Welcome to Volume IV of the quarterly Tract digest, where I share news and happenings from the past few months at Tract. Enjoy!
-Ari, Tract Cofounder + CEO
April Community Calendar Revealed
We are excited to reveal our first Community Calendar for the month of April. Going forward, you can expect a monthly calendar with fun events, activities, and themes to make things even more FUN.
Students Can Now Create in Teams
Our #1 request from our community was to support collaborative creation. Now students can select teammates from a pre-set list of classmates. Adding a teammate shares attribution of the creation, and allows both creators to see project submissions and interact with their learners.
Top Picks Feed to Feature our 600+ AMAZING Creators
This winter we had 600+ student Creators. For many, it is their first time creating media and teaching. We are so excited to help more kids become creators, not consumers. To elevate the visibility and increase the authentic audience for the highest quality learning paths, we introduced the “Top Picks” feed which features community favorites for the entire network on Tract. Instead of relying on an “algorithm” driven by likes, our feed relies on quality.
The Prize Board Evolves into the Shop
As we all know the students LOVE Tract’s in app currency. We rebranded the Prize Board into the Shop, expanded its offerings to include more ways to help students become better Creators and help important causes. We added the ability for students to help kids in Ukraine which has quickly become the #1 shop item, with students donating 300+ times. Students and teachers can also now request new shop items, which will be included in our “drops” every month.
Learning Path Reviews & Feedback
The feedback and revision process is incredibly important whenever any student creates on Tract. This is our opportunity to help them improve as Creators across multiple skills. Now when students attempt to publish a learning path they see a validation popup that provides missing information, quick links to fix them, and personalized feedback.
Once all errors have been fixed, they will then see a confirmation that their path has entered a review and an estimated time for when they should expect feedback. Once the review has been completed by a Tract team member, students will then receive a notification informing them of requested changes or a confirmation their path is now published. All of this feedback is visible and stored for students in the “Activity” tab.
These enhancements lay the foundation for us to extend the review and feedback process to include educators, students, and even multiple reviewers.
Livestream Workshops are Here to Help Students Up-Level Their Creator Skills!
Live Streaming has become incredibly popular amongst kids, but there’s no safe place for them to participate in it - until now! This format lends itself to some really fun synchronous interactions, workshops and demonstrations that you can’t get from asynchronous interactions.
Tract is now holding daily live streams after school hours that students can pop into to improve their communication, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration skills.
Teacher's Lounge Launch
One of the most common questions I get from educators is “How can I fit Tract in?”. Esther showed me how subjects like history, science, reading, and math don’t need to be isolated, in fact they should be integrated in all project-based activities, centered around what kids like. The main course. Not dessert.
To help educators get quick answers and best utilize Tract, we released the Teacher’s Lounge - a forum for our educator community to ask questions, share resources/stories, connect, receive updates, and just chat! We now have 250+ contributors here sharing their knowledge and tips.
Educators Can Now Request Insights Reports
Now, when educators go to the “teach” tab and select “Insights” from the left panel, they can request a personalized report on their classroom’s usage on Tract and our recommendations on how you can further improve. Every report is custom made, and can be tailored to your goals and questions.
What's On Deck for Next Quarter?
- Enhanced Privacy Settings for restricted visibility of student work
- Educator getting started learning paths
- Even BIGGER May Community Calendar
Not yet started on Tract? Get started in under 5 min by signing up and then following the #TractForTeachers videos.
