Wixie includes a range of settings that allow sites and teachers to adjust Wixie to make it more effective for their learners. Districts can choose settings before teachers and students even log in for the first time and teachers can then further adjust these settings to meet the needs of their specific students. 

These settings include many things that can make Wixie a more effective tool for individual students, classes, or entire grades. They include whether students use the Standard or Primary theme; whether or not you want students to see the red-squiggly line under misspelled words; or whether students would be better served using a default font with d'nealian lettering.

Teachers and organization administrators set the Look and Feel of Wixie for students on their Settings pages.

When students log in, Wixie chooses each setting for their account based on the organizational structure of their school. Working from the user, up the organizational chart, as soon as a setting is discovered, that setting is applied and the rest of the organization is ignored.

To give more control over these settings we are updating the organizational structure Wixie uses.

Previously, the organizational structure for students was: 

Student → Teacher → School → District → Wixie

The new organizational structure for students is:

Student → Class → School Grade → School → District Grade → District → Wixie

This expanded structure adds class and grade settings and removes the connection to the teacher settings. This change greatly improves the support for teachers with students in multiple classes and/or grades and allows teachers to have different settings than their students. 

For example, if a teacher has a class of first graders and wants them to use the Primary theme, but also has a class of second graders and wants them to use the Standard theme, the old model made this very hard to achieve. With the new model, it is much easier. The teacher can now assign the theme to each class very quickly.

The new rules Wixie uses to choose settings for a student account and where they are set are:

Custom Student Settings
 - Set up per student by the teacher on the teacher’s Settings page.

Class Settings
 - Set up by the teacher on the teacher’s Settings page.
 - If there is a conflict the first class wins.

School Grade Level Settings
 - Set up by the school admin on the school settings page.

School Settings
 - Set up by the school admin on the school settings page.

District Grade Level Settings
 - If the student is in a school that is in a district.
 - Set up by the district administrator on the district settings page.

District Settings
 - Set up by the district administrator on the district settings page.

Wixie Settings
 - Set up by Tech4Learning as defaults for all Wixie customers.

These new options will give teachers and schools more control and flexibility over how they best present Wixie to their students and make Wixie the most powerful tool for their learners.

For example, a good preference set for Kindergarten might include:

Primary theme
Open to a blank project
Use Patrick Hand as the default font
Turn off Spell Check

With the new system, a school or district can make these settings apply across their entire organization.

While they are all presented in a group, each setting is unique. So a student could get their font choice from their class, their opening screen from their grade, their theme from the school.

Settings made closer to the student override settings made farther up the organization chart. So if a class is set to Standard theme, it will override a grade set to Primary theme.