itslearning has launched a new planner that's set to take over from the old one starting August 2023. The old planner will no longer be available after 30 June 2024. Until then teachers can safely switch back and forth without losing any content. When the old planner is discontinued, any plans from the old planner will be shown in the new planner, the same goes for course templates.
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What's new?
The new planner is designed to be an intuitive and efficient tool that will help you with your lesson planning, and keep your students engaged and on track.
| Engaging | Visuals make plans more interesting to look at and easier to understand. |
| Cohesive | Access the planner from anywhere, on any device (and it will look identical) |
| Accessible | A more inclusive learning experience in adherence with WCAG 2.1 level AA |
| Stay on track | Students can keep an eye on their personal achievements and track their progress. |
| Focus | Experience a new level of organisation with improved sorting and a sharper focus on what's happening in each course. |
| Intuitive | Enjoy the benefits of simplified navigation that make it easy to find what you need, exactly when you need it. |
Out with the old, in with the new
Users will see the new planner in new, old and archived courses. Teachers can still use the toggle in plan settings, so they can switch between new and old planner. When teachers switch to the new planner, both teachers, students and co-teachers will see the new planner. The old planner will be discontinued from back to school 2024. Until then teachers can toggle between the old and the new plan in plan settings.
Plan Card
Educators and students will see their active plans for the week presented as a plan card (see image below showing a plan card - 'Future Energy Sources').
Educator view:
In addition, students will see a progress bar so they know how much work they have completed.
The plan card shows an overview of the content in each plan:
- Plan title (Future energy sources)
- Topic (Energy sources)
- Description
- Start and end dates
- Number of resources
- Image/Illustration
- Progress bar (only available for students)
If educators and students have several plans for the week, they will see two plans in full display. To see more, click the "Show more" button.
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To better control what information students will see when opening a course, teachers can pin a plan on the course overview page. Teachers can pin a plan in single plan page, when opening the 3-dot menu top corner right. The pinned plan will be listed first on course overview page. You can both pin plans with and without a date. You can only pin one plan at a time.
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Click the plan card to open and see all plan details:
On the left is general information about the plan, such as title, topic, date, visibility toggle and image/illustration. On the right is plan description, resources and activities as well as learning objectives. To get an overview of students’ progress without having to navigate to the 360 reports, teachers will see numbers next to the resources and activities. The number to the left indicates how many students that have opened/read a resource, the number to the right shows total number of students.
To avoid performance issues, teachers can’t track students’ progress when there are more than 99 students in a course.
Educators can specify in which order their resources and activities should be listed. They can either use drag and drop or their keyboard to reorganise their list.
If educators have added extra information to their plans, for instance teacher notes, these will also be listed at the bottom. The 'Back to overview' link at the top of the page will take you back to the course overview page.
Plan images
Teachers can add images from their computer. To remove an image, just click the button "Remove image".
Only images files of type jpg, jpeg, gif, bmp or png can be uploaded. We don’t have a maximum file size, this is decided by the customer setting: "Maximum allowed upload picture size".
We recommend using horizontal images with the 3:2 ratio. We don’t auto-scale the image but adjust it so that it fits the image box. If you add an image in portrait mode, we maintain its aspect ratio, but the image will be clipped to fit. Top and bottom will be cut.
Student Ownership
We want to help students taking ownership of their learning. By adding check marks and a progress bar, students can monitor individual achievement. Resources will automatically be marked as read once a student opens it, but students can choose to mark them as unread. Activities will be marked as done after the student has submitted. If educators assess an activity as not satisfactory, the check mark will be removed again.
To start working on a plan, a student can click any resource or activity. All resources and activities for a plan will appear in a side menu and can be used for navigation. Educators will get this side menu as well.
Plans page
The Plans page gives you an overview of all plans. The navigation is simplified, making it easier for teachers to find their plans. There are tabs for filtering on 'Current' plans, 'Past' plans, 'Without date' and 'Topics'. Each tab has a counter, so that you can see number of current and past plans as well as number of plans without date and topics.
Educators can also copy, delete, print and make their plans visible or not.
Current plans
Plans are sorted by date. The plan at the top is either the current plan or the next upcoming plan. To create a new plan, click the green 'Add plan' button.
Past plans
The most recent plan appears at the top of the list.
Plans without date
Plans without dates are sorted by the last created plan at the top. Educators can also specify in which order their plans without a date should be listed. They can either use drag and drop or their keyboard to reorganise their list.
If you have not added an image, you will see a dynamic placeholder image with the same colour as the topic colour (see image below). Here, the plan for “The Moons”, appears in the same yellow colour as the topic.
Topics
Topics function like a folder or tag so it's easier to organise plans. Educators will see a list of their topics as well as a folder for plans without a topic. Each topic shows the number of plans for that topic and the dates shown refer to the start date of the first plan and the end date of the last plan. Educators can also specify in which order to list their topics. They can either use drag and drop or their keyboard to reorganise their list.
Create a new plan
Educators will see a cleaner interface when creating plans. Click the green 'Add plan' button. Add an image, give your plan a title and add a description. You can choose to add dates, topic, learning objectives or make it visible to your students.
Teachers can for now only add images from their computer. Only images files of type jpg, jpeg, gif, bmp or png can be uploaded. We don’t have a maximal file size, this is decided by the customer setting: "Maximum allowed upload picture size".
We recommend using horizontal images with the 3:2 ratio. We don’t auto-scale the image but adjust it so that it fits the image box. If you add an image in portrait mode, we maintain its aspect ratio, but the image will be clipped to fit. Top and bottom will be cut.
Plans will automatically be sorted by date and will by default be invisible to students.
Not using dates?
If teachers are not adding dates to their plans, they can choose to hide the tabs “current” and “past”. Teachers must go to plan settings, and set visibility for the plan field “Date” to ”Nobody”. All users in this course will then just see two plan tabs: “Topics” and “All plans”. Topics will be listed first.
Upcoming features
We are currently working on:
- Table view for educators
- Better support for plans without a date
Table view- in development
Upcoming
- Make it easier for teachers to find and use relevant plan images
- Search for plans and plan content
We’ll update this page when we add any improvements. If you have any questions or comments, please email us. Communication must be in English or Norwegian.