New Developments on Kidscapism

This is a quick listing of new functionality that is being added to the site - with the newest things at the top of this list.

20-2-12 Attachments Thanks to new friends in Germany for suggesting that simulating attachments in emails would be good - for children to learn this functionality. This is now working - when sending an email, users can attach a small file (a small picture or a Word document) to send to the other user. There are a few 'higher-level' learning opportunities for children here - like finding files (on your local system), and saving them to an appropriate place - where the child will find them again! Good luck!

1-2-12 Super-Teachers Several teachers (and ICT Coordinators) have tried to set up classes for their colleagues. This has not been straightforward until now. There is now the facility for the first registered teacher or ICT Coordinator to be designated a 'Super Teacher' with permission to add other teachers, add classes for each teacher, and so on. This streamlines the process of setting up a set of classes or a whole school.

26-1-12 Teacher Registration Only I have removed the facility for students to register themselves. This was happening very rarely, and students could do very little on the site without their teacher's permission. So now, only registered teachers can sign up (we always check they are teachers). The registered teacher can then set up their class and add students.

17-1-12 Countdown Timer. Teachers can set a finishing time for a lesson and a graphical countdown timer will be shown to their students on the 'messages' block described below.

15-1-12 Real-Time Teacher Messages. Teachers can now brief their classes by posting a short message which will show on the front page of each student's computer. There are two types of message which can be shown - a general message to the class - 'Please carry on with your stories this morning - see me if you need any help', and a specific message to a particular student (shown only to that student) - 'Hi Billy, please make sure you work on your own today'. This should be a useful feature - it will update whenever students refresh the page (or complete an email/story etc.) so it could be used for 'real-time' communication from teacher to students.

5-1-12 Recommend a Friend. There is now a page where you can send emails to other teachers to suggest that they too use the site.

14-12-11 Personalisation of Stories. The general idea here is that stories get tailored to the person who is reading them (i.e. the logged in user - yourself, or one of your students). There are three elements to this.
Firstly, a user has to complete the form under 'Your Profile' to enter names for characters, places they might live etc. This is personalisation.
Then - secondly - stories written by us (listed on the teacher stories page) will feature the names the user has entered. In this way, the stories (which are mostly about kids playing sport together) feature the user, his/her friends, and locations with which they are familiar. Kids love this.
Finally (thirdly) This functionality is now available for stories created by other teachers. There are a couple of brief examples on the teacher stories page. Teachers are now able to upload their own stories to the site, and have the option to personalise each story to their users (by specifying e.g. names which change). So if you write a story starring Fred and Freda, you will be able to specify that 'Fred' and 'Freda' can change - so that when Robert and Roberta log in to the site, the story will star Robert and Roberta instead! This needs some work but will be good when it is working properly.

13-12-11 Teacher Stories. We now have a set of stories imported from the previous site. This section will soon include the ability for teachers to upload new short stories that they have written. This section will get lots more attention before and after the Christmas break.

13-12-11 Teacher Management of Student Work. Added a page for teachers to read, edit and delete their students' work in one place.

13-12-11 Points and Awards. This is a much-requested feature. Users (not teachers but students!) can now earn points and (gold/silver/bronze) awards for doing things on the site. So - if a student sends an email, replies, logs in, or writes stories, they are awarded points on the site - and their status is displayed on their class page with their name and a graphic to represent their award if applicable.

10-12-11 Write Stories Together. The story-writing functionality is now live. There are links for children to create three types of story - a simple single story; the first half of a two-part story and; the beginning of a three-part story. There are also links for children to add to or finish stories that their classmates have started.
For two-part stories, each first half can have multiple second halves, and for three-part stories, each beginning or middle can have multiple middles or ends. In this way, a student can write the start of a story, and many others can add middles and endings.
Equally, a teacher could start off a story or task, and the children could finish it.
Stories are based inside the student's classroom - so when students are 'in' their class, or in their joint class, they are able to see stories written by people in that class (or joint class). Stories written by class members cannot be seen by people who are not in that class.
At each stage of the story, other children are able to review the work, and to make suggestions for (peer assess) the work. They can give each story a star rating and make comments.
When the story is finished, there is a summary page, with the three parts presented, and children can print the final work out on a variety of templates.
Teachers will have the ability to edit, delete, review and make comments on the stories and story parts.

5-12-11 Snow! Yes - really!

1-12-11 Parents Information. Some new information has been added for parents - fairly prominently on the front page. This is mainly so that parents whose children come home from school with news of this amazing new website can understand a bit about it - quickly. The page aims to reassure parents of the security of the system, and the fact that their child's teacher is essentially in charge (as they are at school!).

28-11-11 Switch Students OFF! (Wouldn't that be nice...just occasionally?). Anyway, this is a bit of new functionality which allows you as a teacher to prevent students creating anything new on the site when you are not around. Several teachers have suggested this might be a good idea (especially in the early stages of a collaborative venture when everyone is getting to know each other). On the Teachers Home Page there is a button which allows you to select which students in your class(es) you want to 'switch off' temporarily. For the moment, this does not prevent access outside school hours, it just stops students adding anything (sending an email, adding a story etc.). If you feel you want to prevent access completely (disable their login) then that can be done easily - just let me know. For now it will remain this way. Just please remember to switch them back on again!

22-11-11 Nasty Error Message Occasionally your students may come across an error message. This is related to memory, and happens when there are lots of users online. Sorry about this - it will take a forthcoming server upgrade to fix this. In the meantime, a quick refresh of the browser (Internet Explorer/Chrome/Firefox etc.) will solve the problem and no work is lost.

20-11-11 More on Linked Classes. We have some collaborations going on this week, so the Linked classes page now has a chat feature for the two teachers involved. Children are not allowed to access this (they have their email for contacting each other - which is under the teacher's control) but it seems a good idea that when two teachers are linked up (especially if they choose to link in real time) they can have some live chat facility between the two of them. This new feature does that and should mean that collaborative work between classes goes as smoothly as possible.

17-11-11 Linked Classes. As we have had a couple of new linked classes set up today, I thought I should take a look at the 'Linked Class Home Page'. This is the page that is built when two teachers agree to link up, and a joint class is created. It now features three sections: A section with the class name, and a funky little graphic to indicate which two countries are linked, a section where you and the other teacher can place any instructions for the linked class (from the Lesson Plan functionality described earlier), and a section which shows the members of this joint class - from both parent classes.

16-11-11 More Lesson Planning (still not that keen...). Today I have added the ability to set some brief instructions at the 'Class Group' level. The real-world equivalent of this is setting tasks for small groups within a class to do. This particular functionality is designed to be quick - you can write a couple of lines for each group (e.g. a reading group) and only the students in this group will be able to see them (on their class group page). So - you want the Tigers group to read from page 42 of 'The Hitchhikers Guide', and the Elephants group to read from page 3 of 'A Brief History of Time' - well you just instruct them by writing a reading-group-level note to the creative types in the Tigers, and the downright geniuses in the Elephants. You probably want to tailor your notes to the abilities of the two. You can now do that. (By the way, this doesn't stop you from writing more serious plans for a class group (see below - you would just select the class group as the target group for your more elaborate plan) - it is just that what I'm describing here is quicker - ideal for the five minutes you have at the start of the day before they all pile in for registration and guided reading.

15-11-11 Lesson Planning (also not my favourite!). I realised that the soon-to-be-launched story-writing functionality would be a bit lost without some way for teachers to guide their students. So I have spent some time putting together a section which allows teachers to produce a set of 'instructions' (a lesson plan if you like) for their students, which will be seen on the 'Your Class' home page. So when students go to their 'classroom' there will be things for them to do. As I thought this would be so useful (vital even...) I decided it would be good for teachers to be able to share them with each other. Oh yes! So, on the teachers' admin page there is now a section listing both 'My Lesson Plans' and 'Other Teachers' Lesson Plans'. A teacher can choose to show their own plan/instructions on the classroom page, OR (and here is the clever bit...) select someone else's, edit it a bit, make it look like they did all the work, and publish it as their own! All the plans remain in a bank for use at any time - you just indicate which one you want to appear to the students at a particular time. Good eh?

9-11-11 Teacher Registration Some changes to the way in which teachers register - so that we can gather a bit of extra information from them (name and school switchboard number). This is so that we can confirm that they are teachers. We don't want this function for students so there are now two different registration processes.

3-11-11 Confirming a Teacher Link This function sends an email (from Kidscapism) to the teacher who has offered their class as a linked class, from the teacher who has asked to link up with them. It includes the email address of the requesting teacher - so that an efficient dialogue can begin about how best to collaborate. (Without this, the contact between the two is limited to when one of them logs in to Kidscapism and is then notified - which may not be for a few days). This makes it more likely that a quick link will be established.

3-11-11 Emailing Yourself! I had originally not allowed this (rather, you could see a message sent to yourself in the 'Sent' items, but not in the 'Inbox'). I have no idea why I did this, but it must have seemed a good idea at the time. Unless something goes horribly wrong as a result, you can now test the email system by sending a message to yourself. Please remember that for performance reasons there may be a short (one minute) delay before messages show up in the other user's inbox.

3-11-11 Biographies I've been toying with this for a while. When classes link up together, communicating with new friends is very sterile unless you know something about them (by default, all that is visible is their Kidscapism username). Now, users (teachers or students) can optionally enter some brief biographical information about themselves. THIS ONLY APPEARS IN ONE PLACE (the address book for the linked class) - AND ONLY WHEN A LINKED CLASS (COLLABORATION) HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED. Users can hover over a 'bio' link to see some very limited information about the interests of that person. There are strong messages to users NOT to include their full names. As usual, this feature is also under the control of the teacher, and editable by them. Users can enter their first name (or a nickname), gender, favourite subjects, hobbies, and activities (club membership etc.)

21-10-11 Assessment! Not my favourite topic (I think we do a little too much of it)...however, for better or worse, I am implementing some assessment features into the site. Initially, this will give the students a chance to peer assess and make comments on each others' stories (and parts of stories) in the form of '2 positives' and '1 suggestion'. In the UK this is sometimes known as '2 stars and a wish'. In due course, teachers will be able to rate and 'mark' the work of their students as well.

21-10-11 Stories This was a big feature of the old KS site, and I have lots of stories from the old site that I will be loading up soon. The current priority is to get the linking of stories (beginnings, middles, and ends) working. Best estimate for when the linked stories feature will be running is early November sometime.

14-10-11 SECURITY This has actually been in place for some time but there are essentially three categories of users on the site. Teachers (checked by us). Students (signed up by their teacher). Students (signed up independently from home). This latter category clearly cannot have access to the full site, because they have not been verified in any way. So now, if a student signs up from home (which we want them to do) they can identify themselves with their school (fine), but then need to request permission to join a class. Until they are in a class (i.e. a class set up by a teacher at their school) they cannot do much - can't email anyone, or identify anyone else at their school.

07-10-11 Change of School Sorted out an issue which meant it was difficult for a user to change school (e.g. moving on to secondary school). Although users should not change often, occasionally a user selects the wrong school when registering or similar. All the permissions need to be reset so that a person at a new school gets checked out again (either by us - for teachers - or by their own teacher - for students). Important security measure to get this right.

07-10-11 Who's On? Students like to know who else is online from their school. There is now a small panel on the Children's Home Page which lists some of the users who are currently online. Children tend to ask the question 'Are you on?' of each other!

07-10-11 Teacher Management Added one or two important features to enable registered teachers to manage their students more effectively. Accessible from the 'Teachers-Home' page ('List Your Students') for registered teachers.

07-10-11 What teachers think. Small testimonials section now accessible from top menu for site visitors. Turned some of the form boxes yellow - not sure why... Repaired ability for teachers to mass email all their students - small bug fixed.

October I hope to start implementing some of the more interesting functionality - revolving around literacy. This will start with loading up the children's stories which already exist from the old site. There will be the possibility for other children to add to the stories, and to comment and rate them. After that, short stories (written by adults) and the personalisation feature.

04-10-11 Instructions. Added instructions for importing users into classes and for starting a collaboration. FAQs updated.

30-9-11 Avatars and Pictures. I have implemented a choice of avatars - it just brightens up some of the pages when children post stories or comments. Children like it. There is also the possibility for users to upload their own picture - although no particular encouragement to do so. Individual teachers can guide their kids - and these are easily changed if necessary.

29-9-11 Reset Password was not working (sorry!). I think it is now OK - please email me if it is causing a problem.

29-9-11 School Structure Hopefully this is now very clear. You are with a school when you sign up. Your teacher can join you to classes at your school, and groups within classes. These are all clearly displayed at the top of all pages - so you know where you are!

29-9-11 Linked Classes. These are now clearly shown on the Teachers Control Panel. You can request links with others, register your class as interested in a link, and see the status of current links. Also added full instructions for linking up.

28-9-11 Your school now has a clear listing - with all the classes and class groups that you or your colleagues have set up. You can delete classes or class groups - and generally manage things - from here.

27-9-11 Just finished letting teachers list and see their students' (email) activity. I think this is quite important for teachers - especially of young children who are not internet-aware or savvy. Please warn them that you can do this!

10-9-11 Email system is now working well. Internal. Safe. No real email addresses. Thanks to South African friends for lots of useful feedback.

Working on Teacher's page mostly - trying to get a format that teachers can use easily to manage their classes, collaboration etc.

Basic setup is complete. Collaboration between classes is working well.

Early September - site re-launched