We have introduced a new feature for grouping class timings(with weekdays) and assigning the grouped class timing to single and multiple batches of your institution. With this feature you can save a lot of time in managing the institution and you will get optimized and error free attendance report of past batch timings in Fedena. Class timings and weekdays for a batch can be changed now without affecting the existing timetable and older timetable. New settings will take effect after a new timetable is created. Before explaining the benefits, let us find out the problems and challenges with the old method.
Challenge 1: Most of the institutions changes the class timings more than one time during an academic year. Even though this is less likely for K-12 education, it is a frequent process in Higher Education. For example the 2013 batch of Mechanical Engineering in a college will start with class timings 9am to 5pm. But after some months there is a high probability that the class timings might be changed to 10am to 6pm. With the old method of class timing configuration, you have to manually set the class timing each and every time the change happens. There is no way to automate the process even if it is a standard in your institution to have multiple class timings in a single academic year. First challenge is the time wasted in manually configuring class timing changes.
Challenge 2: Once a new class timing is applied to an existing batch in the old method of manual configuration, all past data of attendance will be lost if the option of subject wise attendance was active.
To solve these challenges our product team has innovated the way class timings & week days are configured in Fedena. Instead of manually tweaking the class timings each and every time, we have introduced the following concepts.
You can create class timing sets(including weekday configuration) which are independent from batches. ex: Summer timings, Special day timings, Winter timings etc..
Note: You will have to create a fresh timetable once the new class timings are assigned to a batch.
You can download the feature documentation here. Some screenshots given below.
Note 2: Workflow of weekday is not changed, but changing of weekday and class timing set in between a calendar year is possible for a batch, but it will not take effect until new timetable is created, all older timetable is kept as such in that case.
Note 3: After getting this new update, class timing sets will be created by default for each batch, however, you may find that a particular class timing set can be used for multiple batches, feel free to update those as per the need.
How to use Fedena’s New Sibling Management Feature?
Does your institution have more than one child of same parents as students? Congrats. A sibling of an existing student joining your institution proves the trust and loyalty of the parents in the school’s vision and administration. Fedena is set to launch a new feature – Sibling Management that will minimize the effort of the admin to enter and store parents’ information once again when sibling of an already existing student gets admitted to the school.
Being the admin of any educational institution, you had to go through the ordeal of filling up information related to parents during the time of admission of any new students. It can become even more painful if you have to store the same information once again in case any sibling of an existing student gets admitted to your school. But your work can be made easy with the help of this new feature of Fedena. If you are eager to know how your workload can be simplified, read through the article about this amazing feature.
Firstly, being the admin, you need to make some changes in the General Settings to enable the sibling feature. For this, go to ‘General Settings’ from ‘Settings’ in the Dashboard. In ‘General Settings’ click on ‘Enable Sibling’ option.
Go back to ‘Dashboard’ and click on to ‘Admission’ to fill in the details of the new sibling getting admitted to your school. Once you save the name and other details and click on ‘Save & Proceed’, you will be taken to the page which will help you add the sibling to the existing student.
You can find the required student to whom you need to add the sibling by using the ‘Search’ option and this would add the parent details of the existing student to the new sibling getting admitted.
In case, you want to change the sibling added to the existing students, you can do it using the ‘Configure sibling’ option that is available in the guardians’ page. The guardian’s page can be reached by clicking on the student’s profile and you have the ‘Guardians’ option on right-hand top bar.
Once you go to the guardians’ page, you will get the option of configuring sibling.
When any parent login, he or she can easily switch to any of the children and see the details and the present thread will showcase details of the particular child until it is changed or switched.
This feature will surely help you save some useful time and invest the time in things that are more important and relevant. For a smarter way to do this, switch to Fedena.
1. Tell us more about your institution and its objectives. What does it stands for?
WP: Wisdom Park International School is promoted by a group of technocrats who have rich experience in the field of education. It was felt that enough importance is not being given to the primary education. The fast changing scenario in the field of primary education is gathering momentum around the world.
The old way of teaching which includes lot of books, reading and writing materials needs to be changed. And play way method of teaching has to be incorporated in our primary education system. We must try to identify and nourish the skills and talents hidden in a child. World renowned child education psychologists like Maria Montessori and Mike Gardner and our ‘3C’ philosophy emphasize these points. Edify group of companies are pioneers in this field. One of their branches is EDVISOR which imparts professional consultancy to Wisdom Park International School. This school is coming up in about 5.5 acres of land on the National Highway No 46 in Chenglikuppam village between Ambur and Vaniyambadi. All the modern facilities needed for a modern primary school like smart classes, educational toys, temperature controlled classrooms, natural ambience needed for the betterment of a child, swimming pool, playgrounds suitable for soccer, volleyball and other sports will be available in this campus. The teaching faculty will be trained by the people from EDVISOR, Hyderabad. Foreign teachers will also be appointed for language and other subjects. The services of Edu Sports —–etc will also be taken in their fields.
2. How did you come to know about Fedena?
WP: We came to know about Fedena from search engine. Till now, our experience of Fedena is going good and it has been a great assistance to our efforts and dream.
3. Character, Competence and Content are the ‘3Cs’ of your institution. Please elaborate on the ‘3Cs’ and how it has helped in your goals?
WP: In today’s world where information is available at the click of a button, children have to become knowledge assimilators and analyzers rather than just be a storehouse of information. The focus has to be on application of knowledge through experimentation, research and discovery.3C stands for Character, Competence, and Content. The 3C form the framework of the entire curriculum. The curriculum is learner centric and child- friendly ensuring that children learn for the love of learning. The objective of 3C is to encourage children to become contributing citizen and independent learners, thus enabling them to explore the world through their own ways. The basis of 3C is scientific, formulated with the belief that every child is a potential learner and that contemporary learning has to nurture and educate children to be lifelong learners. The 3C curriculum and its pedagogical practices, an amalgamation of best practices implemented in various national and international curricular. Beside academic achievements, sport and co-curricular activities form an integral part of the 3C curriculum. Assessment and evaluation are part of the process which makes the whole evaluation stress free for the students.
4. ‘Social responsibility’ is an integral part of the educational institutions now. What is your point of view in this context as an educator?
WP: Participating in extracurricular activities not only looks good to school but it’s also a great opportunity for meeting new people. School social activities can help enhance leadership skills as well. Participating in them throughout school level can help the child get into the college of his/her choice while enhancing his/her social skills. Our school social activities include cleaning up school area and nearby villages and creating health awareness among village people, our students helps traffic police in peak hours, provide time for the students to talk and eat as they help others. Our school also participates in The National Service Scheme (NSS).
5. What are your future aspirations?
WP: To foster a society of individuals capable of progressive thinking, creating and initiating positive change in the social, economic and cultural fabric, to impact the global community through knowledge, understanding and attitude and make learning an experience by nurturing individual talents, empower them to be independent, responsible and resourceful change agents of our nation and the world.
It’s always been a tough time for parents when they have to decide what education they should choose for their children; education that is both right and appealing to them as well. Each child has a different kind of educational needs and preferences and depending on that, education should be imparted to them. One of the most highly remarkable innovations of the age is the virtual education, the best alternative to the traditional educational module.This kind of education through the world of the internet is especially helpful to kids who find it difficult to cope with the concept of actual school. In fact, virtual school has been hailed as the next big solution in education that is surely going to change the way education is delivered to its recipients. Read this article to know why virtual education is such a great beginning in the world of education.Virtual education is not similar to the kind of education available in traditional classes. The best part about this kind of education is that it allows students and parents to go through proper counselling to know what will work best for each student, based on his strength and weaknesses. Customized education can bring out the best in each student as it helps to ignite the willingness to learn. Besides, the flexibility that is allowed to students in virtual schooling is what attracts more and more parents. The reason is the fact that it facilitates students to learn and not mere learning that is forced at a particular time. It has been proved through research that students tend to learn more when it is convenient for them, rather than making studies a mere everyday fixed routine.
Likewise, the rising cost of attending courses in colleges and other educational institutions have already forced many students to go for virtual education. The education costs involved in virtual schooling is pretty less as it does not include the immense course fees and resource expenses among a whole lot of others that just go unnoticed sometimes. But with virtual schools, the education delivered does not require such high investments and it is an advantage to students with fewer privileges who are unable to attend well-known campuses. The cost involved in this kind of education via the internet is way less than the face-to-face method.
Now, if we think beyond the student’s point of view, we can also find how virtual education is a great boon to the environment as well. Just think how many trees you are saving by reducing the use of paper. The amount of paper you need while attending a classroom lecture is huge and most of the paper used always end up in the dustbin. While virtual education does help you save the environment and keep your data safe on your computer.
The advantages of virtual education are great in number and these are just a few of them. We must always remember one thing that the benefits of virtual education vary from person to person depending on individual needs and requirements. The huge number of students enrolling for virtual schools itself stands as a witness to the ever increasing demand of virtual education.
We have already seen what great innovations have been introduced by the award winning school management software, Fedena. Now, we get a glimpse of what is all set to be launched by Fedena, called Email Alert Plugin. So far, we have seen that whenever we have any notifications in Fedena, we could only see them when we login to Fedena. But with the new Email Alert Plugin, you don’t have to login to Fedena every time to check notifications; you will be getting email alerts of the same. The best part about this plugin is that emails can be send automatically as well as manually. Besides, emailing to more than one person is also possible with this plugin.
Before you enjoy the advantages of this plugin, you better know the right way to use it. This article will describe in steps how the Email Alert plugin can be used to make the most of it.
Step 1: Being the admin, you have the power to send emails to employees, guardians and students and can also give privilege to any of your employee who can do the same on your behalf. Firstly, login to Fedena with your id and go to ‘More’ and then to ‘Email’.
There are two types of features allotted to you as an admin and also the privileged user- Send Email to employees, guardians and students and Email Alert Settings.
Step 2: When you want to send emails to employees or students or guardians, you need to click to the respective link and fill in all information required and send. All you need to do is to select the particular batch and write the ‘Subject’ and the ‘Message’ to be sent in each of the link.
Step 3: When you click on ‘Settings’, it will take you to the page that allows you to create automatic emails for particular recipients on specific events present. You just need to click on the respective entrant.
So far, only 16 events have been added to the this plugin which are categorized under common event creation for all, event creation for employee and batches separately.
Step 4: When you login as a privileged employee, you have to go to Fedena and go to ‘More’ and then to ‘Email’.
Being a privileged employee, you can also access the Email Alert Settings along with Email, only if the admin assigns you that.
This plugin will surely be of great help to Fedena users as they don’t have to login to Fedena to get notifications. All notifications are just an email away!
Social media is no more just about sharing or communicating with other people. It has spread its wings to various other fields and education is one of the new sectors where the concept of social media is making a great change. A recent study has shown that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter has regular visitors that counts in millions. Estimation shows that more than 90% college-going students visit social networking sites on a regular basis. More and more students have started using social media, not just for communicating, but for gathering information, share ideas and creativity. In fact, when we talk about the benefits of using social media and networking sites in the educational institution, we can never look away from the fact that these social networking sites are helping introvert students come out of the closet and encounter with other students which is very important for a healthy student life.
A pretty new concept in the world of education, social media has become one of the most debated issue of late among teachers, students and professors. With more and more schools and educational institutions are slowly but steadily adopting social media in education as revealed in the research conducted by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth that shows some 100% of colleges have opened their gates to different kind of social platforms. This is indeed, a smart idea for it cultivates leadership skills among students, right from planning to organize an event that can bring about a change both in the social and democratic platform.
Talking about other possible benefits that social media engagement in schools and colleges can bring about, we must not miss out the fact that this kind of interaction can help students in their future prospects through sites like LinkedIn that helps people with employment. Besides, the wide variety of information available over the networking sites shapes up the ability of students to scan and extract information that is useful and relevant. The high amount of interest and concentration invested by students in social media can sharpen the ability of practical reasoning; but then, students must know the way to distinguish the useful from the distractions.
When you see one side of the coin, there is the other side too! When social media can bring some positive changes in the world of education, it has its black side as well. As many researchers and scholars do believe that too much time spent in Facebook, Google and other networking sites can lead to loss of patience as most social media users have a general tendency to shift from page to page too often. Another prime concern with people against the use of social media in schools is the way the use of language has been changing. Sites like Twitter allows you to post your ideas in just 140 characters which in turn bars the person to use words fully spelled. Instead, most users go for shorthand like ‘u’ instead of ‘you’, ‘gr8’ in place of ‘great’ and so on. Prolonged usage of this kind of language has led to the development of separate messaging language which has made its way to mainstream written language as well.
In any case, the rising popularity of social media shows that the trend is going to stay and will influence every phase of life. So, it’s up to students and scholars to decide how social media can be used in a brighter way; how to avoid being distracted and wander aimlessly through sites and instead, promote actual learningin the virtual world.