Wixie got a major update this summer. 

This has been such an unprecedented year in schools. Wixie usage has doubled and we are seeing Wixie used in more ways and in more classes than ever before! With the change in instruction and increased use, users have made a ton of feature requests.

Wixie’s development is driven by these requests.

This update includes hundreds of little changes focused on teachers using Wixie everyday with students. Improving the workflow, through new features and improvements in interoperability with other tools, is the driving theme in the update.

Here are just a few of the highlights.

With all of the school closures happening, here are some options for Wixie use to support at-home learning whether you:

• have Wixie,
• want to expand your Wixie use to additional grades
• want to use it for the first time, or
• are parents trying to support at-home learning.

Many of you have COVID-19-related questions and concerns.

The good news? Even if your site is closed, Wixie works online and will continue to work normally. Students can simply log in from home or the library to complete the work their teachers have assigned.

The update to Wixie this past Friday gives you the option to run Wixie in Spanish and French!

We added a Start Over button to the Wixie update released last Friday. The Start Over button allows students to restart from the original assignment or template.

Wixie has two interface options. You are probably familiar with the standard interface since it is the default for all users. The Primary look is brighter, larger, and has a simplified feature set to make it easier for younger students to get started making their first projects.

Teachers can choose the Wixie interface that best matches the needs of their classroom and learners. You might want to consider using the primary interface if you are working with younger students or think your learners would benefit from a smaller set of choices.

Kids love emojis and now they can easily add them to text boxes in Wixie! The way you add emojis will depend on the device you are using to create your Wixie projects.

Over the past 15 years of Pixie and Wixie, we have built a lot of templates and activities for students. Here are some things that we have learned over the years that you will hopefully find helpful in your own templates and activities. 

Landscape vs. portrait orientation

It is almost always better to create templates and activities using the default landscape orientation. This layout works best on a variety of devices. Portrait layouts become hard to work with in the work-space of a tablet, so try to use this orientation only when designing templates that will need to be portrait when they are printed.

The Tech4Learning team has put the Wixie update into production and you can log in to your current Wixie account to see the changes!

With the Wixie update releasing at the end of this week, you will be able to use Wixie from your mobile smart phone!

Students and teachers can already access Wixie on Chromebooks, iPads, and Mac/PC devices, so is it really necessary for them to access it on their phones as well? Yes! Here's why.