Delete a Lesson Series

Scholaric Users can delete a series of lessons.

When you delete a lesson that is part of a series, you will see a new checkbox in the delete dialog:

If you select delete series, then all lessons created as part of that series, from that date forward will be deleted as once.  This also gives you the ability to redo a series, and change the schedule or text, or whatever you want.

This applies to all repeating lessons created in the last week, since I've started tracking them this way.

My apologies for not going back further on this, but Scholaric is approaching a quarter million lessons, and I would have to take it down for hours to retrofit them.

Happy Planning

Scholaric Goal Results from 2011

2011 was a great year for Scholaric.  On a post nearly a year ago, I outlined my goals for 2011.  Here are the results.


1) An LLC operates Scholaric
Green.  I formed Positive Slope LLC as the company behind Scholaric.

2) Customers happily pay for the service
Green.  I added payment capability, and we launched for payment in April 2011.  Now I hear from customers how much they like Scholaric for their homeschool.

3) Redesign of scholaric.com
Red.  Still is ugly.
4) Potential customers engaged with product tour video and share with others
Red.  No video product tour.  Did one video and hated it.  Was a lot of work and I didn't like the finished product.  If you are interested though you can find it here.
5) New marketing page with better descriptions, video link, testimonials
Yellow.  Marketing page is still bad, but it is less bad than a year ago.  No video, no testimonials.
6) New users given hand's on training during trial period
Red.  This was intended to be training videos sent to you during your trial period.
7) Lessons easily planned for and shared between multiple students
Green.  Lesson sharing was the most requested feature and was added in August 2011.

8) A gradebook view of lessons
Green.  Gradebook now shows how your grade is calculated and how it changes over time.

9) Improved tracking of core hours, home hours, hours by subject
Green.  I added goal tracking, which also shows attendance.

10) Community is giving so much feedback, I have to work hard to read it all
Yellow.  I do get lots of feedback, many suggestions for improvement and some people just saying thanks.  Its all nice to hear, but I'm not yet overwhelmed by it.  Compared to a year ago, it has been a great improvement.  I now have a much better understanding of your needs.

11) Meet 100 homeschoolers by attending homeschool conferences as a vendor
Yellow.  I attended one homeschool conference, but met far less than 100 homeschoolers there.

In total, of 11 goals: 5 green, 3 yellow, 3 red.  I knew these were ambitious when I made them.  More important than goal statuses, when I got requests from users which I felt were important, I chose to take care of customers rather than meet my goals.

Thanks to everyone who helped make 2011 a great year.  Keep your eyes here to see my goals for 2012.

Happy Planning

 

Multi-line entry for mobile Scholaric Users

Scholaric has been gaining lots of mobile users recently, particularly for the iPad.

Its biggest limitation has been the fact that the lesson dialog expands its title field to a multi-line description by use of the down arrow, and there is no down arrow on these devices.

This is no longer a problem.  Scholaric now detects a mobile browser on a variety of platforms, and automatically expands the title field for you.  The label is also changed to not say "Down arrow expands"

This new feature has been tested on the following devices:
  • iPhone 4
  • Samsung Galaxy S
  • iPad
If you have a different mobile device, please add a comment to tell me if this works for you, and I'll add your device to the list.

Latest Scholaric Release: Lesson Sharing

I've just released our first lesson sharing capability in Scholaric.

You will notice a new Sharing tab in the lesson dialog.  Lessons can be shared upon creation, with any number of siblings.  When editing an existing lesson, you can share it with additional students, or unshare it from currently shared students.  Sharing a lesson creates a new shared lesson, while unsharing a lesson deletes a shared lesson.

Shared lessons have a common description - edit it in one and it is edited for all those who share it.  If you try to edit a shared lesson description, you will be warned, and given an opportunity to unlink that lesson from its shared peers.

To support customization of shared lessons, you can also annotate a lesson, so it shows up only for them.  Annotations are not shared between students.

Other lesson information - scheduling, time, and score expression - are copied at the time of sharing, but are otherwise unlinked.

You may also combine lesson sharing with creation of repeating lessons, to create a whole series of shared lessons.

jeff

5 Quick Scholaric Tips

Here are 5 quick Scholaric tips every user should know:

1) Quickly mark your lesson as complete by clicking on it while holding down the alt key.

UPDATE: Lesson no longer requires time for quick complete.

2) Turn your repeating lessons into a sequence by adding a single numeric range within curly braces.  For example:

  Lesson {1-17}

will produce Lesson 1, then Lesson 2, then Lesson 3...

UPDATE: Now supports alphabetic ranges, as well as nested sequences.  See this post.

3) Make sure you set your default schedule for every course, using the course menu in the planning grid.

4) To change a lesson to a different week, click on the lesson date in the lesson dialog.

5) If you are in a daily routine of grading and updating assignments, grade your days lessons prior to printing out.  Scholaric will see that all the day's lessons are complete, and assume you want to print out tomorrow's lessons.