Back to School with Several Enhanced Features
As the school year approaches, we want to let you know of a few things we have recently done on Signing Savvy particularly for teachers and students.
Many sign language teachers and professors are using Signing Savvy to create word lists (aka, vocabulary lists) of their lesson plans and then sharing them with their students. This allows the students to use Signing Savvy's online flash cards and quizzing features to quickly reinforce what they learned in the classroom from home or wherever they have access to the Internet.
"Bookmarking" Word Lists
As a result, we now have hundreds of shared word lists. We have had the ability to search shared word lists, but even this becomes tedious if you always want to return to the same shared word lists. We've added functionality so now you can bookmark word lists that you want to return to often. Just view a word list and click the ADD BOOKMARK button. The list of your bookmarked word lists will show up on the Shared Word Lists page.
"Friending" Shared Word List Authors
If you want to see all the shared word lists created by someone, you can friend them. For example, a student might friend their teacher or a study partner. Then whenever the teacher or study partner creates a new shared word list, the word list will show up in the student's friends list. To add a friend, first, click on the author's name of a word list to see all of their shared word lists, then click the ADD AS FRIEND button. Just like bookmarks, the list of your friends word lists will show up on the Shared Word Lists page.
Note: Of course, you are only allowed to see word lists that are public. Private word lists are not viewable by anyone other than the author.
4-Month Full Memberships
With this in mind, teachers are starting to integrate Signing Savvy into their courses. In some cases, they are replacing or complementing the course textbook with Signing Savvy memberships. We have received several requests from teachers for a membership duration that fits the duration of a semester and the pocketbooks of their students. We have done just that! We now offer a semester long (4 months or 16 week) full membership option for $24.95. That is much cheaper than most textbooks.
Recommendations
We have also just started a "recommendation program." Teachers (or anyone else) can set up an account on Signing Savvy and recommend Signing Savvy to their students (or whomever) by providing a special link. When the link is followed to Signing Savvy and the individual becomes a full member, they are automatically connected (see friending above) to the teacher's account so that they can see their shared wordlists. In turn, the teacher is rewarded with additional free full membership time to Signing Savvy. Recommendations are easy to give and are fully explained in the FAQ section of our website.
Institutional Purchases
This one is not new, but many are not aware of it. If you are part of an institution, such as a school, college, government agency, non-profit, or corporation and would like to offer memberships to your students, members, or employees, Signing Savvy has an excellent way to do just that, called Bulk Membership Purchasing.
With Bulk Membership Purchasing your institution can purchase multiple Signing Savvy memberships at a discounted price, then assign and manage those memberships. For Bulk Membership purchases, we also accept purchase orders. If you are interested, learn more on the create proposal page!
Have a great rest of the summer!
At Signing Savvy, we've had a pretty productive summer! We're happy we've been able to rollout several new full member features (described above), a new design, and have spent time in the recording studio so we could add many more signs to the dictionary. We hope you enjoy the new features!
Savvy User D. Sebi-RaMonday, August 9, 2010
Great options! Good work. Thanks. Keep it up.