Speak Agent version 1.9 comes hot on the heels of our major July release. We've been kicking it into overdrive to make the 2019-2020 school year a great experience for your students! (Sleep is overrated...) Here are the details:
Adds digital portfolio access for secondary students. The digital portfolio feature was a hit with primary students last school year. We've now extended the feature to secondary students. This means that all students now have their own view into the work they've done in Speak Agent. The ability to track self-improvement over time and take pride in one's creative accomplishments contributes to a growth mindset!
Gives the teacher dashboard a long-overdue makeover. It's been a long old time since we updated the teacher dashboard. (That's the home page you see after you sign in). Originally, Speak Agent was designed as a tool for teachers to create their own academic language lessons. Over time, Speak Agent evolved into a tool primarily for classroom instruction—supporting both independent and collaborative practice. Feedback from teachers and administrators led us to change the dashboard to focus on tracking student progress and activity. And that's exactly what the new dashboard does! At a glance, you can see how many digital lessons and activities each student has completed. It shows colorful progress bars for quick visual scanning. You can also see a log of recent activity on the account.
Here's a screenshot of the dashboard in our demo account:
Minor Changes:
- The link to preview lessons and activities is now split into Speak Agent Junior (primary) and Senior (secondary).
- The text for badges (Speak Agent Junior only) now updates after each badge has been won. The new text explains how each badge represents a learning achievement in a way that is relatable to young learners.
As always, if you have a brilliant idea or something that's bugging you about Speak Agent, we are listening! Just contact us.
Written by Katie Cunningham
Katie is CTO and Co-Founder of Speak Agent, Inc. A leading expert in the Python programming language, Katie designed the Speak Agent architecture and wrote the very first line of code for the current platform. She is an accomplished technical author and keynote speaker worldwide, as well as a leader of the Washington DC chapter of PyLadies, an organization dedicated to training women in Python.
