What’s the IDEA?
We launched this blog site just over two weeks ago. Since that time we have read your notes of gratitude, and we acknowledge your appreciation and participation. This is just the beginning!
We have been flooded with your fascinating ideas. It is exactly your ideas that help us improve the Educator system for all … learners, teachers and administrators. There is no status quo in the Ucompass world. We strive to grow into a better place. Without your ideas and input there would be no growth. You have been so vocal that we actually ran into a small problem. Someone actually called it blog clog.
Your wonderful ideas were sadly forced to exist in a vacuum of sorts. While the Educator Team got to see and ponder each one, other members of the FLVS teaching community were not able to chime in, buy in, or even enhance some of your original thoughts. We wanted to share them, test reactions, and plan our development and enhancement paths from there. We thought about email, but we know your inbox can become quite flooded. We just knew that email communication was not the answer. The challenge became how to best share your marvelous suggestions and use cases with the entire FLVS and FLVS franchise community. Having given it considerable thought, we decided to experiment with another idea: the Ucompass Educator Facebook page. The doors are open!
If you have an idea that you would like to share, we really want you to post your thoughts on that page instead of here. We have taken all the ideas that were previously submitted to this blog, organized them around certain topics, and posted them on this page. If you previously made a suggestion, you should find it there. You may note the format that we decided to use … IDEA: Topic. All of those entries on our new Facebook page were submitted by FLVS and franchise teachers (That’s you!) and copied over to that page. Feel free to invent your own way of posting there. Read through some of those ideas on that page. React and add your own thoughts. Maybe you want to add some new ideas. The point is that we want to get our dialogue moving along. You have shown that you want to improve your own ability to facilitate the progress of your students. We’re on the same page! So, how can we help you better get your job done? How can we make you more efficient in your efforts? Tell us! You already know we listen. While we cannot act quickly on every single idea, we do try to plan for them down the road.
BTW … notice that Facebook link in the right sidebar? It’s right below the words Visit Us on Facebook. Just click that link and visit your/our Educator Facebook page. Even better than that …
You are working in Educator. You are going through your usual paces. Then it hits! You remember an idea you read about on the Facebook page. Or perhaps you get a great new idea yourself. You think, “This would make my work more efficient.” Or perhaps you believe, “This would really do my students a world of good.” Rather than having to leave your work, just take a short thought-break, take a look at your instructor’s toolbar in Educator, and click:
What could be easier? And when you get there, and you’ve spent a little time reading and writing about ideas on the table, feel free to even like us. We all love to be liked, don’t we? 
Hi Peter,
This blog is a fantastic idea!
In my humble opinion, a place that our teachers would appreciate some added efficiencies is Students–> Student name. (Click on the Students button on the left, then click on any student name.) That list of a student’s assignments submitted is, I would bet my paycheck, where 99% of our teachers go to see a student’s progress (*not* the Gradebook button). If we could interact with that screen–sort by assignment submitted date, sort by grade–it would be an amazing help for those times when on the phone with a parent and have to say, “Susie last submitted work on……hold on, I’m just scrolling through this list…..hold on just a sec…ok, it looks like she submitted 7.06 last Thursday….oh, wait, no, she did 6.04 yesterday, I didn’t see that one there…”
It would also help administrators and other instructional support who go into classrooms regularly and look at students’ progress. If we could sort date submitted and student score, it would be phenomenal. Thank you!
Hi there, Teresa!
Your presentation and logic are outstanding here.
Tell you what …
As the post above says, it would be great to add this to our Facebook page.
I am going to post this there, and we will see how your peers react.
I think more folks will see it there.
Fantastic job … and thank you.
Keep thinking!
Can we get that option back of dropping student attachments into student folders?
Brandy -
Two things:
1 – Sounds like a great idea to me! I wonder what other teachers think? With that in mind, I have copied your comment to the Facebook page. Spread the word please. We would like to put all ideas for consideration on that page for all to see and comment. Deal?
2 – Secret: I am sure that the educator developers are working on it.
In a comment to Teresa’s post about finding how many and when students submit assignments while on the phone with a parent, I go to Notification Center, I uncheck the second box and the last four. Then I select the time period, week, month, etc., then I go down and select the specific student. Hit submit and you will get a list. You can also choose how to sort the list. It works great!
Hi Peter – I would love to see Educator add a way to attach a file to an exam. Many of the courses (especially mine) have attachments where we want the student to show their work (or in my case include graphs) and it would be great if they could be right in the exam. Any ideas it this would be possible?