Christmas facelift

Hi everyone, during the holiday period we've taken advantage of the spare time to enhance aspects of the My Learning suite. Specifically, the homework module inside courses is now much clearer and looks better. As always, we're also testing some new features that will allow teachers and administrators to create forms and templates on the VLE too.

The early part of 2011 should see some improved modules and a new blogging tool for users. As always, we'll keep you updated.

Version 14.2 released

We have now released the ability for school administrators to control exactly which facilities different types of users can use. This new management tool is entitled the "Module Manager" and is available from your "Manage" menu. It currently has support for controlling what Teachers and Students can see, but will shortly have support for Parents and Governors.

Version 14.2 also consists of 23 minor updates to visuals and addresses some minor issues reported by some schools.

Issues:
Youtube videos containing a comma or apostrophe would fail.
Creating a new student user would select an invalid theme.

Additions:
Module manager allows fine grain control of the VLE
Course manager menu allows you to manage course settings directly

Drag and Drop

We have now enabled drag and drop functionality within our file manager.

What can it do?
All users can drag files to any folder to move the file instantly into that location.

They can also move a file into the recycle bin to delete it or move a file over the 'back' button to move the file up one level into the folder above.

It is hoped that these features will improve the file management experience for everyone and makes things even easier to use!

Spellchecking available soon

Our team is busy looking at a new spell checking facility for our editor. This will allow users to check their spelling; and receive optional suggestions. There will be three levels of spell checking.

The good news is that since we support 67 languages, we will also be adding support for 67 dictionaries! So now, you can use your spell checker in your French lesson too!

This feature will be added to all existing clients in the coming weeks.

Graphium version 14 launched

The next major release of the My Learning Suite is entitled "Graphium" and will be deployed to all clients on Thursday October 28th between 3pm and 6pm.

Graphium Release Notes

Feature request system

New for the September term will be our feature request and bug tracking system which will allow all registered teachers and administrators to create observations, suggestions and report bugs directly to our developers.

You will be able to use your platform login details to access the system and engage with other users of the community system.

New feature for sticky notes

Feedback from some of our recent meetings with schools has asked for the ability to create sticky notes with an optional expiry date. We are pleased to confirm that this ability will be added within the next day on our platform.

Users will be able to create notes from themselves, others - and groups of users and to allow the note to expire on a given date!

All existing schools will receive this update within the next 24 hours.

New instruction manuals

Three days ahead of schedule, the new replacement manuals are now online and immediately available from the help menu of your learning platforms.

They include all the latest features and updates for the v13.1 patch which was applied on 17th August. Our support line is also available during the school term break for any users assembling content and courses.

Our next major update will be in mid-November with the release of v14, entitled "Graphium". Invitations will be sent to all clients in the September term asking users to identify feature requests and ideas.

Upgrade information

A large update was applied to all client users of the My Learning Suite v13. Please find details of v13.1 notes:

•    NEW: Improved support for uploaded files of unusual and varying formats
•    NEW: You can now upload new files whilst editing an existing document
•    NEW: An enhanced homepage lists your to-do list in a better way
•    NEW: When creating notes, you can specify a validity period
•    NEW: Support for the embedding of Youtube and many other media types
•    NEW: Initial implementation of schools linking with other schools
•    NEW: Assistance for users on what QR Codes are, and how to learn more
•    NEW: Realtime transcoding of media files into web formats
•    NEW: Teachers can now create their own course modules to point to websites
•    NEW: Teachers can now write to entire Class Groups and Learning Spaces
•    NEW: A new upload guardian will detect users trying to upload viruses
•    NEW: Improved summary screen for regular users
•    NEW: An enhanced to-do list for new users of the system
•    NEW: Copy and paste files using the new file clipboard
•    NEW: Teachers can now send video popups
•    NEW: Users can now upload new files whilst directly editing a file
•    FIX: Improvements to many data lists and table displays
•    FIX: You can now create messages to learning spaces and class groups
•    FIX: Blogging tool has been enhanced in the course manager
•    FIX: Improvements to learning routes and importing documents
•    FIX: A handful of minor display bugs were found, and squashed.
•    FIX: Files copied using the clipboard are now editable in the document editor
•    FIX: Overhaul of improved support for Internet Explorer 8 (and upcoming 9)
•    FIX: When creating messages, leaving the subject blank would lose your message
•    FIX: Unable to edit your title from your user information page
•    FIX: When creating courses, your name would not honour your formal/informal setting
•    FIX: Lists of students and teachers now have less detail, and show more entries per screen

New updates for 17th August

My Learning staff have been taking advantage of the UK school holiday period to accelerate their updates to our innovative learning platform:- My Learning Suite.

17th August will see a number of new features and upgrades being applied to all our clients. These micro-patches will provide subtle enhancements to popular tasks and include over 30 new updates.

You can now embed 3rd party videos and content directly into the learning platform, and we support nearly all of the popular video sharing websites. More details will be announced on August 18th.

Transcoding now released

Say goodbye to incompatible files! My Learning have released their built-in file converter to all schools.

What is "Transcoding".

Transcoding is the process of changing the format of a specified file from one format to another. It can be useful when you wish to make files more compatible with other systems. For example, an AVI (video) file which runs for 5 minutes may be 100mb in size. By transcoding a file from an AVI to an FLV (web format), the size of the file will be reduced dramatically. This represents a massive reduction in file size, and bandwidth. It also means that the file will be more web compatible.

File type support

Videos
AVI, MOV, MPEG and MPG files will be converted to FLV

Images
GIF, TIF, PSD, EPS, SVG and BMP files are converted to JPG

Audio
WAV and WMA files are converted to MP3

Please note that if this facility is enabled, it will be in effect for all users of the system. We recommend activating the transcode feature for users with lots of files who wish to create their own content. A short delay is experienced when a file is uploaded, whilst the material is transcoded.

Improvements and additions

We have been busy recently adding features requests from users to our range of learning platforms. See below for a few of the additions:

•  NEW: Teachers can now write to entire Class Groups and Learning Spaces
•  NEW: A new upload guardian will detect users trying to upload viruses
•  NEW: Improved summary screen for regular users
•  NEW: An enhanced to-do list for new users of the system
•  NEW: Copy and paste files using the new file clipboard
•  NEW: Teachers can now send video popups
•  NEW: Users can now upload new files whilst directly editing a file
•  FIX: A handful of minor display bugs were found, and squashed.
•  FIX: Overhaul of improved support for Internet Explorer 8 (and upcoming 9)
•  FIX: When creating messages, leaving the subject blank would lose your message
•  FIX: Unable to edit your title from your user information page
•  FIX: When creating courses, your name would not honour your formal/informal setting
•  FIX: Lists of students and teachers now have less detail, and show more entries per screen

Video goodness!

Some great news for all our users! We will shortly be releasing an update to the platform which automatically convert any uploaded videos directly into a more compatible web format called FLV. This format is smaller, whilst retaining quality and is ideal for embedding and re-using in your work.

Users will have the option to enable or disable the feature of automatic conversion. Schools will be notified when the feature has been enabled.

Happy video-blogging!

Index your world

My Learning will shortly be adding support to automatically index and read the text within uploaded PDF files so that you can search your learning platform for text contained within PDF files! Rather neat.

We already have the same facility for Microsoft Word 97 and 2003 - and soon we will upgrade the facility for Word 2007 too!

File clipboard

By popular demand, and outright common sense - users of our platform can now browse the entire tree of content - such as the entire range of 2,700 activities from Sherston Software, and copy the activities directly to their personal online folders or class groups to be re-used elsewhere!

This also means that you can engineer your own courses, bristling with activities and tests within a few minutes!

Version 13 documentation release

We have now released the first part of the manual, guides and documentation for the latest edition of the My Learning suite (release 13: Anteos).

Users will now find this on their "Help" menu, under "Online manuals". Currently, there are 134 pages of tutorial goodness!

Very soon we will be indexing the entire manual and it will become fully searchable from your "Shared files" area for all schools. As you can appreciate, our technical team have been working overtime (in payment of free Pizza) for their efforts!

Anteos Release notes

They also keep telling us that video tutorials are coming for the summer holidays - which will be nice.

Version 13 official release

Our latest and greatest version has now been applied to all clients:

•    File licencing - allows users to stamp their files with a licence
•    CEOP reporting - new option to allow users to report abuse internally, or externally
•    Clipart - We now provide 4,805 clipart items with each deployment! (all tagged and searchable)
•    QRCodes - Take your files on your phone by scanning their barcode image on the screen! (iPhone / Nokia and HTC phones)
•    Notes - Sticky notes are now even more fun to use, remember positions, zoomable and more on screen space
•    Editor - A brand new editor for teachers with even more features, much easier to use
•    Bridge - Teachers can now create courses within minutes with our new "Resource Importer" - make topic courses in 5 minutes
•    Infant - Our new My Learning Infant product is being released after half-term, with 24 cartoon characters
•    Search - Our updated search tool now looks through the entire system, for anything you want

Take it for a spin and let us know if there is anything you would like to see!

Licencing support in development

At the request of clients, we will soon be implementing the support for users to attach a licencing type when they upload material to the learning platform.

This means that any files which you add to them system can use any of the popular licencing types, specifically with regard to Creative Commons licencing.

This allows you to protect and/or limit your files with regard to how they are used by other people on the system. We expect support for this feature to be released by the end of May 2010. The upgrade will be applied to all deployments, and will not be mandatory.

CEOP support enabled

The platform now has an abuse reporting feature which can be made optionally available to students.

Users can click the "Report Abuse" button and are then guided through a series of options and ways to report potential or suspected abuse; including links to the government CEOP site.

There are also options to send a message to the school administrator, and visit the CEOP website.

This update has been applied to all existing clients in Build 210.61

New sticky notes

Release: Build 210.55

For all existing users, your sticky notes have now been upgraded to included the following features:

1) Sticky notes will now remember where you move them
2) You can now zoom in to the note by clicking the magnify tool
3) School notice boards have been upgraded too. Please note that you can move everyone elses sticky notes, but the system will only record the location of your own notes!

First use: Please note that initially, your board will have been reset - so the first time you access sticky notes you will need to arrange them as you see fit. their location will then be remembered

Have fun!

Distributor channel now open

My Learning (UK) Ltd are pleased to announce that we have now opened our official distributor and reseller channel for the international market.

If you are an I.T or educational service supplier in an overseas market and wish to act as a distributor, reseller; or both - then contact us to register your interest.

We provide marketing material, lead insights, technical training and support, dedicated servers, demonstration logins and full access to our distributor web service containing everything required to get started.

Benefit from generous commissions, great support and the freedom to work within territories that you understand and control.

Version 13 is on schedule

The new update from version 12 to 13 is in final stages of testing and will be released to the community in the coming weeks. A quick look at some new features!

• A brand new online editor allows instant podcasts, videos and images to be included in your work.
• New features for calendar items and sticky notes allows users to add expiry times for notices.
• Our new video recording tool is being released, allowing users to create their own videos.
• A new instant gallery tool allows you to view any of your folders as a fullscreen gallery - great for slideshows and presentations.
• Indexing support. Most files that you upload will now be automatically indexed, so that you can search your platform for text that resides inside your files - and see previews too!
• New options for instant popups, now allow you to send notices to groups, and individuals at the same time.
• Many other improvements with regard to class management, user creation, administration and support for Internet Explorer 7 and 8.

Improved support for Internet Explorer 7 and 8

The My Learning development team have continued to improve features for users with Internet Explorer 7 and 8 with many upgrades to improve user management, messaging and the creation of instant popups.

Users who are still using Internet Explorer 6 must note that this browser is now 9 years old. Whilst we provide basic support for this browser, in order to benefit from an enhanced experience, we encourage all these users to upgrade before the autumn term.

5 more languages available!

My Learning (UK) Ltd have this morning released 5 new languages onto the platform!

Most importantly, we now support Persian (Farsi) language characters and translations. You will find Farsi listed under the Iranian flag inside the learning platform.

For our Irish friends, we now have preliminary Irish Gaelic which was added on Friday 27th March.

We have also added Belarusian, Swahili, Malay and Macedonian.

Let us know how you get on!

New photo gallery browser

By popular request, we have listened to user feedback and now offer two great ways of interacting with your images and photos.

The old gallery has been removed, and replaced with a much smarter, faster and feature rich gallery browser. Existing users can access it by clicking their "Images" button or menu.

For those with an interest in 3D, we also have a 3D photo wall replacement.

Please note that these new features will require Flash Player 9 or above. If you have still not upgraded to Flash Player 9, now may be a good time to do so as many other internet application providers are encouraging schools to upgrade!

New school directory

After listening to teacher feedback we are pleased to announce that there is now a great way of adding and editing students for your classrooms and learning spaces.

We have released a new search box which allows you to list all the students, teachers and year groups with a single click.

It is now even easier to add, remove and edit students within groups.
Students also benefit from the same tool.

New personalised usernames

In version 11 of the software we introduced support for students being able to choose their own login name. This was limited to the fact that you could not use a login name that another student (from another school) was already using...

Boo hoo...

So, we re-wrote the entire system; and now users can choose the same login name no matter which school they are from. So, go ahead; and make up some crazy login names!

More new features...? (yes)

Indeed... we wanted to provide teachers (and students) with a quick way of accessing all the shared content on the system WITHOUT having to be enrolled into a course and formally take part in it.

For example, if a teacher simply wanted to run through some existing content for a presentation; or to assign some homework and ask students to take part in an activity.

The good news is that all schools now have that feature!

School administrators will find a new icon in their shared files called "Activities". This is a directory structure, with thumbnails, listing over 2,700 individual activities on your platform (depending upon which version of My Learning you use).

Now, any user on the system can browse this Key Stage tree, and click once to activate their content directly on-screen.

It's a great way of students being easily able to access content, and much less formal than building courses. Ideal for younger learners.

Version 12 launched

After two weeks of testing, and a few late nights from our developers... we present Version 12 of the My Learning Suite:

• Faster language support with client side caching
• Improvements to HTML code compliance (XHTML)
• A re-written user import tool which is much smarter
• Welsh language support (Irish to follow shortly)
• Updated right-to-left text rendering for Arabic and Farsi text
• New user search tools and user directory browser
• Context sensitive online help has been updated
• 7 new themes for older users and teacher accounts
• New school notice board feature!
• New school shared sticky notes too
• All users now have a dashboard on their homepage
• Improved mini-calendar now available
• Introduction of "Recent documents" for all users
• Many little graphical tweaks and technical nonsense things...

Have fun!