It's exciting times are at EZClassSites.com. Version 2 of the site is almost complete (finally!) and with it comes lots of changes, upgrades, and exciting new features!
In anticipation of the site upgrade we will be upgrading our servers over this coming weekend. For us to do this, the site will be offline beginning at 12am Friday night (5/15/2010) until 10:00 pm Sunday (5/16/2010).
Version 2 of EZClassSites.com comes packed with numerous new features, including the ability to create multiple classrooms from a single account, manage content across all your classrooms from one place, and upgraded content wizard to help you create any type of content you want, new classroom themes, parental accounts along with weekly update emails, an in-house messaging/email system, and our own "WhiteBoard" where you, students, and parents can communicate with one another similar to a Facebook wall!
Version 2 is currently scheduled to launch the end of next month, so keep posted to your email and our blog for more details and updates over the next few weeks!
In
our October newsletter, you will find important information about the benefits of a teacher website, some cool site tips and tricks, answers to some common questions, and much more. Please take the time to read this newsletter to find
out about these wonderful new services we are offering.
Please
feel free to share this email with your co-workers and friends, so that
they too can enjoy our full suite of services for FREE! Remember,
everything is FREE so Sign Up TODAY! Or, you can tell them directly
from our website by using our new "Tell A Friend" page.
If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to contact us.
Just a quick note about a new feature that we added. We recently improved our student sign out feature so that student can log out from any page that they are on. Previously, when student would log into your teacher website, they would see a link appear on your site to visit their "Student Maintenance Page." We have now added a second link that will appear, titled "Signout."
July was a record month for us in regards to new sign-ups. We hope that you are enjoying your teacher website and will tell your friends and coworkers about our services.
Regards,
EZClassSites.com - Support
Summer is here...
24-Jun-2009
Summer is here, and for may educators, it's a time to take a step
back, relax and take a deep breath. For many teachers, it's also a
time to start thinking about next year and ways that you can improve
the classroom experience for both your students and yourself. One way
to do this is to build a teacher website. EZClassSites.com offers teachers free teacher websites that include both static and interactive tools that allow the students to get involved in the classroom website.
We currently offer teachers an interactive classroom calendar,
discussion boards, teacher and student blogging, homework posting, an
extensive gradebook, photo galleries, webquest, and much, much more!
Most teachers, when weighing the pros and cons of building a teacher website, they will start with the question, "How will this help my students?" A classroom website is a time investment, and time is a precious commodity for any teacher. So, why should you take the time to build and maintain a classroom website?
Perhaps the best way to answer this question is with a few questions of our own.
Would you like your students to have quick and easy access to information about homework, exams, and projects?
Do you think that you could save time and money by having a place that you could save classroom handouts online, so that both parents and students could access the information anytime and from anywhere?
Do you think that providing your students with an online forum to discuss and share information with both you and their classmates could enrich their learning experience and help foster your classroom community?
Do you want to increase the use of technology in your classroom?
Do your students constantly say that they forgot their homework?
Do you think that timely reminders regarding homework assignment, upcoming events, projects, etc. would benefit both your students and their parents?
There are just a few of the possible questions you could ask yourself, but if you answered yes to any of the above, then you and your student's could benefit a FREE teacher website from EZClassSites.com!
Regards,
EZClassSites.com - Support
Students can now save documents!
11-Apr-2009
In preparation
of the launch of our new district
web hosting solution, we are proud to announce another new feature that is
also available to anybody using one of our free
teacher websites! Now, students are
able to save their work prior to submitting it to you for approval. With this new feature, students are allowed
more time to complete their assignments, can complete assignments over multiple
sessions, and much more!
Along with
this update, we have also updated the student navigation bar and the links that
they can use to access their information from your classroom website. Now, when students log into your classroom
website, they will only see one link on the left navigation bar titled "Student
Maintenance Page" (Figure 1).
(Figure
1)
Clicking this
link will take them to the new student maintenance page (Figure 2). From this one page, they can create new
documents, see every document they have created, the status of documents
(Figure 3), and a link to edit documents (NOTE: Documents can only be edited if
they are saved. Documents that have been
reviewed or are under review cannot be edited.)
(Figure 2)
(Figure 3)
When students
are creating new documents, students will now see 2 buttons at the bottom of
the page (Figure 4). One reads, "Save and Exit," the other reads "Save and Publish
Later." If the student selects, "Save
and Exit," then the document will be saved and submitted to you for
approval. If this option is selected,
then they cannot go back and edit the document.
If they select "Save and Publish Later," then the document will be saved
and NOT submitted to you for approval.
If this is selected, then the student CAN return to the document at a
later time to continue working on it.
(Figure
4)
We hope you and
your students enjoy this new feature.
Over the next few weeks you will see several other improvements to the
site including a new attendance module, an updated homework/gradebook module, a
student locker module, and a new messaging system to help you communicate with students
and parents in your classroom!
Remember, our teacher
websites are now FREE, so tell your friends and colleagues! We are also holding a raffle for a FREE district
website for 1 full year. For
more information on this raffle, please read our April 2009 newsletter.
In
our April newsletter, you will find important information about
several new features and site updates that we uploaded to the site over
the past month. Please take the time to read this newsletter to find
out about these wonderful new services we are offering.
Please
feel free to share this email with your co-workers and friends, so that
they too can enjoy our full suite of services for FREE! Remember,
everything is FREE so Sign Up TODAY! Or, you can tell them directly
from our website by using our new "Tell A Friend" page.
If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to contact us.
For many, spring is a time for change. EZClassSites.com is no different! Over the last few weeks we have been working hard to get our new district web hosting solution up and running. While our new district web hosting service is not scheduled to be pushed live until May 2009, we are pleased to tell you about a few of the changes that have been uploaded as part of this process that everybody is free to enjoy. Below is a short description of these services.
New Content Creation/Editing Wizard
Upgraded text editor that supports Safari browsers
Improved Navigation for teachers maintaining their classroom websites
An improved upload tool to simplify uploading files and images.
We hope that you enjoy these new services. Over the next month there will be more exciting updates coming that everybody is free to enjoy as we prepare for the launch of our new district web hosting service.
Remember, individual teacher websites are now FREE, so if you have not signed up yet, what are you waiting for? Also, if you know a friend or colleague who you think would enjoy our services, please forward this newsletter to them!
Upcoming Changes
7-Feb-2009
Over the next few weeks, you will begin to
see many changes to the services and features that we offer. While
most of these changes are designed for our new district web hosting solution, several will also be incorporated into our free teacher websites!
As these features are released, we will be providing a detailed
overview of the features. But, until then, we wanted to give you a "sneak peak" of the new features you can expect to see shortly.
Attendance -Soon you will be able to take
attendance directly from your EZClassSites.com account. From a single
web page, you will be able to mark students as either present, absent,
or late. Once attendance is recorded you will then be able to create
custom reports and download files pertaining to your attendance records.
Messaging -We will also be introducing a new,
in-house messaging system that will allow both students and yourself to
communicate with one another from one, convenient location. Users will
be able to create "contact lists," folders to save messages, and much
more.
Content Wizard -To make the creation and editing of
content even easier, we are building a content wizard. This tool will
walk you through every step of creating and editing the pages you
create from one, convenient location.
New Homework/Gradebook -The updates to our
homework/gradebook module. In short, you will be able to create custom
grading scales, weight categories, custom disciplines, custom reports,
post life skills/effort grades, extra credit, and much more!
FTP Uploads -To make the uploading of files and
images easier, we will be implementing FTP (file transfer protocol).
Using FTP, you will be able to upload multiple files at a single time
in a matter of minutes!
Student "Locker" - Our new student locker module
will act as a digital locker for your students. This module will allow
your students to upload and store all their digital files in one
convenient location.
Custom Reporting - To supplement these new features
we will also be giving you the ability to create custom reports.
Custom reports will can be viewed, downloaded, or printed at any time.
In
our January newsletter, you will find important information about
several new features and site updates that we uploaded to the site over
the past month. Please take the time to read this newsletter to find
out about these wonderful new services we are offering.
Please
feel free to share this email with your co-workers and friends, so that
they too can enjoy our full suite of services for FREE! Remember,
everything is FREE so Sign Up TODAY! Or, you can tell them directly
from our website by using our new "Tell A Friend" page.
If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to contact us.
EZClassSites.com
is proud to announce several important updates to our service. These
updates were in response to both requests from you, our users, and a
desire to simplify the process of building a classroom website.
Site Improvements:
To
help simplify how you navigate the website, we simplified the
"Maintenance Page" and "Parent/Student Information" page. Now, when
you visit the "Maintenance Page," you will see five links, rather than
a long list of site features and modules. On the "Parent/Student
Information" page, you will now see 6 links, rather than a list of site
features and student accounts. This reorganization did not remove any
features you are used too, but rather reorganized them to make the
pages easier to read and navigate.
You will also notice that the
page listing your student accounts (the "Student Account Maintenance"
link on the "Parent/Student Information" page) had been
reorganized. Your students are now grouped according to their account
status (active,disabled, and pending). Using these groupings, you can
now activate, disable, or delete multiple accounts at one time.
New Tools:
We
also created a new feature on the site that allows you to replace the
standard "Our Online Classroom" text that appears on all of our themes
with your own! When activated, this new feature allows you to add up
to 4 custom lines of text to the upper left corner of your classroom
website. To activate this feature, log into your account, click the
"Maintenance Page" link, click on "Create A Custom Header," and then
complete the form provided.
We hope you enjoy these new
features. Over the next few months you will see several other
improvements to the site including a new attendance module, an updated
homework/gradebook module, a student locker module, and a new messaging
system to help you communicate with students and parents in your
classroom!
Remember, our teacher websites are now FREE, so tell your friends and colleagues!
Congratulations to the following individuals for winning 1 year of free service from EZClassSites.com.
8-Jul-2008
Congratulations to the following individuals for winning 1 year of free
service from EZClassSites.com.These winners
were randomly selected each hour throughout the show.
Barbara Miller
Mary Jane Mescher
Rebecca Swindull
G. Diane Monn
Mary Rodgers
Rebecca Swindull
Irma Andress
Matt Ely
Shannon Carnes
Jeannie Shelley
Michael Valdez
Shannon Rewerts
Lois Costa
Nancy Tom
Thurston Riehl
Marie Reen
Orfelinda Ramirez
William Davis
Martha Johnson
Randy Farmer
Yolanda Coach-Fields
If you were chosen as a winner, you will receive an email from us
shortly that includes a promotional code.Simply visit http://www.EZClassSites.com/sign_up.html
to create your account.At the end of
the sign-up process, you can enter your promotional code for 1 year of free
service.It’s that easy!
EZClassSites.com
offers educators numerous tools to help them build their classroom website such
as an interactive calendar, password protection for
classroom websites, a photo gallery,20+ design templates, a homework tool that lets students digitally
submit assignments and gives you an online gradebook, WebQuest creation,discussion boards, student journals, student
web pages and much more.You can learn more about the various tools we
offer at http://www.EZClassSites.com/learn_more.
In addition to
our teacher website solutions, we offer school districts a simple, yet
comprehensive solution for building an online environment for students,
parents, administrators, and the community.Our district
solution is a fully integrated, enterprise package that offers SIS integration
for automated teacher and student account creation, custom reporting, nightly
parental emails, attendance tracking, a full gradebook, multiple administrative
login with customized account privileges, a CIPA/COPA compliant messaging
system, and much more.You can find
complete details at http://www.EZClassSites.com/district_learn_more/.
For those that were not selected as a free trial winner, don’t forget
that we are currently running a promotion that saves you 20% off our standard
rate of $50.00 per year.For a limited
time, if you sign up using promotional code ezdiscount074030 you will receive our full suite of services for $40.00 per year for
the life of your membership! We also
give group discounts (groups of 5 or more qualify).If you have a group of teachers who would
like to sign up, simply send us an email at Support@EZClassSites.com and we will
send you a group promotional code for additional savings. In addition, all new customers receive a 30
day free trial.No payment information
is required so you have nothing to lose.Sign up TODAY to start building your classroom website!
Congratulations to our free account winners from the 2008 TCEA conference.
10-Feb-2008
Congratulations to our free account winners from the 2008 TCEA
conference.
It was wonderful meeting and getting to know everybody that came by our
booth.
Congratulations to the following individuals for winning 1 year of free
service from EZClassSites.com. These
winners were randomly selected each hour throughout the show.
TRESA ESTES
FRANK VASQUEZ
DAVID WILLIAMS
LINDA JENKINS
KASEY BELL
JANA HOOVER
BRYAN EVANS
KAREN MURCIA
DIXIE ANDERSEN
CAROLE AKTINES
ANNE STREET
JOE LYTLE
KATIE RUSSELL
KATHY HAMPTON
TOMELL WALTON
CARMELINA HOLLINGSWORTH
TRACI LAFOY
A. DENISE NEWSHAM
MAVIS TONEY
LORRAINE ALVAREZ
If you were chosen as a winner, you will receive an email from us
shortly that includes a promotional code.
Simply visit http://www.EZClassSites.com/sign_up.html
to create your account. At the end of
the sign-up process, you can enter your promotional code for 1 year of free
service. It's that easy!
For those that were not selected, don't forget that we are currently
running a promotion that saves you 20% off our standard rate of $50.00 per
year. For a limited time, if you sign up
using promotional code ezdiscount074030 you
will receive our full suite of services for $40.00 per year. Pay for additional years and the savings will only
increase! In addition, all new customers
receive a 30 day free trial. No
payment information is required so you have nothing to lose. Sign up TODAY to start building your
classroom website!
Congratulations to our free account winners from the NSBA T+L conference
22-Oct-2007
Congratulations to the following individuals for winning 1 year of free
service from EZClassSites.com. These
winners were randomly selected each hour throughout the show.
KRISTEN FRIERSON
CAROLYN DERUYCK
CINDI WACKER
CINDY RAY
KATHY CARAWAY
KASEY DIRNBERGER
DONNA ROMANICK
WENDI STACHLER
CHARLIE CHESMORE
SHARI LAMUNYON
TRACY LEBO
JOHN BEISEL
DOYLE MASSEY
ANGELO ROMANO
SUSAN PATRICK
If you were chosen as a winner, you will receive an email from us
shortly that includes a promotional code. Simply visit http://www.EZClassSites.com/sign_up.html
to create your account. At the end of
the sign-up process, you can enter your promotional code for 1 year of free
service. It’s that easy!
For those that were not selected, don’t forget that we are running a fall
promotion that saves you 20% off our standard rate of $50.00 per year. For a limited time, if you sign up using
promotional code ezdiscount074030 you will receive our full suite of
services for $40.00 per year for the life of your membership! In addition, all new customers receive a 30
day free trial. No payment information
is required so you have nothing to lose. Sign up TODAY to start building your classroom website!
At EZClassSites.com, we are always trying to improve the
services we offer by listening to customer suggestions and feedback.Over the last few months, we have made
several updates to the features and tools that we provide our customers.
Homepage
Custom Logo – Now, along with the 22 templates we provide, you can
also upload a custom homepage logo that will appear in the upper
right-hand corner of your classroom website.
CalendarUpdates – Our calendar was
recently updated so that daily reoccurring events could be created.We also gave teachers the ability to
turn on/off the option to have calendar events automatically appear on
your classroom websites homepage as an alert.
StudentAccount Creation – Students are
now able to create their own accounts from your website homepage.All accounts are automatically set to
“disabled” until the teacher approves them.
Student
Grouping Feature – To coordinate with our homework/gradebook module,
you can now group your students into virtual classes.You can then assign homework assessments
to specific classes.
Student
Interface Updated – We also improved our student interface.When students login, they will no longer
be required to work within multiple browser windows.Everything is completed within one window.
Photo
Gallery Auto Resizing – Our photo gallery was also updated so that
photos you upload for viewing will be automatically resized to be viewable
within your internet browsers window.
Updated
Homework Module – Our homework module was recently updated to make the
digital submission of homework assessments easier for students.
We hope that you find this update useful.We have several new features coming in the
next few weeks so please check back often!
EZClassSites.com is proud to announce its newest tool to
help you in your classroom, our homework module. This module offers you numerous tools to
create, collect, and track assignments.
Within our homework module, you have the option to create
assignments for your students. Once
assignments are created, students can securely log in and digitally submit
their assignment to you! After an
assignment is submitted, you can review, comment, and/or post a grade for the
student. If you don’t want students to
digitally submit a document for an assignment, you can manually post grades
yourself with no student involvement. Plus,
you have the ability to download your gradebook as a CSV file for viewing in
any spreadsheet program or to view your gradebook online to see assignment
grades and student/class averages. Once
assignment grades and/or comments are posted, students will be able to login
and securely view their individual grades and/or comments left by you.
To preview this new module, please visit our sample page, Mr. Randall
located at:
EZClassSites.com is proud to announce two important updates
to our service. First, we have added 17
additional themes for you to choose from when building and maintaining your
classroom website. Second, you now have
the option to password protect your classroom website!
The first thing anybody visiting you classroom website sees
is the theme you choose. One of the best
ways to attract repeat visitors to your site is to occasionally update the
theme you are using. Changing themes
immediately lets your visitors know that that you have been working on the site
and there are new, exciting things for them to experience and learn. To assist you with this process we have
recently added 17 additional themes for you to choose from, bringing the total
number of themes available to 22! These
themes vary from seasonal, to holiday, to religious, to fun and student
friendly.
We have also introduce the ability to password protect your
entire classroom website.
EZClassSite.com customers now have the ability to turn this feature on
and off per their individual and school district preferences. When the site is password protected, any
visitor trying to access your site must have a username and password before
they are allowed to enter. If password
protection is turned off, any visitor can view your site without a username and
password. When you turn the feature on
you are asked to create a general username and password that you can then give
out to parents, students, and anybody else that you would like to see your
website. Plus, you have the option to
allow students to use their username and passwords to access your website.
Please check back often for more exciting features!
Congratulations to our free account winners from the NECC conference.
2-Jul-2007
It’s hard to believe but the NECC conference is over already!
It was wonderful meeting and getting to know everybody that came by our
booth.
Congratulations to the following individuals for winning 1 year of free
service from EZClassSites.com. These
winners were randomly selected each hour throughout the show.
Heather
Brown
Mary
Lafferty
Barbara
Clark
Sue
VanHooser
Gayle Cole
Amanda
Hajnos
Audra
Sanders
Frank Hwu
Pamela
Donesley
Sally
Hennis
Jefferson
Ricketson
Laura
Murphy
Gail La
Croix
Beth
Walizer
Lisa
Sanders
Kathleen
Covey
Ann Green
Jan Duke
Lynda
Perrodin
Danielle
Klaus
Anna Sexton
If you were chosen as a winner, you will receive an email from us
shortly that includes a promotional code.
Simply visit http://www.EZClassSites.com/sign_up.html
to create your account. At the end of
the sign-up process, you can enter your promotional code for 1 year of free
service. It’s that easy!
For those that were not selected, don’t forget that we are running a
summer promotion that saves you 20% off our standard rate of $50.00 per
year. From now until September 30th,
if you sign up using promotional code ezsummer2007
you will receive our full suite of services for $40.00 per year for the life of
your membership! In addition, all new customers
receive a 30 day free trial. No payment
information is required so you have nothing to lose. Sign up TODAY to start building your classroom
website!
In an effort to continually upgrade and improve our
services, we recently introduced two new tools to our suite of services;
district accounts and photo galleries.We also improved our calendar to allow teachers to create reoccurring
events.
First, EZClassSites.com now offers school districts a
simple, yet comprehensive, solution to building an online environment for
students, parents, administrators, and the community.Using our simple system, district accounts will
receive a complete district website and a website for every school within the
district.Each of these websites gives districts
the ability to create a district/school calendar, list of faculty members and
their websites, alerts on their website homepage for upcoming events, photo
galleries, and the ability to create up to 10 additional web pages for
additional needs they may have as a school and/or district.On district websites they can list and link
to each school within their district. For more information, please visit http://www.EZClassSites.com/district_learn_more/.
We also recently introduced a photo gallery module to every
teacher account.The photo gallery is a
place to share the wonderful experiences you and your students encounter
throughout the year. Teachers can create as many photo galleries as they like
and are able to add specific comments about each photo they add to the gallery.
Photo galleries can be viewed as either thumbnail galleries, or as a slide
show.
We also improved our calendar feature so that reoccurring
events can easily be created.For
example, if you have an assignment due every Friday and want to place a
reminder on your calendar simply create the reminder 1 time and tell our system
to continue displaying the reminder every Friday.Reoccurring events can be weekly, bi-weekly,
or monthly.You also have the option to
create an end date for the event to stop being displayed.
Summer is finally here and we have numerous other updates
coming in the next few weeks.Please
check back often for more exciting, new features.
Thanks again for choosing us as your classroom website
solution!
EZClassSites.com is proud to announce that it has been
selected as the “Site of the Week” by Highlights Teachernet (http://www.teachernet.com). Highlights Teachernet is a highly regarded online
resource for K-8 educators. Their
website offers educators numerous resources and features. They offer online content and links to a vast
network of sites where educators can learn and share ideas.
One ongoing feature at Teachernet is a “Site of the Week”
column. Sites are carefully selected for
this list based on their ease of use, relevance to education, and overall
quality. We are proud to announce that
EZClassSites.com will be the “Site of the Week” for the week of May 14th,
2007!
EZClassSites.com is proud to announce that it will be an exhibitor at the 2007 NECC Conference!
The NECC convention is hosted by International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). The NECC conference is the premier forum to learn, exchange and survey the newest innovations in educational technology.
EZClassSites.com will be located at booth 3232. If you are in the area and visit the conference take a moment to stop by and say "Hello!" to us.
EZClassSites.com Opens!!!
4-Mar-2007
EZClassSites.com officially opens for business on March 5th, 2007!
EZClassSites.com was established under the firm belief that every classroom should have a website that not only serves as a communication tool for parents, students, administrators, and the community, but also as a tool for teachers to integrate technology into their classrooms and to differentiate lessons for their students.
EZClassSites.com offer 15 tools to help teachers build their classroom website:
Alerts
Classroom Management
Curriculum Overview
FAQ
Student Pages
Classroom Calendar
Classroom Newsletter
Discussion Boards
Lessons
Student Journals
Classroom Journal
Classroom Tour
Educational Links
WebQuest
Additional Pages...
EZClassSites.com also offers teachers an easy to use email system that implements their current public email address for communicating website updates to parents and/or students.
In addition, there is no limit to the number of pages a teacher can create using the system!
EZClassSites' goal is to bring a website to every classroom. As a customer you can always expect to see new and exciting tools available to you to help you with your ever changing classroom needs.
(Figure 3)
