⭐[NEW]

New version of Communities for an even more intuitive digital workspace in secondary schools

This new feature for secondary schools is currently in the pilot phase and is only available to a small number of users for the time being. Please be patient: you will soon be able to discover it within your secondary school’s digital workspace!

To better meet the needs of secondary school teachers and students, our teams have designed a new version of the Communities application, making it a central feature of our digital workspaces. The goal is to provide a single point of entry to make sharing resources between teachers and students easier, more intuitive, and smoother than ever before.

Reversing the navigation logic in the digital workspace

Communities reverse the usual navigation logic. No more switching back and forth between applications: everything now starts from the community. The goal is to simplify the use of the digital workspace for both teachers and students:

• The teacher creates a community for a class or teaching group;
• They add the students;
• They share documents, teaching resources, links, and information.

The community then becomes a clear and intuitive educational dashboard for the class. Students can find all the information they need in one place, without having to search for it.

Create a community for a specific topic

In addition to its primary use for classes, Communities offers an alternative use for bringing members together around a theme: sports association, theater club, group of English teachers in the department, etc.

The differences between the two types of communities are as follows:

• a “classroom” community is archived at the end of the school year. However, the resources shared within it are retained. Added users receive a notification, but cannot refuse to be added or leave the community.
• A “theme-based” community is not archived, and members can leave the community.

Colorful, themed banners allow you to customize communities and find your way around the app’s home page more quickly.

Making students more independent

To empower students to take control of their academic journey, a QR code system allows students to request to join a community. The administrator then chooses whether or not to approve the registration.

Teacher or personal profiles added to the community can be granted management rights. They will then be able to share resources and messages with the community in the same way as the administrator.

Centralizing resource sharing

The “Documents and Resources” tab is the community’s memory bank. It allows you to centralize all shared content, regardless of its origin or format:

• resources designed in ENT applications: Pad, Collaborative Wall, Mind Map, Multimedia Notebook, Blog, etc.
• documents: video, audio, image, PDF files, etc.;
• sounds and videos recorded in the Studio;
• external links.

The resources for the ENT applications can be created directly from Communities, within this tab. They are then automatically shared with members and can be manually shared with other users or groups. This content will also be accessible from its dedicated application within the ENT. When the community is archived at the end of the year, the content is not deleted.

And this is just the beginning

Three other tabs, which are currently inactive, will soon be available to Community users:

• A “Featured Courses” tab for sharing courses and wikis;
• The “Home” tab will be enhanced with an announcements section;
• A “Discussions” tab, a true forum for exchange.

Finally, the application will be accessible from mobile apps.

What will happen to the old communities?

For users of the old version of the application, don’t panic: both versions of Communities will coexist. The old communities will not be deleted and will remain accessible as they are in the old version. We encourage you to recreate them manually in the new application in order to take advantage of all the features of Communities.