October 2011
Schoolbox brought to you by Alaress
Introduction
Alaress is pleased to present the latest update to Schoolbox.
This release is the beginning of Schoolbox moving to a fully object orientated framework. Many areas have be refactored and the latest features of PHP5.3+ used to make the code cleaner and maintanable. We have also added in a testing framework to ensure each function is individually tested by an automated process. All of these changes will ensure the stability and reliability of the Schoolbox system moving forward. There are four key updates to Schoolbox in this release.
- New survey builder
- New plagiarism checker
- Question bank for assessments and surveys
- New welcome dashboard
This update is made up of a record amount of changes with over 800 change commits in the last 150 days. We trust that you and your school community enjoy the improved version of Schoolbox.
Major Updates
There are four (4) major changes to Schoolbox in this 11.5 release. These are:
Survey Builder
The new survey builder allows you to build long or short surveys to gather information about any topic. Surveys are flexible and can be used as forms to gather information or get feedback from students or parents. The results are automatically graphed and can be exported to CSV for further manipulation. To get started with surveys you will need to add the survey component to your homepage.
Plagiarism Checker
Once setup the new plagiarism checker automatically scores and reports on student submissions. Work submitted electronically will automatically be scanned against other students work across the school and the internet as a whole. Please read the Setup Plagscan guide for instructions on how to get this enabled.
Question Bank
The question bank provides a space to store questions for both assessments and surveys. The question bank can be used across classes, departments or in following years. We hope this will develop into a valuable resource of questions to quickly build quizzes, tests and surveys.
New Dashboard
The dashboard everyone sees on first login has been completely rewritten and now has complete control via the admin system. Each group in schoolbox can have its dashboard individually configured. We are planning on adding many new components to this important space in the near future.
Minor Updates
Core System
- Added publish dates to news, available under advanced options
- Search tabs are now remembered when you press back
- Check to prevent adding multiple homepages with the same class code
- Prevent users with no known email from sending emails within the system
- Returned functionality to show current day on timetable
- Added additional information to the staff profile page, including department, room and building.
Admin System
- School policies now controlled via admin system
- Added extra group policies to groups (controlled via lists), group type and change password
- Added support for drop downs in lists
- Added support for non required config values
- Added control of default homepage colours in settings
- Added ability to control display of teacher photo policy
Homepages
- Added new area for components top 100%
- Removed old homepage layouts and added variable control over column width
- Improved drag and drop function to make positioning components easier
- Fixed issue with components not loading on homepage until a reload
- Added support for creation of new wiki pages via wiki links (wiki stubs)
- Added sort options to display of wiki pages
- Added support to alter image carousel time and display of captions
- Improved RSS feed support to include ATOM and some other weird types
- Added ability to remove homepage from folder
- Added subscribe buttons to allow users to join and leave groups from the homepage.
ePortfolios
- Improved textbox functionality to make it simpler to use
- Added image carousel to eportfolio
- Added resume components; cover letter, skills, achievements, goals and experience
- Fixed issue with components not loading on eportfolio until a reload
Assessements
- Assessments are now included in the calendar
- Assessments are now auto marked immediately after a student has submitted, the student is notified of the preliminary mark
- Teachers can now perform a dry run of the test themselves
Submissions
- Added descriptions to submission boxes, give teachers more space to explain the required work
Synergetic
- Added support for new Synergetic API. Enables parents passwords to be synced to community portal on parent password change.
Known Issues
- When upgrading to this version the new dashboard system means that some components on the welcome page may be incorrect. Each groups dashboard should be checked via the admin system following the update to ensure the correct components are displayed. We have made our best efforts to ensure this is correct but schools with custom components may have issues.
- Some new group policies have been applied to the group table. Please check these policies are correct following the update. They can be found on the Group table on the List tab in the admin system.