K12Portal's Corporate Blog

Launching School/District edition of K12Portal

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 12:40:37 -0700

Today's a big day for K12Portal, we're launching the District and School Edition of K12Portal. When we launched K12Portal about a year ago, we set out to build the best possible tools for teachers, schools and districts. Since the launch, it has been a roller coaster, and we're very proud of our success in the teacher community and of the more than 10,000 students we're currently managing. New signups are increasing every day !

We've continued to be busy though :-) While teachers and students will remain our core focus, we also want to make sure that schools and districts can take advantage of our tools and solutions.

Our school and district solution allows school and distritcts to manage grades and attendance. We offer a 30 day demo server for you to try it out. Getting started and setting up your school can be done in less than an hour !

If you're interested in using K12Portal as your student information system for your school or district, check out our offering at k12portal.com/weborders

Thanks,
-Roger

Passing the 1000 accounts mark !

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 20:25:33 -0700

Yay ! We passed the 1000 account mark (we're now over 1100 actually).

We feel an enormous sense of accomplishment. I remember vividly walking down Market Street in San Francisco on the phone with a really good friend of mine, bragging that we had 50 signups ! Of course, of the early signups, at least 10 where of the team :-)

Anyway, we're proud and feel an enormous responsibility to all of you who are using K12Portal.

Thank you.

And keep the feedback coming !

-Roger

System outage

Mon, 10 May 2010 13:09:08 -0700

Dear Members,

This is a very difficult note for us to write, but we think that being open and honest is an important aspect of any relationship, whether it's embarrassing or not.

Yesterday night, K12Portal experienced a major outage for the first time in the 2.5 years that we have been operating the site. Our hosting provider (Amazons AWS service) had a multi system failure, which caused the loss of our database storage. This should never happen, the database storage is supposed to be redundant, but it happened nonetheless.

As a result, we lost about 5 days worth of data. This is devastating to us but more importantly, to our members. We've undertaken steps to make sure this won't happen again and we're in the process to recover as much additional data as possible.

We deeply regret the inconvenience this has caused. If you created an account after 5/4, it is likely that your account was lost. If you cannot login please recreate it. Any grades or assignments entered after this date have been lost too and will need to be re-entered. Feel free to reach us on feedback@k12portal.com if you have additional questions.

Please accept our sincere apologies. We are 110% committed to building a great, safe and reliable experience.

Thank you for understanding.
The K12Portal team.

Changes to the landingpage

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:17:50 -0800

We have made some changes to the site. Previously we landed on the
calendar page. From some of the feedback we got it would make more sense
to land on the dashboard page, so we've enabled that. The early feedback on
that change has been good.

We've also started adding documentation to the site. You can find it by clicking the
"Academy and Docs" link in the menu bar on the left.

Enjoy !
-Roger

More new functionality: Easy to use Dashboard Sharing

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:54:53 -0800

We're making big strides here at K12Portal: we're announcing a new and much
improved way of enabling sharing assignments and grades with parents and students.

In the gradebook, look for a link top right that says: "Student Dashboard".

All that is required is to click the link and enable sharing.

Enjoy ! As always, keep the feedback coming !

-Roger

New Functionality: Customize Attendance and Assignment codes

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:16:44 -0800

Several users have asked us whether or not it is possible to customize the attendance and score codes. The product supported this internally already so we decided to expose this to our users. Here's how it works:

- Access the gradebook
- When you're in the gradebook, click on the "Setup"-tab

Here you'll find the "score footnotes" and the "attendance codes" links, which can be used to customize the score and attendance codes.

Customize away, and keep the feedback coming !

-Roger

Site Updates

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:43:11 -0800

We're seeing record traffic (almost) everyday. Based on user feedback we've added a couple of features to the product.

You can now share calendars with colleagues, students and friends. This allows people who you are connected with to create events on your calendar.

Also, we've added a shortcut to add students to a section, right in the gradebook.

Furthermore we've fixed several bugs that we've (and you ! ) have found in the last weeks.

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who's left feedback, good or bad for us. The most important way for us to make things better is if you tell us ! You can leave feedback using the links on the top right of the page or at roger@k12portal.com.

Thanks for using K12Portal!

-Roger / K12Portal team

Happy Holidays !

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:39:05 -0800

Happy Holidays from us to all of you. 2009 was our best year yet and we're going into 2010 with tremendous momentum !

We'd like to thank our members for the feedback and support. Keep the feedback coming it's how we make our products all they can be !

All the best and here's to the next decade !

- Roger / K12portal team.

Updates...

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 19:38:38 -0800

Dear Members:

We have had tremendous early success with our product, many, many of you have been checking out the service. As a result, we have found several bugs (yikes!) that we have been diligently fixing. In addition, we have gotten several requests for some changes and feature requests.

Some specifics of new developments:
- New dashboard page has been rolled out. It contains more of what you want, in a format that is (hopefully!) easier to read
- New assignment detail screen.
- Improved overall stability and performance of the site, including an improved backup mechanism

We're getting very close to roll out a public version of our reporting engine. This will allow you to create and update existing reports. This is ofcourse mission critical, we're working diligently to make sure the quality is what you would expect it to be.

Here is what you can do for us: Every page has a 'Leave Feedback' link on the top of the screen to the right. As you're using the product, please let us know what your thoughts are ! Alternatively you should always feel free to reach me on roger@k12portal.com. I read all my email, and respond to it too !

From the K12Portal team, we wish you all a great and prosperous 2010!

Very Best Wishes from the team !

Mikin, Roger, David, Anna and a cast of 1000's :-)

Early feedback

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:33:26 -0700

We've been up for a week now, and the early feedback has been really good, and informative ! Fortunately, not too many bugs but some great usability feedback.

We're on it... expect updates and improvements on an ongoing basis. Keep the feedback coming, it's how we get better !

... And we're live !

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:32:16 -0700

After a couple of years of hard work, we're thrilled to announce that we're live with the first iteration of K12Portal.com. A lot of hard work went into this release. I'm sure there are still bugs and issues outstanding, feel absolutely free to reach out to us and let us know what you think !

The (very proud) K12Portal.com team.