We announced earlier that a number of apps in Golabz were removed under the new data protection and privacy rules of the EU (GDPR). We are happy to inform you that many of these apps now have been redesigned to answer the GDPR rules and that they are back, even with extended functionalities. Also, we developed a set of new apps that is now available at http://golabz.eu/apps.

Apps that were technically changed are the Conclusion tool, the Data viewer, the Report tool, and the Viewer. The technical changes are meant to make the apps more robust and maintainable and you will not notice these changes from the outside; but what has changed is that these apps have a bit crispier interface. An app that has more fundamentally changed is the Concept mapper. You will notice a new interface that we think is more intuitive than the previous one. Of course, all existing concept maps will keep working in the new Concept mapper.

Another app that has a new interface is the Online user visualization app, that shows in which phase and which app students are in so that you have a quick overview of the whereabouts of the students in your class. Apps that have returned are the Timeline (see Figure 1) and Activity plot app. The Timeline app shows how much time students have spent in phases and apps; the Activity plot app shows how active students were in the different apps. In Graasp, so visible for you as a teacher, the apps will show all students’ (nick)names, in an ILS the student only sees his/her own name and the other students’ names are hidden. This principle also holds for the User visualization app. Another returning app is the Concept map aggregation. In this app students can compare their own concept map with a concept map that is composed of all concept maps created in their own class. Also, new is that you can easily add reflection questions to these apps so that students are guided in the reflections over the time they spent in phases and apps, the activities they did, and the concept map they created.

Figure 1: Timeline App
Figure 1: Timeline App

 

Another set of apps let’s student compare their time spent in phases with their own expectations or the expectations of you, their teacher. In the Time spent app (see figure) you can indicate how much time you think your students should spend in specific phases and in this app, students can compare your expectations with their actual time spending. Typically, you would place the Time spent app in the final phase of an ILS so that students can look back at their inquiry process. The Time planner app let’s students state their own time expectations for the different phases, so you would most probably place this in the beginning of an ILS; in the Time check app (most probably at the end of an ILS) students can compare their planning with their actual time spending.

Figure 2: Time Spent
Figure 2: Time Spent

 

A final, and brand new, app is the Peer assessment app. This app, we think, is maybe more for the more advanced Go-Lab users. When you include the peer assessment app in Graasp, other apps get an extra possibility for students to ask and give feedback, for example to the hypothesis they have created (see Figure 3). The app allows you to configure all kind of options for the feedback and also to connect students that can give and receive feedback to each other. So, quite a lot of renewed and new apps, for most of them we have now explaining movies on the Go-Lab support page, all of them will have movies soon. So, please visit this page to see these movies.

Figure 3: Peer Feedback
Figure 3: Peer feedback in the Hypothesis App

 

Also, in the Go-Lab authoring platform, Graasp, there are a few cool new options. First, you can now remove standalone users (see Figure 4). So, if you have tested your ILS with a few fancy names you can later simply remove them. This was an option requested by many teachers. Another new feature is that you can create a short URL of an ILS to give to your students. Just click on “get short link” next to the green Show standalone button and the short link is yours.

Remove Member
Figure 4: Remove standalone users in Graasp

 

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Friday, 29. June 2018