Tuesday Tech Tip: New Schoology Awesomeness

Schoology is always improving what they do and how they do it.  The 2015-2016 school year is going to rock with some of the new features Schoology has recently released.  Check out the slides below for additional information and pictures.

Digital Portfolios

Students can actively participate in demonstrating their mastery by creating a portfolio that either displays the process or the product of their learning.  Portfolios can encompass the entire learning cycle or a selection of pieces that showcase their best work. Portfolios provide a space for students to create, celebrate, track progress, share and reflect. You can add text, images, Thinking Maps, embedded content, links, videos and so much more! Portfolios can be private or public. Check out the slides below and Schoology's blog Showcasing your Work in Schoology's Portfolios for additional information. 

Course Linking

Do you teach the same course multiple times? Perhaps you teach Geometry three times.   Now, you are now able to link your similar course sections together so you are really managing just one class! Yep, this is a game changer!  Link courses to manage all materials, due dates and gradebook settings.  Check out the slides below and Schoology's blog Your New Superpower: Manage Multiple Course Sections at Once for additional information.

Discussions

The new discussions look pretty sharp!  This new design will help teachers and students navigate through posts. Check out the slides below and Schoology's blog Six Glorious Reasons to Love Schoology's Redesigned Discussions for additional information.

Mastery Settings

Do you remember when you setup your Mastery Settings and students only had to meet or exceed a standard three times to identify mastery?  Yeah, that's changed.  You decide how many attempts now!  it will make earning that Mastery star more powerful!  Check out the slides below for additional information.

Tuesday Tech Tip: Schoology Updates

In the past few months Schoology has rolled out some updates that will pretty much knock your socks off.

First, rubrics are now able to be saved as a resource and shared with others. Woo-hoo! Gone are the days of creating a rubric for an assignment and having it live only with that assignment in the course it was built. This has been one of the most requested features at Schoology, and it’s finally a reality. We recommend adding your rubrics via the Grade Setup area so you always have a master copy of a rubric you use often. Or, create a collection of rubrics in your resources so you can easily find and share them when you need them. Combine this option with the updates from February that keeps rubrics with materials when they are shared or moved and you’ve got yourself a rubric arena to play in! For more information on all the fun to be had with rubrics, check out the Schoology Blog post here.

Speaking of rubrics, the latest Android app updates will also allow mobile educators to grade student submissions on a point-based scale on an Android mobile device as well as override rubric and final grades. Not to leave anyone feeling let down, this feature is also available for those iOS educators as well! Check out these and other app updates on the Schoology Blog here.

Another update to celebrate is that notifications have been updated to now alert students when a submission is overdue. Although sharing rubrics was up there in terms of feature requests, this was the most highly requested feature from the Schoology community. And we can certainly see why! Any time a student misses a submission deadline, not only are they notified, but any parents/guardians or advisors will also be notified. How’s that for keeping everyone in the loop? The notifications will show up in an “Overdue Submissions” section above the “Upcoming” notifications. For more information on how these notifications work as well as some of the specifics for settings, check out the Schoology blog post here.

And finally, we are excited to announce that CCSD now has access to the newly created portfolio feature in Schoology! While this feature has not been opened up everywhere, our district users have early access so you can start to plan for your students future success by incorporating portfolios that capture their best work/thinking in one place. The portfolio stays with the student rather than in a course they won’t have access to once it’s over-which means they can add to it and build it over time. To access the portfolio feature (students or teachers), click on your user name in the upper right corner. On the profile page, click on Portfolios. Use the New Portfolio button at the top to add a new Portfolio, and then start adding items to the portfolio such as submissions from classes, files, links, or pages with embedded content to highlight and showcase amazing work and exemplary thinking. Leave us a comment below giving some ideas on how you might use portfolios with your students!

Around here, the Schoology Blog posts regarding site updates and new features are read immediately as we are always excited to see how Schoology has managed to outdo their previous work when it comes to supporting educators and students. We will keep you posted as more updates start to roll out over the summer!