We have received your requests and have been working hard to bring you this release today, just in time for the new school year. We hope you are as excited as we are!

With our latest launch we are adding Projects, Activities, Rank & Reason, and Person Puzzles to our interactive platform as well as other exciting new features. We have also made updates to My Lessons and officially launched our Admin Dashboard for site and district administrators.

Interactive Lesson Types Added

We have expanded our interactive platform to include additional lesson types. Any lessons you had downloaded on the old platform will get this snazzy new look!

Projects and Activities

For Projects and Activities published on our new platform, students can now complete and submit work online. Plus, teachers have the ability to lock or unlock steps from student view in the lesson settings. Both students and teachers will continue to enjoy our existing interactive features throughout each lesson:

Students:

• In line resources (websites, videos, PDF attachments)
• Text to speech support

Teachers:

• Specialized Teacher and Student Views
• Real-time view of student responses
• Submissions View with access to grading and rubrics
• Teacher Guide and additional lesson background and tips
• Answer keys
• Standards alignment
• Lesson sharing to classes
• Download printable version

Rank & Reason

We are excited to launch an updated Rank & Reason tool with a fresh new look and features. To enhance the already powerful experience (ranking items based on a discussion question, justifying and comparing rankings), we have built the following teacher-requested capabilities:

Students:

• Students decide when to share their rankings
• Text to speech is available on all questions

Teachers:

• Real-time view of student rankings and justifications
• Indication of whether students have shared their rankings with the class
• Grading of overall ranking and justification supported through Submission View
• Notes (text or links) option to provide additional information on each item

Person Puzzles

For the first time, our 250+ Person Puzzles are now interactive. Because they are single skill practice in a multiple choice format, student responses are auto graded for teachers — a big time saver!

Editing Interactive Lessons

To empower teachers to customize lessons, we have enabled a brand new Editing mode. With Editing on, not only can you edit text in Projects, Activities, Rank & Reason, and Person Puzzles, but you can also:

• Add, delete, copy, and move questions, text blocks, attachments and steps
• Show and hide teacher guidance
• Add, change, or delete question icons
• Format text with bold, italics, or underlining
• Customize tables (size, shading, heading, etc)

Note: At this time you are not able to edit Performance Tasks.

My Lessons Updates

My Lessons has been given an updated look and we have also added a few new features.

Starring Lessons

Now you can star lessons! After starring, you can find those lessons via the Starred link on the left sidebar. Super convenient, yes? Teachers may star a lesson to use this week, for a certain unit, or as a reminder to review it or grade student work. When you click upon this star, your organizing dreams will come true! 😉

Updated Lesson Alert

While all of your previously downloaded lessons (Projects, Activities and Rank & Reason) are on the new interactive platform, our curriculum team has further updated many of them with new resources, better organization, new data, and more. To ensure you have the latest version, we have given you a new copy and appended “- UPDATED” to the title. You can always find the original version you downloaded (along with any custom edits) in My Lessons.

Filtering by Lesson Type

Looking for a specific lesson type? Filtering by lesson type can now be done from the dropdown menu above your list of lessons.

Deleting Lessons

Tidying up your lesson library just got easier. Just select which lesson(s) to delete and click the “Delete Lessons” button and then confirm. If you are deleting a lesson with multiple editions (Essentials and Performance Tasks), you can choose which ones to delete.

Admin Dashboard Added

Designated district and site admins can now view usage reports from the Admin Dashboard (Don’t have access yet? Email us at support@xanedu.com. Common reporting periods are available as default with custom dates enabled as well. Data reported can be customized in Settings and exported as a CSV file. Three reports are available:

Activity

Know how active sites, teachers, and students are on NextLesson. This section includes data for # of created teacher accounts, # of active teachers, total page views, student participants, most active teacher, and more. This section helps identify which sites and teachers you can go to for suggestions on implementation and answers to questions.

Downloads

Track the number of downloads by lesson type for sites and teachers through the Downloads report. This section includes data for total # of downloads as well as # of downloads for each lesson type (Performance Task, Rank & Reason, Project, Activity, and Worksheet). This section helps identify which lesson type is most popular and informs PD or collaboration time.

Page Views

Get insight into which key pages are being visited by sites and teachers. This section includes data for total page views, # of Standards Browser views, # of Class Manager views, # of interactive lesson views, and more. This section identifies usage of key pages that support a high fidelity implementation of NextLesson.
What are your thoughts on these updates? As always, please send feedback or ask any questions at support@xanedu.com.