It’s been in the making for some time now – version 2.0 marks a huge step forward in the Contribute Cloud Software. We’re pleased to announce that it is now live for you to use! In short, pretty much everything has been tweaked and improved. In this blog post we are going to go though all of the new features. If you want to get started with the software then head over the http://contribute.cloud and select the blue login button for 2.0 of the homepage. Please note, if you are using 2.0 then you will have to have your student and participants use the “join a 2.0 session” from the left hand side on the homepage.
The first thing that you will notice is that we have a new user interface which runs through the whole software. It’s cleaner and maximises the space available on the screen. If you are logging in, don’t worry, your details are the same as before and you should also find all your workbooks in your 2.0 account. If you dont, please do let us know and we will make sure they are moved over for you so you don’t loose any data.
One of the first new additions is the ability to start a whiteboard session directly from your dashboard. No longer do you have to create a workbook in advance, just a quick click on the button and you can start a session. Before we look at the in session controls and changes, let’s look at the profile and the workbook creation pages.
In your profile from the “burger” menu in the top left of the screen, then click on your avatar and you are now able to update all your settings, add an avatar, change the language of the software and also choose to display the eduction tools or not in your sessions – great if you are a corporate user and wont be using them.
As before, the editor allows you access to your clod storage and local machine. Now you can see previews of all your documents that you add and also reorder them directly in the editor. Want to add a blank page for white boarding, not a problem, you can do that too.
When you begin your session with the workbook or a whiteboard session, you will see that all has changed in the layout. Firstly, we have a new floating toolbar. Also, we’re now supporting multi-touch with the pen for multi-writing in a session.
The functionality is the same on this toolbar as before although now, we can add a whiteboard page at the click of a button using the “plus” icon at the bottom of the toolbar.
The blue icon in the top left is a slide in toolbar that gives you some access to “in session” controls such as the pace screen and the self-paced versus student led activity.
Our slides are new viewable and you can re-arrange them live in a session using the button at the bottom of the screen that looks like a list (next to the chat button)
Group chat has also undergone an upgrade as it is now possible to send files and links to students directly through the chat window – great for delivering activities or documents directly from your Contribute Cloud session.
One of the biggest changes or additions has been the educational tools. Our users have been asking for tools like this to use with their workbooks and sessions so we’re really pleased too be able to add them. Click on the sliding toolbar and you will see that they are arrange into subject specific options so that you only need to open the tools that you will need for your session. We’ll be adding to these throughout 2019.
Both cast and multi-cast have been turbo charged in this version 2.0
We’ve also added what we call “teacher cast” – now a teacher is able to share a 3rd party website or application out to their students. So think for example if you wanted to show your students news website. Well, start teacher cast then you can navigate away from the Contribute Cloud page and the students will be able to see what you are doing on their own machine – very cool! We’ve even built in teacher video so you can share your video with remote participants or students that are not in the class.
We think that you are absolutely going to love version 2.0. We’ll be running both 1.0 and 2.0 side by side during March and will discontinue 1.0 at the end of the month.
To help you get started with the new version, we have a brand new online manual and we also have some tutorials. The online training platform will also be updated during march so a brand new training course will be available – we’ll let you know.
Enjoy!
