New and Improved!

Greetings Hivespace! 🐝

Welcome to the new and improved Infiniscope Website Experience! 

"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." 

Walter Bagehot

Sina and I continue to be your guides on this adventure as we bring you a new website and team members to support you and your ever-changing classrooms. 

I'll create a separate post to introduce you to new team members and reintroduce you to Sina and myself shortly. Today's post is all about the excitement we share with you about the website! It's been a long slog since January of 2020 when we received the news that Smart Sparrow sold their platform. 

I'm not going to lie, the news was crushing...at first. How would we continue to support YOU?! You are the MVPs and we needed to keep going for you!

But you see, we have amazing leadership here in ETX, the home of Infiniscope. Leaders that have vision and gut instinct. Our Director, Dr. Ariel Anbar insisted we could build a new platform from the ground up. One that was better, more powerful, open-source, and more intuitive. Over the last two years, we have partnered with Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative (OLI) and Unicon inc. to envision and implement this new platform, and enlisted the help of a new technology service provider, Argos Education to deliver these products to educators and learners. All of these technologies mean a new delivery mechanism...the new and improved Infiniscope website! Huge shout-out to Daydream Software for building the site of our dreams!

With the launch of this new website, you receive 

• an all access pass to this powerful new authoring platform hosted by Argos Education called Torus. Torus is non-proprietary, so we and you no longer need to worry about the sale of our technology tool in the future. It includes a feature called "Core Authoring" that allows educators to quickly and easily create their own lessons and an adaptive page to create more advanced lessons like those previously built in Smart Sparrow.
  
  
• tools that enable enrollment, whether you have an LMS or not. No LMS? Just click and go! Have an LMS, connect with your administrator to connect Argos Education. Once Argos is connected to your school's LMS, you or any teacher can enroll students in a lesson at any time!
  
  
• search functions! We have created tagging and search features that allow you to quickly find the content you are looking for and we even allow you to suggest tags. Is a piece of content aligned to a specific state standard for you? Tag it! Then others from your state can find the same content.
  
  
• quick access to all the Hivespaces with more ways to connect to educators in the network using the platforms you enjoy most. Have a preference for Facebook over Slack? We have a group for you to connect with!
  
  
• so much more! Get in there and start playing around to find all the features that your membership provides for free. 

We know it has been a long wait and we are so excited to have you along for the next phase of Infiniscope. Stay tuned for more blog posts as we feature team members, hive members, and "how-to" vignettes. There's SO MUCH MORE to share! 

Follow us to stay up to date!

Have a great week all!

Jess Swann - The Queen 👑  Bee 🐝