Claire Brooks :: Blog

SchoolCentral  = COMPLETELY FREE

My name is Michael Chua from Zebra Mobile, and I would like to introduce you to a new, COMPLETELY FREE service called SchoolCentral.

SchoolCentral is a custom-built web based communication platform, built upon the latest Internet and mobile technologies.  This platform is not a call system, but serves as a mobile notification system, organizational tool, and communication hub between administration and the community.  SchoolCentral will enable administration to improve the districts communication with parents and students, and will measurably impact parental involvement, staff communications, school organization, and community out-reach.  Functioning as a supplement, this platform supports existing emergency procedures, providing different options of how important school information is sent and received.


10 Ways SchoolCentral Will Benefit Your School District:


1. Real Time Communication -SchoolCentral has the ability to send up to 9,000 messages per minute, via email, text message, web, mobile web or RSS.  Capable of notifying the whole community, faster than any call-system, some districts under 60 seconds.

2. Platform Independence -School administrators and community are enabled to decide how they want to receive and respond to important information. School notifications are sent via Internet or SMS.  If a district alert is sent from a cell phone, SchoolCentral deciphers what phone number it is sent from, and where it should be delivered.  More frequent messages of less importance can also be sent to notify families when an event such as an awards program is cancelled, or if their child on the soccer team is returning late from an away game.  Each member of the community now has the option to select what methods of communication are best preferred.

3. Communication Hub –SchoolCentral is a protected, moderated communication platform that provides each school, and groups within, its own online community.  Parents and teachers can connect easily and engage in what is most important to us, our students.

4. Tool For the Classroom – Everyone benefits when using SchoolCentral in the classroom.  Teachers are enabled to compliment a student for a job well done, or connect to a parent with underlying concerns.  Our filing system allows teachers to store documents of unlimited size, giving students the option to access school material outside the classroom, or to reprint an assignment accidentally forgotten at school.

5. Tool For Athletics –Coaches can instantly notify students and parents, if practice is cancelled, when riding on the bus, or standing on the field.   They also can address the community with the winning scores, stats or rosters.  Each sports team now has a web presence, and their own calendaring, filing and alert systems.  This enables them to share important notifications, drum up support, organize team practice and game schedules, or post pictures of the winning touchdown.  The potential is endless.  SchoolCentral’s group’s for athletics is a powerful tool, easily engaging parents and students throughout the community.

6. Easy to Use Calendaring –The RSS Feed calendaring system checks for new events or changes, and automatically updates every 60 seconds.  It also can be synced with Ical, Gcal, and Outlook.  Now all school related events are synced with your personal, work, and mobile calendars.  Besides Alerts, the calendar is the second most utilized feature in the SchoolCentral platform.  It allows parents with multiple children, to organize their schedule more efficiently with color-coding.  It also has a reminder and invite feature, easily allowing reminder and event invitations sent to friends via Email, SMS, RSS, and Desktop Widget.

7. Upload Your School News Letters -Our News Section is a big hit with Superintendents.  They now have the option to blog messages addressing the community without third party help.  School newsletters of any size can be uploaded, and the community has the option to be notified by text, Email, or neither every time new material is released.  This could save the district money by reducing cost on postage.

8. Easy Effort for Schools –This is an End-User-Based Platform.  There is no database management, staff allocation, or maintenance required.  Each member manages their own account, self-registering through a setup wizard, choosing how they would like to receive their school updates and information.   Zebra Mobile custom-builds every platform for each district.  Schools can choose what they want to use SchoolCentral for and we will make all the arrangements.  We customize the look and feel to your districts needs.  You can pick your school colors, and can even choose your own U.R.L.

9. 24 Hour Support -It is Zebra Mobiles commitment to accelerate, and provide your district with superior service and support, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

10. COMPLETELY FREE -We are currently offering this service completely FREE to early implementers, as a thank you for helping us get SchoolCentral started.



Please send me a message to arrange a short (10 min.) web demonstration.

 
Please feel free to contact my direct line listed below, or send me an email.

 

Warmest Regards,


Michael Chua
Zebra Mobile's
SchoolCentral Team
Direct line (513) 729-6973

mike.chua@yourschoolcentral.com

www.yourschoolcentral.com

I tried to change my password, to one that contained characters that aren't letters/numbers - as if often suggested.

I thought it had changed & realised it wasn't working. I then reset it & tried again. 

This time I saw the feedback & it does say "password can't be changed" & it says why. 

However, this was all the in body of a large block of text - and very easy to miss. 

If this still applies for version 1.x - is it possible to ensure that it's highlighted & put in red at the top - or something  - so that it's clear?

I also noticed that my Twitter password is showing up nice & clear when it reports what's been reset ... 

 

Hi

I have recently updated my external blog to WordPress 2.7 - and have noticed that the updates to here stopped at more or less the same time. (The last post to appear was the peunultimate one posted from the old versoin - but I wrote a post & then updated fairly shortly afterwards, so quite likely didn't give Eduspaces time to get the RSS feed)

In resources, my blog's still listed. If I click on the RSS icon, I get to see the new content as well as the old; however, if I click on the "view content" then I only see the old content (i.e. what's showing in my blog). Has anyone else got a similar issue? 

Hi, I am quite impressed with the format of the front page on this ELGG powered system, and am trying to achieve the same. Would the developer(s) of this site be willing to share their knowledge of how they managed to achieve this? Any help or tips would be extremely appreciated. I'm running the latest ELGG. Many thanks. Dean

This is unrelated to Eduspaces (we're not involved), but we thought some of you might find this event interesting:

The Scottish Book Trust is hosting Creative Sparks, "a conference for learning professionals interested in creative approaches to literature in education," in Edinburgh on February 27, 2009. (It's open to educators outside of Scotland as well.) From their site:

"Join Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen (find out more about the Children's Laureate post), Nínive Calegari from 826 National and some of Scotland’s best writers and literature development experts to explore and discuss the impact of creative approaches to literature and language in education."

You can "find out how engaging with a new approach to computer games can stimulate your pupils’ creativity and get them writing – almost without them noticing." Standard Life is also sponsoring a Best Practice award:

"If you have developed a project in your school or library that you think is innovative and really effective, we would love to hear from you. The 5 best projects will have the opportunity to showcase their work for 6 minutes each at the conference. The winner will be chosen by the delegates and will be announced at the celebratory reception at the end of the day."

For more information, check out the Creative Sparks website.

For several reasons I decided to go back and use my mainstream blog at blogspot. Sorry eduspaces. It is a matter of easy blogging from within my Flickr account which made me just change preferences again. Adding images from Flickr could not be done without copy paste urls. When I login to this one, I am taken through several steps before I get to the blog editor, which would always be my primary reason for coming back. I am poor of time and need something fast and efficient, and I would already be logged in to my Google account.

It is silly because I am in the middle of the MUVEnation course, and started out with a handful of blog posts here. I will have to briowse posts from this one and reblog them at http://worldofwebheads.blogspot ...

 

Hi, I am developing an ELGG system (version 1.1), and cannot get the user registration to work.  The only method I have that works is by an administrator manually adding a new user via the admin panel. However this is not practical if there are going to be many users of the system. What is happening is that, even though the new user's details are recorded in the database when the new user registers, their accounts are not getting activated because no email is being sent to them to activate their account. I notice that the registration system is working soundly on this Eduspaces system....I am hoping that the developer(s) can help me out here.

Many thanks.

Dean

SLidentities - true or false?

Who are those people that you're interacting with in Second Life and ofther virtual contexts, really?  Is there a real person with honest intentions behind the mask, or are you perhaps encountering someone pretending to be someone else?

I would not find it rude at all to ask for more information about people's identity, if we are talking professional shop, or for other reasons. On the contary, I think this is the breaking moment of genuine interest, a step in the process of trust building. On the other hand, I would per routine discretely check the Profile of just anyone I am considering my offer of friendshop to include this or that person's avatar in my list (so that we can see each other online, and eventually get in touch later). This is not inappropriate or rude at all, it is a commonly known social contactability practice and suppsoed to be quite polite to know what people have shared about themselves in their own profile.
And, as my list of SL friends grew too long to remember one imaginary name from another , I also appreciate the way that you can save your own special notes on each avatar!

It would be interesting to examine to what degree it has been either positive or negative to build up this alter ego persona, for people who have serious intentions about using SL for their professional life.

NB! This post was inspired by a new conversation in the MUVEnation course started by David Winograd (rwho is new to SL and perfer being know by his real name)  and with a reaction from Anna Begonia whose first name is new to me: Antonella Berriolo. Anna claims that it would be rude to asl people in SL about their real life identity, and does not mix her RL and SL friends while David is worried because he is used to a codex where you would be responsible for your contributions.

Hallo
I have uploaded on elgg community site new language pack for Georgian language.
Dear Administrators, please look http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/highlander/read/9324/georgia
and add it to eduspaces too.
Thank you much in advance!!!

Eariler today, I was unable get in world, and not surprised as I had noticed a SL server upgrade on the grid status blog //status.secondlifegrid.net/ . After dinner & dishes duty - around 17.30 GMT, I wanted to see if group 2 were still in a meeting at MUVEnation island, but they had left. On the map, I tracked someone and teleported there,he was also from the MUVEnation project; he told me the others had left and we made friends, had a conversation, tried a few things around friendship features and played hide and seek with mini map and teleport, good practice for mentor skills. I need to find out who he was as I forgot to note down his name - but I have several photos of him, close up face only,so that will be an identifier. What we actually did not do, was to try out the six helpful posts of informative exercises, which I took up ather he left

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3175/3046043075_973e98b854.jpg

 

 

 I don't know if he had been taklen there by the course leaders Rosie /Shirley and Pat P. they are also developers at the neighbor island Emerge of the JISC project. What I fould was a powerful training camp with all the nice advice you could ever want for the first few weeks in world. For me, the note collection will serve as reminders t helping me to catch up after half a year away, and a lousy memory.

How to change appearance and dress yourself up, where to get useful freebies (in an economy where most beginners are free riders and terribly poor, this comes in very handy!) How to use camera controls, take snapshots - and how to measure your height. This is where I I stumbed into an emergency! I touched the tall talking box, got the expected measure (an am 1.78 meters which is 20 cm taller than in RL ) - and then I touched a second time. Now the box attacked me, and it lookedfun because I am wearing wings these days. I knew I had a note about how to get rid of a box in your face from the helpful Emerge handbook, so I just wanted to send a snapshot to myself before getting out of the box - and then - FREEZE! 

. Sorry if I made a fool of myself  but these things do happen once in a while; I am sure I did not tell the beasty box to become part of my outfit. The picture looks silly. I will have to get back in world and control that I have not really stolen this piece of useful inventory from the Emerge training camp.

I did practise my camera skills again, see my Flickr album for evidence.

 

Another useful thing that I will remember from today: send a postcard with a snapshot to yourself or another recipient, from in world, and it will have the SLURL on it!