Tech4Learning is about to release an update to the Wixie tablet apps that will change the sign-in process on the iPad and Android tablet. 

This update will only affect users who enter their username and password into Wixie directly. If you use a third-party system, such as Clever or Google, you will not see any changes to the way you log in.

As part of a unit on colonial America, my son came home with an assignment to spend an evening behaving like a puritan child. The assignment included a few bullets in faux-Colonial English describing what was expected of a puritan child and a space for my signature and grade for his work.

When you are sitting at Thanksgiving, politics is generally off the table for a topic of conversation... especially this year! In San Diego, where it is always sunny, weather isn’t really a good topic either. So one of the things left to talk about is work.

I strike up a conversation with my brother and he says to me “Remember when Iain was showing off his California missions project last year with his Wixie project and map? Wouldn’t it have been neat if each time he showed a new mission in Wixie, a light would show to indicate the location of that mission on his map?”

As we dug into the usage data for Wixie we discovered a couple of things. One was that thousands of people look at Wixie projects on their phones every month. The other was that for almost every visit to the log in page on a phone, the next page viewed was the student home page. So we decided to spend some time making that user experience in a student account better on the phone.

Today’s update makes it easier for curriculum writing teams made up of teachers from schools to share their work with the district. Teachers are already able to share the activities and templates that they create with other teachers at their school. We have gotten many requests from districts to make it easier for teachers who are part of a district curriculum writing team to share their activities and templates with the entire district.

With the latest Wixie update, students and teachers can now share their projects to Google Classroom.

The student dashboard allows students to browse Wixie projects on a device that does not have Flash installed. It is also the first screen students see when logging into Wixie using a browser on an iPad or Android tablet. To make it easier for students who might be just trying to log in quickly to their account to print a project or two, we have added a print button to the project list.

Today’s update will help teachers print their student work. Teachers now have a print option when viewing student work that allows them to print projects using the same layouts as students can use when they are creating their projects.

Because Wixie is an app on the iPad and runs in a browser on PCs, users going between the two devices often find themselves logged into their account in Safari on their iPad and not able to create a project. For teachers trying to grade student work or assign an activity, this wasn’t a big deal. But for students, there really wasn’t much they could do. With the latest update, if you log into your account in Safari on the iPad and tap the button to create a new project, the Wixie app will launch and you will be able to work. You still need to have the app installed, but Wixie will do the work of moving you from the browser to the app.

On Wednesday, August 17th, we are excited to release an update to Wixie that will refresh the interface for teachers and administrators. The goal is to update the interface to take advantage of the larger screens that have become popular since the product was first released.