Version 17 Released - Damora

We have today released the latest edition of the My Learning Suite to the community.

Version 17, entitled "Damora" is one of the largest updates for over 18 months and comprises a mixture of requested features, user experience updates and a focus towards consolidation and ease of use.

Here is a list of the major new features you'll find:

The online editor is now equipped with a range of built-in templates that allow you to create content much more easily. Templates can be used when creating a new file, using the course manager and building websites. A simple point and click interface allows you to insert templates, change images and add video easily.

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Graphical Enhancement

The entire interfacing system has been improved to provide better support for smaller screens, tablet devices and general navigation. There are a range of new themes to add greater diversity and subtle improvements to shadows and on-screen elements.

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Course improvements

The course manager has undergone layout improvements in order to display more relevant information to users. New abilities to customise your course homepage and discover newly contributed content greatly enhances the user experience.

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Translation Trainer

For our international users, there is a new facility to allow administrators to contribute translation changes to any part of the interface. If your school is interested in becoming a translation trainer please let us know. The system has been used successfully in Holland.

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Curriculum classification

Every course, class, learning space and file on the system can now be classified to fulfill key curriculum areas using a common colour format. This means that in a future edition, resources can be searched according to their curriculum type.

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Menu improvements

My Learning Plan, which is the edition that provides an interface for secondary schools, colleges and teachers now has an enhanced menu that is much easier to use, and more compatible with touch based devices such as whiteboards, tablets and touch PC's.

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New file manager interaction

We discovered that 85' of users were clicking the middle of an icon in order to view their files. This used to open the file properties screen but has now been improved so that it will display the file. File properties can be accessed using a smaller 'settings% icon.

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Improved user search

You can now search for users more easily by quickly accessing common groups with large easy to use icons. We've also improved the layout and order of the way that some users were listed.

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New user roles

Our system now has full provision for the following role types: Student, Teacher, Non-Teaching and Governor. In order to improve the detail of the system you may wish to edit your users and select a more accurate role type for them.

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Class filtering within test results

Within a course, you can now filter test results based upon individual classes. This is useful for teachers who have multiple classes enroled within a course.

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In-place file upload

Each file in the file manager properties now allows you to upload a replacement file. This allows you to freshen a file that already exists and can be useful in updating Microsoft office files, images and media.

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Course management upgrade

Administrators have a new option to manage course categories, users, classes and a range of new tools.

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Class ownership feature

It is now possible to change the owners of learning spaces and classes by appointing a new owner. All the resources are then moved to the new owner of the resource.

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Theme overhauls

Our themes have been increased and simplified to create a much cleaner and faster user experience.

There have been over 180 minor updates, fixes, tweaks and improvements which will be available in the formal release notes for registered users. As with all our releases, phase 2 will commence during the next few days to provide supplemental features and minor adjustments as the new update settles in. We hope that we have addressed many of your requests and look forward to Version 18, entitled "

Even more support for the Apple community

Our development team noticed that there was a huge upsurge in users wishing to store podcasts, iPod movies and a whole range of Apple format files on the learning platform during the last month. This is brilliant, because users are now able to use the learning platform to store a range of files for many purposes.

One major problem, commonly found in many other products is that all you can do is store the files - when it comes to playing them back; you have to download software in order to play the files.

The team have just released a new update (ahead of schedule for the next release) that now adds integrated playback support for the following file types:

AVI, MOV, WMV, MP4, MPG, MPEG, M2V, M4V, 3GP, 3G2 and M2V

This means that (if transocding is enabled on your VLE, which it normally is) if you upload any of these files, our system will recompress the material into FLV format, meaning that your material can be played back online without requiring any software!

Now you can include mobile phone videos, podcasts, iPod material and a whole range of Apple produced material directly inside the learning platform. Our mobile edition can also palyback this material too (Android only at the moment).

Have fun!

Version 17 release date announced

My Learning are pleased to announce that the release of the next major update to the My Learning Suite of products, entitled "Damora" will be implemented from 4pm on Tuesday 29th November.

Version 17 [Damora] contains many visual enhancements, layout improvements and a range of new features. We've radically overhauled the entire course/topic management system to provide many new options at the request of schools. Our internal development systems are already running Damora, and the feedback so far has been fantastic.

The main focus for Damora is "consolidation" and "enhancement". We decided to improve the existing modules and features rather than release another wave of new facilities! (There's already a huge amount of modules within the platform).

The launch of Damora also delivers a new sister-product to the My Learning Suite, entitled "Commune".
My Learning Commune acts as a central hub between all our clients, allowing much greater flexibility and enhanced communication between geographically different locations. More details regarding "Commune" will be released in November.

As with all our upgrades, there's absolutely nothing you need to do other than wait. The formal pre-release notes will appear on the login page of your learning platform as usual. Another new update will see the production of our monthly newsletter which will be emailed to all relevant parties on the last day of each month (optional).

We look forward to hearing your comments, ideas and feedback as always.

ML Support.

Import from Microsoft Class Server and Sharepoint

We've been working hard to allow our system to now import tests and quizzes from Microsoft Class Server and Sharepoint LMS. This work has now led to some new facilities which will be available for existing clients, and new schools.

A direct import will be available in our next release "Damora" (end of November) which will allow users to bring their material from Microsoft based systems. This is a great step forward in providing our services to those schools whom feel that other LMS systems may be unsuitable from a financial sustainabiltiy or usability point of view.

Further news will be released from our labs section during the next month.

Over 100 file types now supported

As users continue to use more and more open source software, and the quality and depth of this software becomes better - we are generating ever greater types of files. We are pleased to announce that we have just added support for our 100th file type (Google Sketch Up) - so now you can store these on the system too.

In due course we'll be adding very nice icon support for all these new files, so your file manager will look more like your computer and laptop desktops. If you wish to add support for new files, please email us - it only takes a few minutes to do!

Hallo en welkom - to Holland!

My Learning (UK) are pleased to announce that they are deploying a high-speed server in the Netherlands in order to support our community of Dutch schools. After a very enjoyable BETT 2011 where we met with some very excited Dutch schools, we are looking forward to assisting the educational community in Holland with learning platforms, upcoming technology and exploring ICT for the 21st century.

We had recent discussions with one of Holland's leading ICT innovators, with some fantastic ideas for the next generation of the My Learning suite of products. Our team is looking forward to bringing these ideas to the digital world.

Gelukkig leerlingen!

Upgraded server in Vietnam

As part of our 5 year plan to provide localised services to our international schools, My Learning (UK) Ltd is pleased to announce that we have now enhanced our Vietnam server with additional capabilities and bandwidth to accommodate schools in that region. We are pleased to welcome these schools into our community and to receive kind feedback from our "digital pioneers"!

It's been a while, but we've been busy!

We didn't want to bombard everyone with news during the school holiday's - simply to provide information which was not school related. More importantly, we've been busily working away during the break on many enhancements, updates and consolidation of version 16 before our jump to the new edition.

For those of you who want to see all the patches for the latest edition, have a look in the labs. Many of the patches have been in direct response to user requests and we'll publish them all shortly.

Multi-room chat upgrades

We've upgraded our entire chat engine so that it now provides multi-room chat facilities. Each teacher in the school is now able to create a new "chat instance", and each of these instances may then be attached to any shared resource within the school.
This flexible approach to the creation of a chat room, allows real-time exchanges of opinions, thoughts, feedback and quickfire re-cap sessions. As expected, the entire system retains a transcript which can be downloaded or edited, and is protected by the online censorship system.
for further details of the enhanced "Chat+" module, login as an administrator and browse to "Add-ons".

Integration with Education City

My Learning have today completed their second phase of integration, with support for Education City - who provide a range of online activities and games in the UK and overseas. Administrators can activate the integration service quickly and easily - providing even more features for their students within the platform.

2 Simple integration

Thanks to the detailed support of staff at 2Simple, My Learning are pleased to announce that we now provide integration with 2 Simple's award winning "Purple Mash". Users of our learning systems can now access their 2Simple - online documents from within the platform. Existing schools will receive an update which will allow them to activate their integration automatically.

Support for Clicker

We've just added support for the storage of Clicker files within the learning platform. This means that students and teachers can now store and retrieve Clicker XML files using our file uploader.

Welcome to zip heaven

We have decided to release our new zip facility ahead of the forthcoming Temenis release on June 20th. Users of our systems are now able to upload a zip file and ask the contents to be unpacked on the platform. The system will unpack the entire contents of your file online, and then preview, thumbnail and index all of the contents making them searchable and accessible.

You can also upload a zip file without unpacking it, and then browse it's contents online too. In future versions we'll enhance the system so that you will be able to unpack multiple files, and browse your entire zip file online.

Finally, as always, you can package individual files and folders and download them as a zip file too. This new system is now live, so take it for a spin and let us know any suggestions!

Integrated email now available

My Learning are pleased to announce that integrated email will now be available in our next release, with multi-lingual support and an easy to use interface.

Users have access to a web friendly, fully featured email system to send and receive internet emails. Over the coming weeks, we're also performing tighter integration into the VLE to incorporate all your mail groups. This latest feature will be activated during our next major release entitled "Temenis" on June 20th.

The system can also be accessed as a separate email service just like GMail or Hotmail. This facility has been released ahead of schedule in order to provide a unified learning (and communications) environment for new schools who may benefit from this feature.

Version 16 release date announced

My Learning (UK) Ltd is pleased to announce the release date of it's next version, entitled "Temenis". Version 16 provides an extensive range of new and improved features; guided, as always, by teachers, students and parents!
The release date will be Monday June 20th.

After the UK half-term break we'll be releasing an information document to all our schools explaining some of the changes that we're making to the My Learning Junior interface. Our team is making the most of the school break to press on with final phase testing to ensure the v16 release goes smoothly.

Any schools attending the Northern Grid Conference and the E2BN Conference will be amongst the first to see our new interface and features (another reason to come and see us!). This new release contains some of our most advanced features to date, and details will be posted to the public lab on June 23rd.

My Learning - Now teaching the teachers!

My Learning is pleased to announce that it's core product, My Learning Junior will be used as a teacher training tool by the University of Cumbria. Trainee teachers will have full access to the entire array of tools, facilities and modules to enable true 21st century learning within classrooms of the future. This will aid potential teachers in understanding the huge potential that digital classrooms and resources can bring. My Learning are proud to be associated with such an exciting opportunity. Learn more about the University of Cumbria here

Persian (Farsi) language support

We've now released access to Persian (Farsi) throughout the entire system. Persian is spoken in Afghanistan, India, Iran, Tajikistan, the United Arab Emirates, U.K and the United States of America. Currently, the translations are word-by-word - but will allow Persian readers to utilise nearly all the features of the learning platform.

Support for Promethean and Smartboard

My Learning have recently updated their learning platform suite with built-in support for Promethean Flipcharts (.flp and .flipchart) and Smartboard Notebooks (nbk). Now, teachers who currently use flipcharts in school can store these files on their learning platform and access them from any location. These files can also be used by students (with required software installed).

This service is available immediately to all clients.

Updates to bookmarks

We've made a minor improvement to the bookmarking facility in the learning platform. Users will now benefit from a graphical snapshot of the website when it is created. For any existing bookmarks, users can take an updated photo of their website.
The interface has also been enhanced to make it easier to browse and view websites.
Go and try it out!

Automated Error Reporting (AER's)

Recently we've been researching ways of optimizing the learning platform so that any issues that are encountered do not hinder the use of the system from an end-user point of view - especially whilst teaching. Two weeks ago, we activated a new process entitled "Automated Error Reporting" which allows our system to silently make detailed observations of any issues or improvement opportunities encountered whilst using the learning platform.

The result of this new facility is that our support team are now obtaining details of unusual issues that may have been difficult to replicate or determine and are now able to correct them on demand. We have measured the improvement of the new system and it has reduced the "Time to fix" [TTF] by 50%. Goodbye bugs.

ISO 9001

Perhaps not as exciting as new features, gadgets and video recording tools - but because we're now taking onboard lots of unhappy clients from other companies it makes sense to ensure that we have a solid and efficient service running behind the scenes.

We like to think that we're all perfect, so we've invited an ISO 9001 firm to come in and explain if we're good at doing things, or if we need improvement!
On a more serious note, ISO 9001 will provide further market confidence in the fact that My Learning is rapidly becoming an exciting alternative to many existing platforms. Long live the revolution!

Phase 2 of upgrades

Just to advise all our users that phase 2 of our upgrade is happening this weekend. There is no downtime required and you'll find that any issues or errors with the recent large upgrade will be eliminated before Monday.
We've squashed a bug with the Audio Recorder, the Calendar updates and we'll be releasing the first edition of our entirely re-written parent portal during next week. All godd stuff!

Version 15 - official announcement!

For all those schools who are waiting to hear when version 15 is being released, we have today agreed that the update will be published towards the end of the half-term on Saturday 26th February. And for all the competitors (...trial users) also following us, here's a list of some of the features we have in store!

New facilities and features:

• Audio recording now built into the system - allowing voice recording from anywhere
• Video recording for teachers allows creation of mini-video clips
• Ability to grab images directly into the VLE from Flickr (single click)
• Learning spaces/classes can now be co-authored
• Ability to publish a school website from within the VLE
• Multi-month calendar views
• New feature to allow student and teacher blogs
• More specialised themes for ages 9+ (introduced in v15.1 the following week)
• Playlist exports and music/podcast sharing
• We've improved the client-side runtime speed of the system
• Initial support for Internet Explorer 9
• A new 'virtual' web browser to allow "safe surfing" inside the VLE itself (CEOP enabled)
• New handwriting practice tool
• Image tracing program

Research and ongoing modules:

• BETA: “Homework Streams” allow teachers to create homework easily
• BETA: Google Earth explorer allows map scripting and overlay tools for teachers
• BETA: Turtle/Robot and LOGO programming tool
• BETA: “My Learning Bridge” is a tool underway to allow multi-school linkup’s to share content and courses.

Of course, there are literally hundreds of minor changes and tweaks which have been applied at the request of schools and 3rd parties. All clients will receive our Spring Newsletter on 15th February detailing all the changes, features and taking a look at how to make use of these new features in your lessons.

Users will be pleased to know that we'll be launching a new "Best practice vlog" which will be a Video Blog of over 50 things you can do on the system in one minute clips. An ideal way of finding out common tricks and tips to aid in using your learning platform to it's maximum potential - and making learning fun too!

Enjoy - The team @ My Learning

Adelph release notes

Did you know where we get our versions names from? Amazonian Butterflies.... Version 15 is entitled "Adelpha" representing a common, but unusual species found in Central America. Why not learning about them?

My Learning Free Edition has been launched

On Tuesday February 1st, My Learning (UK) Ltd have officially launched a new FREE version of their Learning Platform specifically aimed to help schools with less than 100 pupils.

Entitled My Learning Free, it is a basic version of their highly successful Primary learning platform "My Learning Junior". The product will be provided freely to any primary school with less than 100 students. Schools then have the option of paying for any additional requirements such as training, support or extra features.

Business Development Director, Alan Sawyers advised "We receive many requests from smaller Primary schools who don't often have the budgets to be able to enjoy the services of their larger counterparts. The release of My Learning Free, allows these schools to join our community and then sculpt their learning platform inline with their budgets as they see fit. We want to help all sizes of schools, and My Learning Free enables us to do just that."

My Learning Free is available immediately, and any school (UK or abroad) with less than 100 pupils can apply directly using the link below:

http://www.mylearningltd.co.uk/view/free-virtual-learning-platform

Hybrid themes

As most users will already know, our system is equipped with two methods of operation:
1) A touch/button theme system allows for single click iconic operation
2) A menu driven system is slightly more verbose with more options

Since our last major release, we've been asked if we can provide some extra themes and designs for users somewhere inbetween the two editions. So, for version 15 - you'll find a new range of themes designed exclusively for users who still want touch/button operation - but with more complex and detailed designs for their age group.

The exact release date for "Adelph" (version 15) will be announced during the coming days.

Sharing your class now becomes easier

Even though the My Learning Suite is one of the easiest and most intuitive systems to use, we constantly improve the product according to user feedback. As part of the final set of updates to v14.4, teachers are now able to share their Classrooms or Learning Spaces with "co-authors".

This means that Teacher (A) can create a space, and then arrange that Teacher (B) has the same priveleges to author and maintain work. An ideal solution for split classes, or job sharing roles. The update has been applied to all users, as have the following changes:

1).  Renaming a file checks for an existing file of the same name first.
2).  Uploading a file will report errors if file name already exists in same location.
3).  Folders now show in yellow when inside a class instead of inheriting the folder icon.
4).  An occasional bug when deleting files has now been resolved.


This is the last major update before the release of "Adelph", our version 15 edition.

Audio happiness

We are pleased to announce that our current edition has been updated this morning to allow the instant embedding of audio into any document or resource. With a few clicks, users can now insert their own MP3's, podcasts and clips - or resources from the shared areas. You can also instantly download the resources and... because we like cool features, you'll also get a real-time waveform display too.

So, no need to 'attach' MP3's, now you can embed them into your documents!

Version 15 is under final testing

Inline with our corporate strategy to release 4 major updates per year for the community, version 15 of our platform will be released for mid-March. All of our releases use the names of Amazonian butterflies, and the next release is entitled "Adelpha". It will bring with it, the following new features:

• Teachers will be able to co-own Classgroups and Learning spaces - very useful for part-time teachers or split class sharing with teaching assistants.
• Our new Google Earth integration is nearing completion, which will allow teachers to embed all manner of mapping technologies.
• A re-write is underway for our MP3 and podcasting engine to allow users to easily embed music, sound and narration on the platform.
• We're working on a built-in LOGO emulator to help teachers discover this fascinating programming language to bring ICT lessons to life. (We're looking for test sites - so please get in touch!).
• Further additional themes and graphical tweaks for the system
• Enhancement to our SCORM player engine to work with mobile phones.
• We're als releasing our "Video Guru" video recording tool.

Plus, the usual minor releases and updates - so stay tuned!

Editor updates

As part of our ongoing promise to continually provide new features and friendly tools, we've enhanced our editor with two great new features:
1) You can now fix the position of your toolbar so that it locks to the screen, not the editor.
2) We've also provided a full-screen editing option.
Our users will also soon have access to a powerful templating tool which is still in beta-testing. Watch this blog, or find out details from "The lab"

New bandwidth limiting for v14.4

As part of our micro-update to the My Learning Suite (v14.4) we will be including a new option to help schools with lower internet speeds. The system will now let the school specify the bandwidth for their entire school; choosing from 1,2,4,8,16,32 and 100mb.


It then automatically determines the active users on the VLE and will distribute a shared speed to all the current users of the platform. This is extremely beneficial if a school has 30 students clicking to access a large video; as the bandwidth will automatically be controlled. It has enormous benefits when downloading at once too.

In version 14.5, to follow in late February, administrators will be able to produce reports of detailed internet use of the VLE as part of our new reporting engine. Details for v14.5 will begin to appear in our Labratory blog.

New features at BETT

We just thought we'd let all our users know some of the great new features we have this year at BETT for our suite of Learning Platforms. Things have moved on quite a bit since last year!

We will be showcasing how you can grab videos from popular video sites and pull them directly into your VLE - and now we've made the service twice as fast.

• Our new graphical drag and drop file manager (which works in all common browsers, no flash!)
• "Drift", our ongoing drag and drift technology for younger learners - amazing on whiteboards!
• Mobile learning is on display, all editions now come with mobile learning at no extra cost.
• We now support Sherston, Birchfield and Learnalot content directly within the platform. that's over 18,000 items of content (insane!)
• Fantastic new Special Educational Needs support, symbols, audio and large text reading.

In fact, there are far too many other new things to list here - so pop over to W51 and just see it!

Two new video importer sites activated

As most teachers are aware, our VLE is the only product to allow you to DIRECTLY import a YouTube video and make it part of the learning platform. If you didn't know this, then you do now!

During the Christmas break we've now added support for two further popular video websites:

www.dailymotion.com and www.metacafe.com

You can now directly copy the URL for any video on these sites, and our VLE will import the video (with thumbnails) straight into your system. Best of all, the entire process is now twice as fast! We're adding support for more video sites over the next 3 weeks as part of our update for v14.4.

Support for these two sites will be released on Wednesday 5th January.

Our new 2011 website just went live!

Let us know what you think... good or bad!

YouTube importer updated

Some users may have noticed that the YouTube importer service was offline for a few days. We've now completed an urgent upgrade on the system which will now download videos much more quickly.
Over the next few months we'll be introducing a 'queue' service which will allow you to do other things whilst the video is added to your VLE (much like FaceBook).

We have also enhanced the range of support for video downloads at YouTube and will soon be able to support the following websites too!

www.metacafe.com
video.google.com
www.photobucket.com (videos)
video.yahoo.com
www.dailymotion.com