Tech Insights: New Mobile App

Thursday, January 3, 2013

One of the things I enjoy most about my role is getting out and visiting with our customers to see how the technology we are putting in place is helping students learn. Just before holiday break I was onsite with one of our incredibly passionate instructors who was preparing for her next class to work in the credit recovery lab. As we were chatting she was busy printing off learner progress reports so she could individually go around the room and discuss each student’s Plato Courseware personalized learning plan with them.

This is one of the key scenarios we looked at when building our first application for tablet devices – The Plato Educator App by Edmentum. We understand that teachers in the 21^st century classroom are not limited to the confines of their desks. This new mobile application allows you as a teacher to quickly access key information while away from your desk – whether you are working one-on-one with a student in the classroom, or on-the-road visiting a student unable to attend a class. You won’t have to spend valuable time printing out reports. You can be focusing on helping students. Unlike the full ‘desktop version’ of the Plato Learning Environment (PLE) which allows full course customization, the Plato Educator App exposes only key LMS (learning management system) functionality from PLE to support one-on-one student management interactions which include:

Viewing the current login status of students in a teacher’s class.
Viewing the assignment progress of students in a teacher’s class.
The ability to create a list of “favorite” learners that require more regular observation.
Locking/unlocking elements within a student’s assignment.
Basic student account management like password resets and force logoff of learners with abandoned PLE sessions.

The application is currently available for iPhones and iPads with support coming for Android devices early this year. If you are a teacher that uses PLE, check it out. We’re sure you will love the quick and easy access to much of the information you need every day. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/plato-educator-app-by-edmentum/id587188880?mt=8

Edmentum Courseware

Technology

Paul Johansen

Paul is Vice President of Product and Chief Technology Officer at Edmentum overseeing talented groups that have the exciting responsibility for delivering our online solutions to our customers. His teams manage our comprehensive product portfolio, design our world class user experiences, develop our technology platform and operate our data centers. Paul loves to spend time out with our customers and stays active in his children’s home district where he recently helped design a K-6 coding curriculum and is a member of the district innovation team. Paul has degrees in Computer Science and Marketing from the University of Minnesota and an MBA from MIT. He has been with Edmentum since 2009.