Product Updates: July through October 2019

Avatar
Code.org Support
Follow

Here are the latest updates we've made across the Code.org website and platform! Updates from previous months can be found at the bottom of this article.  

App Lab, Game Lab, and Sprite Lab

  • Themes: You can now set themes for the screens on your App Lab apps, making it easier than ever to get your apps looking fresh!

themes.gif

  • Sprite Lab / App Lab documentation + tutorials shown in Help menu: You can now access Sprite Lab documentation and tutorials from all Sprite Lab projects and levels, and App Lab documentation and tutorials from all App Lab projects and levels:

pasted_image_0__7_.png

  • Data tab improvements: We removed the 1000 row limit in the App Lab Data Tab, and added pagination so that users with large tables can page through them a few hundred at a time!
  • Maker Toolkit Fixes: We now use the same format for accelerometer data for Circuit Playground Classic and Circuit Playground Express, eliminating a point of confusion for classrooms who have a mix of devices.

  • Other bug fixes:

    • Sprite Lab: Fixed bug where blocks overlap the toolbox when switching in and out of the costume tab
    • Sprite Lab: Location Picker now works on iPads
    • App Lab: added error messages to “readRecords” to make student code easier to debug
    • GameLab: the Sound Dialog is taller, making it more clearly scrollable
    • Various updates to help connections to Circuit Playground more reliable and easier to update using a WebUSB connection

Professional Development

  • Differentiated map pins for CS Fundamentals intro workshops vs. Deep Dive workshops: pins on the K-5 workshop map for workshop locations with at least a deep dive option, or both intro and deep dive, are now starred!

64048854-cfae9900-cb27-11e9-999b-463a891ecc31.png

Platform

  • The new Teacher Feedback notification system to students has launched! Students will now see a notification when a teacher has left feedback for them on a level, and can visit a new feedback page to see all the feedback their teacher has left. Read more about the Feedback feature here.
    • This header will appear for students when they have feedback from their teacher:

pasted_image_0.png

    • Clicking on 'view feedback' will take students to a page with all feedback from their teacher(s), and details as to what level the feedback is on:

pasted_image_0__1_.png

  • Usability updates to progress tab: To make it more clear what our two different views on the progress tab show teachers, we added a “View by” toggle that shows Lessons vs. Levels to replace the zoom in, zoom out icons we had previously. We also added a title over the progress table that explains to teachers what they’re looking at. The title includes a link to the current course (this was previously represented as a separate link on the page).

Screen_Shot_2019-10-29_at_3.27.51_PM.png

  • Improvements to Assessments tab: students’ free-form text answers were being stripped of line-breaks on the Assessments tab, which made it difficult for teachers to read and parse those answers. Line breaks are now maintained!

  • OneNote notebook for 2019: Teachers can now generate an updated OneNote notebook that contains resources from CS Discoveries 2019, including journalling and discussion topics.

  • Easy-to-find curriculum guide for sale: The latest CS Fundamentals Curriculum Guide is now available from the Teacher Resources drop-down list, on the course overview page for CS Fundamentals courses:

pasted_image_0__6_.png

  • Donors and partner pages are now mobile-friendly!

64655349-d3bc9f80-d3e0-11e9-8ee0-dec4ea82b4aa.gif

  • New Hour of Code map: We are using a new map API, which can now hold more than 200k entries on the map. We also gave the colors a refresh.

pasted_image_0-1.png

  • Other improvements and fixes:
    • Teachers can now move students out of archived sections.
    • The Unit Overview continue button and the Lesson Extras continue button now handle hidden lessons correctly.
    • Fixed an issue where announcements would briefly appear and then disappear on course overview pages. 
    • Fixed an issue with a banner telling teachers they have lesson extras turned off for some sections, when they really don't.
    • The teacher panel no longer appears partially hidden behind level instructions. 
    • We fixed a multiple-week-long issue with Minecraft puzzles, particularly on Chromebooks, not loading properly.
    • We fixed an issue with the "Continue" button not working on various levels. 
    • The text-to-speech button is now available on new Dance Party lessons for the Hour of Code! This allows students to have the instructions for those lessons read aloud to them when they tap the “play” button.

International

  • We improved our crowd-sourced translation tool as it works with curriculum and lesson plan content, to now support: keywords, topics, categories, lesson vocabulary terms, standards alignments, headers & footers, and other miscellaneous text that can now be translated by our worldwide team of volunteer translators! You can learn more about translating Code.org content at https://code.org/translate.

pasted_image_0.png

  • We added Hindi to the language selector!

    pasted_image_0.png

Videos

  • We debuted a new video on How to Debug! This video has our wildest cast of characters of any curriculum video to date. Everyone gets bugs!

Thumb.jpg

Previous product updates can be found here:

Powered by Zendesk