Skip to main content
All CollectionsWhat's New?Release Notes
October 2023 Product Updates
October 2023 Product Updates

Grab your pumpkin spiced beverage of choice and join us for some exciting updates!

Bryan Carvalho avatar
Written by Bryan Carvalho
Updated over a year ago

With Halloween around the corner and the leaves starting to turn their colours, it's the perfect season to cozy up and discover some thrilling updates from SpacesEDU. Rest assured, it's all treats and no tricks from us this year. Check it out below!

Portfolios

District Admins with Full Permissions (DAFPs) can now create and assign Portfolios to specific schools or grades within their district using the new Portfolio Templates feature. DAFPs will have access to a Portfolio Template table which lists all Portfolio Templates created for all schools in the district.

From this table, DAFPs can view and sort by Portfolio name, grade(s), district/schools (only on web), and publication status. They will also be able to edit, publish/unpublish, delete, or duplicate a Portfolio Template from the table.

When creating a new Portfolio Template, DAFPs can set specific teacher viewing permissions, either by:

  • Allowing teachers to see ALL student Portfolios within the school.

  • Permitting teachers to view ONLY the Portfolios of their respective students (determined by Class rostering in SpacesEDU Classes).

Once a Portfolio has been assigned, students and teachers will both gain access to a new tab for ‘Portfolios’ within their account.

Students with access can view:

  • "Active" Portfolios: These are Portfolios, whether ongoing or not yet begun, based on Portfolio Templates matching the student's current criteria.

  • "Archived" Portfolios: Portfolios formed from templates the student doesn't currently access but has contributed work to.

    • It's essential to note that students cannot make new posts or remove posts from an archived Portfolio.

Teachers with access can view:

  • A 'Portfolio Quick Review' table to swiftly select students, view their Portfolios, and post directly from the table.

  • Complete control to contribute posts, make edits, delete content, or make other changes to a student's Portfolio.

With this release, families will not have access to Portfolios. We’re working on a future update to support this functionality. Additionally, Posts in the Portfolio will not appear in the All Work Feed - these posts will show up retroactively once functionality has been extended.

Portfolios will only be available to schools and districts licensing SpacesEDU Pro + Reporting Add-On.

Simplified Posting

We’ve received a lot of feedback about the number of steps to post within SpacesEDU. To address this, we've simplified the posting process to minimize clicks and enhance the experience by offering pre-selected fields and consolidating everything onto a single page.

We are super excited to share this update and welcome any feedback to help us refine the process around posting critical evidence of learning.

Simplified posting updates are available to all SpacesEDU users. Give it a try today!

Ability to Switch the Activity Space

Teachers will now be able to change the Space an Activity is assigned to from the ‘Edit Activity’ screen. This can be done both before posting submissions and after posting submissions.

If there is a mismatch in the students available within the new Space, we will inform you of that and provide you with the tools to make quick adjustments to move forward.

This update will be available to all SpacesEDU users regardless of license.

Additional Updates & Enhancements

We also made a handful of additional performance and quality of life improvements in SpacesEDU.

  • We’ve increased character limits across SpacesEDU (SpacesEDU Free)

    • Increasing character limit from 2,500 to 5,000:

      • Post description, Space description, Summary Statement, Areas of Learning Summaries, and Comments

    • Increasing character limit from 600 to 1,200:

      • Messages

  • We’ve increased the limit of Areas of Learning you can have in the Reporting Space to 20 (SpacesEDU Pro + Reporting Add-On)

  • For those using SpacesEDU in the browser, we’ve increased the session expiry limit so you can stay connected longer without being logged out. (SpacesEDU Free)

    • Teachers: 168 hour timeout (7 days)

    • Family: 744 hour timeout (31 days)

    • Admins: 168 hour timeout (7 days)

    • Students: 12 hour timeout

    • Note - People using the SpacesEDU native app on their iOS and Android device will be unaffected by this update. You will remain logged into your account.

  • Additional warnings for activity submission deletion (SpacesEDU Free)

  • For rostered schools and districts, we’ve removed the ability for students to change their names. (SpacesEDU Pro)

    • Note - Student names can still be updated through imports or changed from within the admin account.

  • Within the Reporting Space student header and on the generated Reporting Space PDF, a student’s student number (OEN, PEN, etc.) will now be visible next to their grade in order to better support reporting. (SpacesEDU Pro + Reporting Add-On)

  • We’ve introduced a new disclaimer when deleting posts from the Reporting Space to make it clearer that you’re simply removing a copy and not the original post content. (SpacesEDU Pro + Reporting Add-On)

  • As a teacher with a student view, when switching between account types, we’ll keep you in the same class for any testing on your end. (SpacesEDU Free)

  • Within their class, students will now gain the ability to see which family members or teachers are associated with their class by selecting the class name from the header. (SpacesEDU Free)

  • When creating a new direct message, family will now be sorted alphabetically by last name. (SpacesEDU Free)

  • While already accessible within the quick actions section of the dashboard, admins will now have an additional access point to ‘view import history’ in their dashboard. (SpacesEDU Pro)

  • To better support Mac users, we’ve added a ‘CMD+ENTER’ shortcut for adding messages. (SpacesEDU Free)

    • This shortcut is available to all user types in the platform.

  • We’ve updated the District Admin account to split active and invited accounts into two separate tabs. (SpacesEDU Pro)

  • We’ve revised some of the language around Space deletion to make the impact clearer. (SpacesEDU Free)

If you’re interested in learning more about SpacesEDU Pro or the Reporting Add-On features for your school or district, don’t hesitate to contact us - pro@spacesedu.com.

Learn more about SpacesEDU Pro on our website - https://spacesedu.com/en/pricing/

Stay tuned for more information on upcoming releases. For the latest updates, check out ourPublic Product Roadmap. You can submit ideas or add your thoughts to any of the existing Roadmap items.

Did this answer your question?