When classes resume for the 2014-15 school year, students and teachers will be able to take advantage of enhanced access options, more streamlined processes and several more upgrades in the itslearning (http://www.itslearning.net) K-12 digital learning platform. The 2014 CODiE Award winner for ‘Best PK-12 Personalized Learning Solution,’ itslearning is the learning management system of choice for a growing number of districts nationwide and has announced the following enhancements in their latest release:
Access and visibility enhancements for teachers, students and parents
itslearning has streamlined and restructured the login page and main landing page for students to improve access for students with all types of devices. The simplified login page allows students easy access to coursework and instructional materials on tablets, mobile devices, and laptops. The new “My Page” gives students quicker access to tasks, notifications, messages, personal files, ePortfolios and Individual Learning plans.
Students with mobile devices will now be able to easily record or select previously recorded video from within the platform to quickly include in blogs, ePortfolios, discussion boards or submission to assignments.
Finally, parents will now be able to access their children’s calendar in addition to the daily lesson planner via the itslearning Parent Portal.
Better access to content and collaboration
The learning objects repository, called Library, is vastly improved, allowing teachers and staff to quickly and efficiently search for and share content with their students. Teachers can collaborate on a resource by adding colleagues from their school or district as co-authors and create new versions of content with the original author’s permission. Publishers can now share resources compliant with IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) specifications in the Library as well, allowing districts that have subscribed to publisher content to have a single repository for digital resources.
All of these shared resources can be added to courses and will be accessible via the itslearning recommendation engine, enabling teachers to assign additional personalized tasks to students who have not yet mastered specific course learning objectives. As their creators update resources, they will automatically update in all courses, saving districts and teachers time and ensuring that students have access to the most current content possible.
Insights to student workload and physical resources availability
Further reducing teacher time on non-teaching tasks, itslearning has added workload ratings to its Custom Activity tracking tool to help teachers keep students from being burdened with too much work within a particular time frame. Teachers can now also book resources such as rooms or equipment through the calendar with clear insight to availability and who has already booked what resource.
A full list of new features can be found on the itslearning website:
About itslearning, Inc.
Established in 1999, itslearning is a cloud-based K-12 learning management system designed to make teaching easier, learning more engaging, and parent involvement more effective and efficient. Headquartered in Bergen, Norway, itslearning has offices in Boston, Atlanta, London, Birmingham, Berlin, Paris, Mulhouse, Malmo, and Enscheda. For more information, visit http://www.itslearning.net.