Scholaric supports embedding youtube videos in your printout page.  By embedding a YouTube video, I mean that the video itself...

...rather than a link...

...appears in the page when displayed on screen (not in a printout). This keeps the student on Scholaric's site, and not on YouTube, which can be a distraction, with all its related video suggestions. 

To embed a YouTube video, first visit a YouTube video page, such as this math video 

Next, click the share link below the video.

And there you have it.

Happy Planning

To add courses to students, click on the courses label in top-left corner of the planning grid:

or select add from the courses menu.

This brings up the Add Course dialog:

Note: for new students, the dialog pops up automatically.

To add a course, take these three steps:

1. Enter a course name and a subject name.  Scholaric will try to match existing courses and subjects for you automatically.  If it does find a match, you can select these names from a drop-down menu.
2. If you'd like to add the course to multiple students, check the checkbox next to their names.  The student whose grid is displayed is automatically checked and disabled - to force that student to get the course.
3. Finally, hit the Add button in the lower right corner of the dialog.

Hitting add performs a number of actions for you, including:

1. Create the course, if it does not exist; otherwise, find the existing course by name.  If the course does exist, the entered subject name is ignored. 
2. Create the subject, if it does not exist; otherwise, find the existing subject by name.
3. Add the course to each of the selected students.
   

The new course is then displayed and highlighted for you, and a message indicating the results is displayed in the dialog.

Note: the dialog remains open so that multiple actions can be taken quickly.

As announced earlier this year, the Scholaric price change started to impact existing grandfathered users in May, after a one-year grace period.

Some of you have, when the time came, agreed to renew your subscription at the higher price, and I am grateful for it.  These users were prompted to subscribe to the higher charge and agreed to it using Amazon Payments.

This was supposed to do two things - (1) start to charge these users the higher amount on their next payment and (2) mark their account as being on a "new" plan.

Unfortunately, due to a bug in the handling of the new payment plan, some of these accounts still show the "old" plan (see the above link for a screen shot of what this looks like) and are still being charged the old amount.  Other than notifying these users, I am taking no action due to the bug.  So in effect this bug is extending the duration on the "old" plan even longer for some users.  Note this bug is now fixed, so future updates will work properly. 

I am writing this post, and emailing those whom I believe are impacted by this issue and writing this post explaining the issue because of two problems this is or can cause:

• When you do renew your payment authorization the next time, you may think, "Is Scholaric raising prices again?".  It's not, just the same price increase.
• If you authorized a higher amount, and then get charged the lower amount, you may think "Will I be charged for both amounts?"  You won't, Scholaric only allows one authorization per account.

I hope this explains my error, and your gain.  Sorry for the hassle.

Happy Planning

Parents can give their students Logon access to Scholaric, through the account link on the dashboard:

The account link takes you to the student account page, which allows you to control logon access to Scholaric for your student, set and change their password, and decide what they are able to do in Scholaric.

The student account does NOT require an email address.  If one is provided, the student can use it to reset their password.  Otherwise, the parent will have to reset their password on the student account page.

Student Authorizations:

At the bottom of the account page, the parent must decide what authorization level to give the student.  There are several levels to choose from, depending on what the parent wants the student to be able to do.

Track Work:   At the most basic level, the student can track their work as completed, but it does not modify the complete state of the lesson in the parent's account.  Lessons marked as "student complete" will show up as green.  The additional color allows the parent to know the student's progress during the day.

Mark Complete:  Designed for students with a higher degree of trust, the mark complete level allows students to mark lessons as complete in both their account and the parent's account, but not to enter a grade.  Note that these lessons will appear black, just as though the parent marked the lesson as complete. This level may be considered also for homeschools who do not track scores.

Enter Grades: Designed for the student who grades their own work, this authorization level allows the student to enter scores as well.  The parent will be able to view the scores and modify them.

Edit Lessons: Designed for the student who works more independently, this level also allows students to modify the lesson text. 

Create, delete and move lessons: For those with complete trust, the student can be allowed even to create, delete, and modify lessons.  Use with caution.

Happy Planning

Many of you use Scholaric on an iPad or iPhone.  A quick way to launch Scholaric on your iOS device is to create an icon bookmark of the site.  Tapping the icon will launch mobile Safari and bring up Scholaric in a tab.  Here is how to set it up:

1. Log in to Scholaric in mobile Safari

Go to www.scholaric.com and log in, like you normally do on your device.

2. Click the Share Icon

It looks like a box with an arrow coming out of it.  At the top on an iPad, bottom on a iPhone.

This brings up the share dialog:

3. Select Add to Home Screen

This will put an icon somewhere on your home screen.  Note, it may add it to a different screen than the one you are looking at.

4. Drag the Icon Where you Want It

Optionally, move the icon around.  This is useful to keep icons you use together.

You can even create folders to keep related icons separated from others.  To create a folder, drag one icon on top of another.  You may need to rename the folder, as iOS only guesses a folder based on a common category of the two icons.

Happy Planning

Scholaric searches through the text lesson printouts and looks for URLs - uniform resource locators, in your lesson text and turns them into clickable HTML hyperlinks, or "hot" links.

Scholaric finds two forms of URLs: 

• a full URL, beginning with the protocol, such as http://somewhere.com
• an abbreviated URL, beginning with www.  Scholaric will insert a http:// before the url for you.

I've also tested (successfully) with complex URLs, such as this example from wikipedia - 

• foo://username:password@example.com:8042/over/there/index.dtb?type=animal&name=narwhal#nose

Happy Planning

A year ago, I announced a price increase for Scholaric, the effects of which were deferred for existing users.  To find out if you are impacted, or are already paying the higher amount, check you payment plan in the payments tab on the Scholaric Dashboard:

Any plan that starts with Old like Old Standard is subject to the change.

That time has come.  May 1st it goes into effect, but only when you renew your payment.  This is because you are protected from being charged a different amount than you agreed to under the subscription model I have chosen.  So the next time you add or remove a student, or have to change your card, payment renewal will be with the new amount.

So, if you need to add or drop students, do it now, and reauthorize payment before May 1st!

Happy Planning...

Unlike Grouping Sequences, where multiple lessons, or pages, or chapters, get grouped into a single lesson, you may want multiple individual lessons in a single day.  This would be desired, for example, to assign several lessons in a single day, but have individual scores and times on each lesson. 

Grouping Sequences has a special syntax to allow the day's group to have individual lessons.

Lesson {1-55**2} 

will produce two individual lessons per day.  Note the second asterisk.

Lesson 1
Lesson 2

Lesson 3
Lesson 4

Lesson 5
Lesson 6

Where the group sequence

Lessons {1-55*2} 

produces one lesson covering two per day.

Lessons 1-2

Lessons 3-4

Lessons 4-5

Happy Planning...

A lesson's date can be changed in several ways:

1. Drag the lesson to a new date and drop it.  Note this does not work on mobile devices.

2. Edit the lesson and click on the lesson's date.  Then select a new date and hit update.  This is useful to change the lesson to another week, or for any change on a mobile device.

3. Bump the incomplete lesson earlier or later using the cell menu. Note - this impacts other lessons.

Happy Planning...

Some times, the schedule must be shifted earlier in the period.  This can be done in two ways, either to move the entire remaining schedule earlier, or to open up a gap in the middle of your schedule.  The cell menu reflects these possibilities

Moving Entire Remaining Schedule

To move the entire incomplete schedule, we must bump from the end of the period.  Select the menu option bump schedule earlier from end of period. This is the equivalent of navigating to the last planned date for the selected course and student, and bumping earlier.  

Opening a gap by Shifting Earlier

To open up a gap at any point in the schedule, navigate to the date to become empty, and select the menu option bump schedule earlier from this date.  This will push the incomplete schedule backward from the selected date only.

Note that in either case, the bumping behaves according to the bumping criteria.  If your bump does not carry forward as far as you expect, your lesson schedules likely do not match.

Happy Planning...