OnCourse | The Blog

I know that I am into the Autumn season, not only because my beloved Philadelphia Eagles have started their season, but because my phone has been silent for the last thirty minutes!  That means that the August/September rush is drawing to a close, and I hope you are having a wonderful start to the '09-'10 school year.

Now that almost all of our schools are up-and-running, we are focusing on incorporating our teacher feedback into the major upgrades that we are releasing over the next few months.

It seems that you've wasted no time with the updates we've made already.  While taking Support calls, I've seen that lots of teachers have started using the To-Do List feature of the OnCourse Dashboard - it seems to be the most popular widget so far!  I've also seen that the Reoccuring Events feature of the Calendar is being used quite a bit.

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That makes me very optimistic that our upgrades to the Documents Library and Lesson Planner will be well-received.  We've taken extreme care that the program functions stay consistent, even though we are making major changes in the background.  Then, in the Documents Library for example, we've re-worked the whole system, however it will look even MORE familiar now because it mimics your operating system.

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One suggestion we heard loud and clear at the beginning of the school year was, "CAN WE HAVE SOME NEW WEBSITE THEMES??!"

We immediately got on the task, and now there are a handful of new themes and headers in the Website Designer, with more on the way.

Tip Of The Week:  I received a question at the beginning of the year about adding custom headers to the website.  Because the space of the header is limited, we definitely recommend using one of the headers we have built

already, because it fits so nice and snug right in the frame!!  However, if you insist:  go to your Design Assistant > Category : Colors > and choose a blank color header to match your site.  Save that.  Then click the Edit Pencil on the header and add a picture just like you would to the main body of your site.

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Have a great weekend everyone!

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Welcome back to school everyone!  I felt the ‘First Day’ jitters this week;  well, actually I guess you can call them the caffeine shakes.  Everyone here has been working really hard to make sure that new schools and veterans have a smooth start to the school year.  Thanks again to the teachers and admins who have chosen OnCourse this year, and I hope that those of you who have added new OnCourse tools (like the Gradebook or Discipline Tracking) are having fun so far!

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I’ve been busy driving around New Jersey and doing training sessions for some of our new Lesson Planner + Gradebook schools – thanks Washington Township and Margate for being great hosts!

As I drove back into OnCourse HQ today, I drew a blank when I noticed that the flag was at half staff.  When I sat down at my computer,  it suddenly occurred to me what day it was when I saw those familiar digits in the corner of my screen.

When I was a kid, I always thought that days of remembrance were just a time for adults to sit around in awkward silence;  now, I recognize these days as a time to pull back from daily distractions and realign my focus on those things that are most important.  And just as important to me is resolving to do the work necessary to make positive changes.

I’m reminded of the American pride we discovered after 9/11/2001; which makes the current hyper-polarized state of the country seem bizarre in comparison.  Today seems a perfect opportunity to rediscover the grace of intelligent discourse, and to respect our brothers and sisters on the other side of an argument.  In our homes, in this country, and across the world, peace and respect require no conditions.

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Back in OnCourse HQ, I’ve noticed that our new changes have started to trickle in.  The new Calendar system (with support for recurring events, by request) has been launched, and the updates to the Lesson Planner are on the way.  Thanks to everyone who has been sending over fantastic suggestions, and when this first round of updates is finished and solid, we are going to put these all up on a whiteboard and start planning more upgrades.

I hope everyone had a great first week!

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