Transform your WordPress site into an Online Campus with Sclipo

With Sclipo’s new “Embed your Campus” feature, you can now transform your WordPress site, or any Content Management System like Joomla or your custom-coded website, into an Online Campus in just a few minutes! The Sclipo Online Campus provides powerful e-Learning apps, including a course manager and live web conferencing, as well as a social network and promotion tools. It has been especially designed for continuing education helping independent teachers and education organizations to teach and collaborate better, as well as to attract new students.

We created this feature because many of our current users have a website to promote their educational services. Now, their webs can also offer an Online Campus, providing a better learning experience for current students and helping to win more new ones.

Benefits

• Easy & fast: Integrating the Sclipo Online Campus requires no programming or additional hosting. In just 3 steps and a few minutes your web will feature a powerful Online Campus with e-Learning, social network and promotion tools.
• Students stay on your web: Your Students can log into and use your Campus right on your web.
• Visitors stay on your web: Visitors, who are not yet students, can browse the Campus, courses and content right on your web without having to register.
• Embed many campuses: If you are an organization with more teachers, you can embed many campuses, one for each teacher, into your web.
• More visitors: Your Campus will also attract visitors from Sclipo.com.
• Your branding only: There is no Sclipo logo on your Campus, and you can easily adapt its look and feel to that of your web.
• No competition: There are no links to other Campuses, so students and visitors will stay focused on your educational services and content.

Transform your web into an Online Campus in 3 easy steps

1. Create a new page for the Campus, with width = 1000 px and no columns.
2. Copy / paste the embed code of your Sclipo Online Campus, provided with your subscription, into the new Campus page.
3. Add the Campus page to the navigation menu of your web site.

Done! If you have built your site with a Content Management System like WordPress, this just takes a few minutes.

Demo
To see this new Embed your Campus feature in action, visit this demo web site, built with WordPress, that integrates a Sclipo Online Campus.

Create a new page, name it 'Campus' and add the embed code. Done - your web has now an Online Campus!

Embed one or various Campuses, one for each teacher of your organization.

Adapt the Campus to the look and feel of your web in just a few clicks.

Welcome to your Online Campus

We changed “Web Academy” to “Online Campus.” It has several benefits.

Easier to understand: Students and teachers of a school, training company, freelance teacher on Sclipo can now easier understand what an Online Campus is. The term “Campus Online” is better known, as all universities and many schools have one.

It sells better: Teachers and schools can now promote that they have their own “Online Campus” with course manager, virtual classroom, library and social apps. This sets them apart and generates more confidence in their students to receive a great service. Students are already accustomed to using an Online Campus in their schools and universities, and expect to receive this service also from their continuous education teachers. Therefore, having an Campus Online will help to get more students and to keep them.

It is neutral: The term “Online Campus” is neutral as it does not define a type of school. “Academy” instead is a type of school. For example, the “Police Academy” would have its Online Campus, just like the “Language Institute” has one. There is no more risk of confusion or changing brand names.

Bienvenid@ a tu Campus Online

Hemos cambiado “Academia Web” por “Campus Online”. Tiene varios beneficios.

Se entiende mejor: Los alumnos y profesores colaboradores de una escuela, empresa de formación, profesor freelance… con un Campus Online en Sclipo ahora entenderán más fácil qué es. El término “Campus Online” es más conocido, ya que todas las universidades y muchas escuelas tienen uno.

Se vende mejor: Los profes y escuelas ahora pueden promocionar que tienen su propio “Campus Online”, con gestor de cursos, aula virtual, biblioteca y apps sociales. Esto les diferencia y genera más confianza en sus alumnos a recibir un buen servicio. Alumnos ya están acostumbrados a utilizar los Campus Online en sus escuelas y universidades, y también esperan tener este servicio de sus profesores en la formación continua. Por esto, tener un Campus Online, ayudará a conseguir más alumnos.

Es neutral: El término “Campus Online” es neutral y no denomina un tipo de escuela. “Academia” en cambio sí es un tipo de escuela. Así por ejemplo, el “Rincón del Policia” tiene su Campus Online. Tener una “Academia Web” se podría llevar a la confusión de que el Rincón es una “Academia”.

How to create a Course in your Web Academy

Here a new tutorial that explains how to create, edit and publish a course in your Web Academy. Remember – you can create face-2-face, online or blended courses.

For more tutorials, check out the Sclipo University.

New! Instant Live Sessions – start sessions with anybody in one second!

In our quest for more speed, we created a new feature allowing you to start a live session in less than a second. And, your participants can join as fast as they can type their names and click on Join Live Session!

We named this new feature Instant Live Sessions. Besides allowing teachers to start sessions immediately, anybody can participate – even people not registered! Participants just need to write their names to enter the session. An Instant Live Session is different from a Scheduled Live Session, which you can program for a later time and privatize, and for which you can administer participants and payments. Scheduled Live Sessions require registration.

Instant Live Sessions are useful to:
* Start a session with anybody fast, even with people not registered at your Web Academy or Sclipo.
* Demo your sessions and live teaching room to students, fellow teachers, friends, …
* Learn the features of your Live Teaching Room. It’s much easier than riding a bike, but hey, better to practice a bit how to start the camera, activate audio, share your screen, upload a document, play with the whiteboard, change roles, etc.
* Verify that system requirements are met. That’s key! We get more than one “I can’t hear my students!” … just to find out that the teacher had not turned on the volume, or that the student did not have a microphone, etc. Do not start your first session without checking that your system (i.e., computer, camera, microphone, Internet upload speed, browser) and that of your students meets the requirements. In addition, we recommend that you and participants conduct the fully-automated-10-second System Check.

There are some things you cannot do with Instant Live Sessions.
* Schedule the session for a future time
* Describe it with title and tags, and edit these as often as wanted
* Make the session private
* Publish a price
* Administer invitations, participants and payments
* Promote the session in the directory of your web academy and the Sclipo Campus
All these things are, of course, possible with Scheduled Live Sessions.

Cool! So, how do I start an Instant Live Session?
Easy! Login and go to the tab Live Web Teaching in your Web Academy. In box Quick Links on the left, click on “Start Instant Live Session”. People will be able to join after the teacher has initiated the session.

For additional info: On tab Live Web Teaching, click on “Show / Hide Help” in the Quick Links box.

Ah, before you rush away to check out ILS… we also released a new version of the live teaching application. It has better audio, reduced latency, you can share part of your screen, and chat is translated on the fly with Google translate (eg, if you type “hello”, a participant with the Web Teaching Room interface in Spanish will read “hola”). We will post about this in a few days.

Looking forward to your feedback.

Speedy Sclipo

We just launched a new version of Sclipo. Focus was: speed! Nope, we did not add any new features, we just made current ones faster. We tested with Vertain, an independent website speed comparison service. Results show that we are now just as fast a Facebook, a bit faster than Wikipedia, and a little slower than Google, and… a whole bunch faster than Microsoft.

We encourage you to test Sclipo from your location! Let us know the results.

Have a fast Sclipo and a long weekend!

Initiate live sessions 15 minutes early

Teachers can now initiate a live session 15 minutes before its official start time. And, students can enter the live teaching room after a teacher initiated a session.

For example, a session is scheduled to start at 11:00. The teacher initiates the session at 10:45. All admitted students can also enter the live teaching room at 10:45.

Benefits:
* Teachers can prepare the session, eg, to upload the docs to share during the session
* Teachers & students can test their webcams and microphones
* Teachers & students can get familiar with the live teaching room features prior to starting the official session

We hope you like this enhancement. If you need more than 15 minutes of prep time, just let us know.

And yes, it’s a great movie :)

Students can now register directly at your Web Academy!

Each Web Academy has now its own Registration. This means that visitors to your Web Academy, who do not have an account on Sclipo, can now Register directly at your Web Academy. Each person who registers at your Academy, automatically becomes its follower. Before, a person needed to first join Sclipo before being able to follow your Academy, enroll in your courses, etc.

Example: A person – say Hanna Learnmore – finds your Web Academy on Google. Hanna does not have an account on Sclipo. She visits your Web Academy and starts exploring it. Hanna checks out your credentials, sees non-restricted content, reads info about your courses, etc.. She likes your Academy and clicks “Register” on the top right of your Web Academy. A new registration page will show inside your Web Academy. After registration, Hanna becomes automatically a follower of your Web Academy. Being a follower, she receives alerts about new content and courses you publish. And, you can also invite her to courses, live sessions, events and groups.

Tip: Send the URL of your Web Academy to all your students and other people you’d like to know about your Academy, content, courses etc.. Ask them them to register at your Web Academy. After they do, they will automatically become followers of your Academy. This means, you will now be able to invite them to your activities and they will be automatically notified about new content, courses, etc.

We hope you find this new feature useful. Looking forward to your feedback.

How to register directly at your Web Academy

New Student & Teacher Invite released

We just launched a new Invite. Inviting students and teachers to your courses, live sessions, events and groups has just become a much easier.

To invite new students:
1) Select people from your list of current Contacts and Students by clicking on their image. To easily find people, just type their names. Those in grey have already been invited or are participants.
2) Enter email address, by writing and/or importing these from your web address books.
Next, add a nice message and go invite!

To invite new teachers, just click on the filter Invite New Teachers. The list of current Teachers that are active in your Academy will show. Next, add a nice message and go invite!

Like before, invitees will receive an email notification with a link, info and instructions.

Happy invite!

Thanks Alex – great job!

Sclipo – Web Learning Application or eLearning for the Rest-Of-Us (part 2)

In part 1 of this post, I explained that Sclipo is a Web Learning Application, a new eLearning software category for “rest-of-us”: independent teachers, and small companies and schools in continuous education for which a traditional Learning Management System is too complex and costly.

In this part 2, I describe the learning applications that Sclipo provides through its Web Academy, which is the eLearning space teachers, schools, companies and anybody who enjoys teaching can open on Sclipo.

With your Web Academy you can:
* Teach & manage face-2-face, online and blended Courses
* Store & share content in your Library in any format: videos, documents, audio, images
* Teach Live classes and webinars via webcam, whiteboard, desktop sharing and more cool live interaction tools
* Organize offline Events and collaborate in online Groups with your students and fellow teachers
* Promote your Academy and its services across the web, such as Facebook or Twitter
* Collect payments for courses and live sessions (no commission for Sclipo)
* Invite & manage an unlimited number of Students
* Authorize multiple Teachers to teach courses and live sessions of your Academy
* Customize your Academy name, URL and look & feel

Here more detail:

Courses
This application allows you to publish, manage and teach face-2-face, online and blended courses. A course can be taught by one or many teachers. It allows you to share content, hold discussions, schedule live sessions and post messages on the course wall. Courses comes with an administration panel to invite, approve and communicate with students and teachers. Courses can be public and private. You can also charge for courses and easily collect payments via credit card or other forms. Sclipo takes no commission.

Library
This application allows you to store, share and manage the content (videos, papers, presentations, audio and images) you use for teaching. You can store your own content and use content from thousands of other Academies on Sclipo. You can use the content in courses and live sessions, and share it in your groups and events. Your content can be private or public.

Live Web Teaching
This application allows to conduct live classes, webinars and meetings with multiple participants anywhere. A live session can be stand-alone, or part of a course, event or group. You teach through webcam (= video chat), document sharing, whiteboard, text chat and screen sharing. You can schedule an unlimited number of public and private sessions. Sessions can be recorded. You have an administration panel to invite, approve, administer and communicate with participants. Just like in Courses, you can charge for live sessions and easily collect payments via credit card or other forms. Sclipo takes no commission.

Events
This application helps you organize off-line educational happenings such as conferences, workshops and lectures. You can discuss on the event wall, stream event sessions live and share content with participants. Just like in the Courses and Live Teaching app, you can charge for Events and easily collect payments via credit card or other forms. Sclipo takes no commission.

Groups
This application helps you collaborate online with fellow students and teachers for studying, researching or conducting other collaboration activities. You can discuss on the group wall, hold live online meetings and share content with members. Hmm, you cannot charge for participation in Groups. We thought this makes little sense. Let us know, if we are wrong:).

Academy Dashboard
The Dashboard has tools to customize your Academy, to administer its Teachers and promotion features.
* Customization is easy! In less than 1 minute you can make your Academy look great without any programming skills! Choose your preferred Academy name and URL simply by typing them into a text field. Design your favorite look & feel by uploading a background image (for example your logo or a cool photo) and by selecting a matching background from a color panel with just one click!

* You can have multiple teachers at your Web Academy. Teachers can help you teach courses and live sessions. Or, these can teach courses and live sessions by themselves with you being the coordinator. To increase the number of teachers, just go to Dashboard / Administer Teachers and invite people from your Sclipo contact list or by writing / importing their email addresses. Your invitees will receive an email with a personal invitation code. Once a person accepts the invite to be a teacher, you can assign her/him to courses and live sessions of your Academy. That teacher can then edit the course / live session, promote it, invite students, define activities, etc. Only you, the Academy owner or “Dean”, can publish a course / live session and change its price and payment conditions.

* Just by having your Academy on Sclipo helps you gain notoriety. Google and other search engines can easily find your content and courses (if you want). And, if they are good, word will spread. In addition, Sclipo also gives you tools to let the world know about your Academy. Just click on the tab Dashboard / Promote Academy and you will be able to invite your students, tweet about your Academy or let your Facebook friends know about it. You can also put a cool button with a direct link to your Web Academy on your web.

Well, I hope this post helped you understand what eLearning tools Sclipo offers and how these benefit your teaching.

For more info, check out:
About Sclipo, with more info on what Sclipo does for whom and why.
The Sclipo University, our Web Academy with free tutorials, courses and live sessions to learn all about Sclipo’s apps.
Sclipo Features, providing an overview of all features.
Part 1 of this post, where I explain why Sclipo is eLearning for the Rest-Of-Us and how the Sclipo Web Learning Application is different from a traditional eLearning solution.

Haven’t got your Web Academy yet? See our Web Academy plans and select the one that best fits your teaching needs.

Last, but not least, I’d like to thank Victor, without whom Sclipo’s learning applications would only exist in my head :) Thanks Victor!!

Manage your invitations to courses, live sessions, groups and events from your profile

You can now manage your invitations to courses, live teaching sessions, groups and events directly from your profile.

After you have been invited, for example to enroll in a course offered by any Academy, you will be able to:
* Click on the title of the activity or view, to be directed to the info page of the corresponding activity. There you will find more info about it and you can decide if to accept the invitation.
* Click on the Name of the Academy that invited you. You will be directed to the Home of the Academy, to find out more about the Academy.
* Click Ignore, and the invite will disappear from your profile.

Only the owner of the profile can see the invitations. Not her contacts!

We hope you find this helpful. Thanks for your feedback!

Sclipo launches Groups

Groups are key in education to boost knowledge transfer and networking. Today, there is hardly any learning without group work. Groups are used for activities such as study, research or exam preparation. This is why Sclipo built an application to help our members organize online Groups.

While creating groups our goal was to respond to the specific needs of teachers and students – needs which are not solved by generic group apps:
* Integration with courses: groups are often part of a course, which needs to be associated with a group
* Sharing of educational content: presentations, audio, video, images need to be easily accessible and shareable for members
* Live meetings: allow group members to meet live via video chat, white board, doc sharing and other live collaboration tools

We also believe that the networking potential is better on Sclipo than on generic apps – as all our members, activities and content are about education.

Here is how we responded to these needs. With Sclipo Groups you can:
* Organize online groups for activities like study, research, test-prep
* Assign courses related to the group. For example, if your group members are part of the same course, you can associate that course to the group
* Share educational content related to the group: documents, presentations, videos, audio files and images
* Conduct live meetings with the group members, and store and share the recordings
* Discuss with members on the group wall
* Invite and administer members
* Restrict group membership to selected people or make it open for everyone

Here our Group Teaching on Sclipo. Why don’t you join?

To learn more about Sclipo Groups, check out these tutorials.

We hope you find Sclipo Groups useful and are looking forward to your feedback.

Sclipo launches Automatic System Check for Live Teaching

We created an automatic Live Teaching System Check. With one click, you can now check if:
* your webcam works
* your audio / microphone works
* your Internet speed (in special the upload speed) is sufficient

The Live Teaching System Check page also contains answers to common problems related to webcam and microphone installation.

We recommend that every participant of a Live Teaching session conducts this system check prior to its start! If you are the teacher / organizer of the session, make sure that all participants also conduct this system check.

Sclipo works with any broadband connection (DSL, ADSL, cable), webcam and microphone. Yet, the more broadband, the better (plus 1MB upload speed recommended). And, the better your webcam and microphone, the better the quality of your video and audio. We recommend you use one of these Sclipo recommended webcams.

Many problems related to our Live Teaching system are caused by the incorrect setting-up of webcams and microphones, and too low or unstable Internet speeds (in special the upload speed). Remember that by participating in or giving a live class, you are “uploading” a lot of data: video, sound, chat text, whiteboard drawing, etc.. If your Internet speed is too slow, our servers will receive your data with delay, which will cause other participants to also see and hear you with delay.

So, check your system now! It takes just a few seconds: http://sclipo.com/liveteaching/systemcheck

We hope this Live Teaching System Check is helpful!

Happy live teaching and learning!

Sclipo launches Educational Events

Events play a mayor role in education as they foster knowledge transfer and networking. Events such as seminars, conferences and workshops are hence important complements to courses and individual learning activities. This is why Sclipo built an application to help our members organize face-2-face educational events.

Now, there are a lot of event apps out there. And we did not just want to give you yet-another-event-app. Our goal was to respond to the specific needs of educators – needs which in our view are not solved by generic event apps:
* Integration with courses: events are often part of an educational program consisting of various courses, which need to be associated with an event
* Sharing of educational content: presentations, audio, video, images – generated before and during an event – need to be easily accessible and shareable for participants before, during and especially after the event
* Remote participation: as travel and time budgets get tighter, the possibility to take part remotely is a strongly growing demand

Here is how we responded to these needs. With Sclipo Events you can:
* Organize off-line educational events such as conferences, workshops, seminars, lectures, etc.
* Assign courses related to the event. For example, if you want to organize a workshop as part of a course, you can easily assign that course to the workshop event.
* Share educational content related to the event: documents, presentations, videos, audio files and images
* Live stream the event, and store and share the recordings
* Discuss the event on its wall
* Invite and administer participants
* Charge participants for attendance
* Restrict events to a selected audience or make it open for everyone

We also believe that the networking potential will be outstanding – as all members, activities and content on Sclipo are about education.

Here an example Event:

Sclipo Events was built by Alex Blessing, with the invaluable support of Victor Bautista and Chris Grant. Edwin Toone did a great job in unearthing those nasty bugs that somehow always manage to sneak in. Thanks guys!

We hope you find Sclipo Events useful and are looking forward to your feedback.

Sclipo enables live teaching from Moodle

We released the long awaited Moodle plugin for our live web classroom. It allows Moodle users to teach live – classes, webinars and conferences – directly from Moodle. For free! We are looking forward to much live education from Moodle teachers, and we are happy that Sclipo can make contribution to Moodle.

With the Moodle plugin, you can:
* Schedule unlimited live classes and webinars from Moodle for up to 99 students
* Interact with students through webcam, whiteboard and chat
* Present and share documents during the live class and webinar
* Record live classes, and share and embed these in Moodle and other webs

Installation of the plugin is very easy:
1. Download the plugin
2. Copy the plugin to the folder “mod” in the directory: moodle/mod/
3. Log in to Moodle as Administrator and click on “Notifications”

Find more info and download the plugin from Sclipo and from Moodle, where you can also help improve the plugin.

Special thanks to Alexander Blessing for developing version 1 of the plugin!

Sclipo launches Folders

I was giving a class to about Sclipo to teachers. One asked – “What about folders? I have lots of materials, and being able to organize it into folders would help my students a lot.”

We got to work, and a few days ago we launched Folders to help you organize the content of your Library. You can:
* create as many folders as you like
* describe and write tags for your folders, to help others understand its content
* assign a content item – like a video or document – to one or more folders
* share a URL to your folders (each folder has its own URL), so that students can go directly to the content you want to them to study
* delete folders (this does not delete its content)

Creating folders is very easy! In your Academy Library:
1. Click on Create New Folder
2. Write a Title, Description and Tags and click Create Folder
Done!

Assigning content to folders and removing it is even easier! In your Academy Library, after you have created at least 1 folder:
1. Find the content you want to assign to or remove from a folder, and click on Assign to / Remove from Folder
2. In the pop-up, you will see a list of all folders you have created. Simply check / uncheck the folders to which you want to assign / remove the content.
3. Click Save Changes
Done!

Here a short video tutorial.


To see an example of how folders work, check out the Sclipo University Library. There we have organized our tutorials into folders that are named according to the feature group they teach.

We are looking forward to you feedback!