Centricity 2 is coming!

This week, Melissa Edwards and I attended an workshop on the latest version of the Schoolwires Centricity 2, our district web hosting solution. When we transitioned to Schoolwires in March, we knew that a newer version was soon to follow. It was very exciting to hear how much the company has listened to its clients as they developed Centricity 2. WSFCS is currently scheduled to begin our upgrade on December 29, 2010. I would like to share just a few of the changes we will see once the upgrade is complete:

• You will no longer have to navigate to your allowed section to login and see Site Manager. You will be able to login to Site Manager from anywhere and it will open what you have rights to edit.
• Groups can be created by webmasters to better able sharing and collaboration. They do not have to be linked through LDAP.
• Webmasters will have the ability to unlock their users rather than waiting for district staff to do so.
• Hierarchy of pages will be drag and drop.
• Webpage design will offer editor layouts where you can choose to add specially designed sections like widgets (called apps). This will allow teachers to have more creativity in how pages are laid out but will also allow for sharing of apps (with live updating). For example: If I teach first grade at my school, I can create an app for our first grade team calendar. I can share that app with my team mates, have them add it to a page and then as any of us update the calendar, it changes on our page. This can be done for podcasts, news events, and much much more!
• We will be able to push certain events to collections of schools or teachers. We can push events up, down, and sideways! (up and sideways will require approval)
  
• Each site will have the ability to see the usage statistics for their own site.
• Webmasters will be able to create short urls for sections.
• Content Moderation- we will have the ability to approve content before it posts. For example: a teacher could create a page for a project at school and give students rights to edit. Before those changes show live, the teacher will have to approve the changes.

There are many other new aspects! Stay tuned for more updates!