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ICYMI: 5 Awesome Product Updates from Scrible

 

 

In case you missed it, we launched 5 awesome new product updates last month! Each one was substantial and deserves its own blog post. So, the updates are listed here with links to each of the posts:

Scrible Gets Design Upgrade – We launched long overdue updates to improve Scrible’s user interface and user experience. They improve Scrible’s look and feel, layout and navigation and functionality.

Scrible Improves Tagging System – We’ve revamped Scrible’s tagging system to make it easier and more intuitive to create, apply and manage tags for your sources and annotations.

Scrible Expands Support for Books and Print Sources – We’ve long offered the ability to add books and print sources to your bibliography via the Add Offline Source feature.  That’s now replaced with robust new Add Book and Add Print Source options.

Scrible Revamps Google Docs Add-on – We revamped Scrible Writer, our Google Docs Add-on that helps bring your research into the paper you’re writing in Google Docs. It’s now faster and let’s you view/insert your outline and easily view/edit your bibliography.

Scrible Now Supports Co-Teaching – Educators whose school, district or campus subscribes to Scrible Edu Pro can now add co-teachers to their classes.

 

We’d love to hear your feedback on these new updates. Let us know what you think!

— The Scrible Team

 

 

 

 

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Scrible Wins Classroom Essentials Award

We’re super excited to announce that Scrible’s been awarded the 2019 Classroom Essentials Award for all grade levels by the Illinois Association of Teachers of English (IATE)! We deeply appreciate and thank IATE for recognizing our work to support teachers and students with research and writing. Here’s their take on us:

“Scrible provides a comprehensive, seamless integration of technology into the research process, allowing teachers at all levels to analyze student work and to assist students as they write.  Scrible allows teachers to oversee the formative process of research writing and creates an online environment where research is cited appropriately and easily while students research.  It allows students and teachers to focus on the important skills of exploring and integrating resources and frees them from the stress and chaos of chasing down citations.  What’s more, in addition to school-level accounts, Scrible allows individuals to purchase accounts and carry this valuable tool with them into a university or career setting.”

We received the Award at the 2018 IATE Fall Conference in Hoffman Estates, IL, where our Cofounder/CEO was excited to meet and show Scrible Edu to Illinois English teachers. Here are some pics from the Conference:

  

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Scrible Now Supports Co-Teaching

(Image credit: Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction)

Educators whose school, district or campus subscribes to Scrible Edu Pro can now add co-teachers to their classes.  A co-teacher has the same access to all sections, student assignments and class libraries as the teacher who created the class.  For those who sync their classes to Scrible from Google Classroom, we now automatically sync co-teachers in Google Classroom into their classes in Scrible.

You can view the co-teachers for a class by going to your Classroom page in Scrible and choosing your class from the list.  This will open the Class Page, which lists the sections of that class.  Click the edit icon to the right of the class title to edit the class details.

 

On the subsequent Edit Class Page, you’ll see a new section for Co-Teachers displaying the current list of co-teachers for the class.

 

If you’re using Google Classroom, you won’t have the Add Co-Teacher Button.  You’ll need to add co-teachers in Google Classroom and let them sync over to Scrible via our Google Classroom Sync.

For classes that aren’t being sync’d from Google Classroom or other applications (like a learning management system (LMS)), click the Add Co-Teacher Button and enter your co-teacher’s email address to invite them.

After they’re invited, when they’re in their Classroom page, they’ll see a pop up notice alerting them of their pending co-teaching invites.  When they click on this alert, it’ll pop up a list of co-teaching invites that allows them to accept or decline each invite.

 

We’d love to hear your feedback on this new feature. Let us know what you think!

— The Scrible Team

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Scrible Revamps Google Docs Add-on

We’ve totally revamped Scrible Writer, our Google Docs Add-on that helps you bring your research into the writing process in Google Docs. It’s now faster and let’s you view and insert your outline and more easily view and edit your bibliography.

Wait. What’s Scrible Writer again?

To recap, Scrible Writer is our powerful writing companion for Google Docs. Here’s an excerpt showing the previous version of Scrible Writer from our general Scrible Edu demo video (which’ll be updated to reflect recent product changes):

Scrible Writer requires and works with your Scrible account. You can find and install it in your Google Docs account via the G Suite Marketplace or by searching for it within Google Docs under Add-ons > Get add-ons…. Once you’ve installed it, it’ll always appear as one of your add-ons under the Add-ons menu. Whenever you want to use Scrible Writer, simply select it from that menu to load it as a Sidebar that’ll appear to the right of your Doc. That Sidebar represents a slimmed down version of your Scrible Library so that you have easy access to your research while writing a paper. The first time you load Scrible Writer, you’ll need to connect it to your Scrible account.

Previously, Scrible Writer contained your Library’s sources so you could easily browse and full-text search your Library from within a Google Doc while writing your paper. You could click on an annotated passage or comment shown in the Sidebar to add it to your paper. Annotated passages could be inserted as quotes in the Doc and their corresponding in-text citations were automagically inserted too. The citations were also as added to your Bibliography, which was automagically maintained and inserted on the last page of your Doc so you can spend less time on tedious manual formatting and more time crafting your brilliant paper!

Access to the various Scrible Writer features depends on which Scrible plan you’re on. You get a lot in a free plan (Basic or Edu), but of course you get much more if you’re on a paid plan (Edu Pro).

Awesome! Now, what’s new?

First, we’ve re-engineered how Scrible Writer works with Google Docs so that inserting quotes is much faster now.

Second, we’ve updated the interface to a new tabbed layout.  Edu Pro users will see 3 tabs – Sources, Outline and Bibliography.

The Sources Tab works as Scrible Writer worked before. Browse and search your sources and annotations. Click to insert annotations as quotes into the Google Doc and the corresponding in-text citation is inserted as well and your Bibliography is automagically updated in the background.

The Bibliography Tab (available to Edu and Edu Pro users) replaces the previous Bibliography Preview Window that used to float over the Doc when you clicked the previous red Bibliography Button in the Sidebar. That Button is now gone.  You can simply click on the Bibliography Tab to view the current state of your Bibliography at any time. You can change the citation style for your paper here (e.g. from MLA to APA).  You can review what sources are in your bibliography and remove sources or edit their details right in the sidebar.  For Edu Pro users, all changes are synced in real time back to the Bibliography Tab in your Library. Nice!

 

The Outline Tab (available to Edu Pro users) allows you to view the outline you created in the Outline Tab of your Scrible Library.  You can click the Insert Link to insert the entire outline into the Doc, including in-text citations that accompany quotes. You can also click the Edit Link to navigate back to the Outline Tab in your Library, where you can edit the outline.

 

You’ll also notice a new Status Icon to the left of the Sources Tab. This Status Icon will let you know if your bibliography and in-text citations in the Doc are out of date.  If you change your bibliography via the Bibliography Tab in your Library or update the citation details for any of the sources cited in the Doc, the Status Icon will change from a green checkmark to a red exclamation mark ().  Clicking this will trigger Scrible Writer to refresh your in-text citations and the bibliography on the last page of your Doc.  This refresh also happens in the background automatically every time you insert a quote/citation into the Doc. While this is happening, the Status Icon appears as a syncing yellow spinner icon and then turns into the green check mark. Powerful stuff!

 

We think these updates make Scrible Writer much easier to use.  Let us know if you have any questions or run into problems!

— The Scrible Team

 

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Scrible Expands Support for Books and Print Sources

(Image credit)

Scrible Edu Pro has long offered the ability to add books and print sources to your bibliography via the Add Offline Source feature.  We’ve now taken this to the next level!  The Add Offline Source option has been replaced with two new options: Add Book and Add Print Source.

 

Working with Books

When you add a book, as you enter its title, we suggest potentially matching books and automatically populate the citation details. You can also enter a book’s ISBN to search by that instead.

 

Once you’ve selected the book and clicked the Create Button, the book is added to your Library as a new source.

 

When you open it, you’re brought into our new Book and Print Source Editor. It allows you to enter passages and annotations from these sources into Scrible. Simply click the Add Passage Button  to show the Passage Editor and then type in a passage and enter its corresponding page number in the book. Page numbers are optional but encouraged because passages are grouped by page to help keep them ordered correctly. The Editor displays each page with the all of passages you’ve entered for that page. By default, passages are added to a page in the order you enter them, but you can drag and drop them within a page to reorder.

 

While editing a passage, a mini annotation toolbar appears atop the Passage Editor with options to set the color and style of the passage. You can apply an annotation type and color to each passage so you can maintain a consistent annotation style across all of your digital sources (e.g. webpages and PDFs) and print sources (e.g. print books, magazines, newspapers, etc.).

 

Once entered, as with annotated text in digital sources (e.g. webpages and PDFs), you can apply tags to annotated passages and add comments to them using the icons appearing to the left of each passage when you hover over it.

 

As with webpages and PDFs, all annotations and tags for book and print sources flow through the system and appear in the Sources Sidebar in the Outline Editor in your Library and the Scrible Writer Google Docs Add-on.

 

Working with Print Sources

The screenshots shown here are for the example of working with a book, but what about print sources like a print magazine or newspaper? Similar story. When you choose Add Print Source in a Library, the print source you enter is added to that Library. Opening the source brings you into our Book and Print Source Editor. As with books, you can add a page number and passage so that your entered passages are grouped and ordered by page. You can apply annotation styles/colors, attach comments and add tags to the passage. In this case, however, the icons are a bit different. Instead of the book icon in your Library, the print source appears as a newspaper icon  and the Add Passage Button is similar . As with the book annotations and tags, everything for a print source flows through the system and appears in the Sources Sidebar in the Outline Editor in your Library and the Scrible Writer Google Docs Add-on.

 

We’d love to hear your feedback on these capabilities. Let us know!

— The Scrible Team

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Scrible Improves Tagging System

 

(Image credit)

We’ve revamped Scrible’s tagging system to make it easier and more intuitive to create, apply and manage tags for your sources and annotations!

Add/Remove Tags to/from Sources and Annotations

When hovering over a source (under the Sources Tab) or annotation (under the Annotations Tab) in your Library, an Actions Drawer appears at the far right end of the source/annotation with various options for that source/annotation.  One of those options is the ability to edit the tags for that source/annotation.

 

Just click on the tags icon to display the Add/Remove Tags Window, which allows you to view the tags already applied to the source/annotation. Start typing to see matching tags that already exist in the Library. Select one of those or type a new tag and apply it the source/annotation. Hovering over an already-applied tag reveals a red x at the right end of the tag. Clicking the x removes the tag from the source/annotation.

 

Edit and Delete Tags

The ability to edit tag names and delete tags from a Library is now right in the Tags Sidebar at the left side of the Library.  When hovering over a tag in the Sidebar, options to edit and delete the tag appear to its right.

 

Bulk Adding/Removing Tags

Applying/removing tags to/from multiple sources/annotations in a Library can be accomplished by selecting the sources/annotations and clicking the Tags Button atop the Library.

This displays the Bulk Add/Remove Tags Window, which contains a list of all tags in the Library. Simply check or uncheck multiple tags to apply or remove them from the selected sources/annotations. A horizontal line through the checkbox for a tag indicates that the tag is applied to some – but not all – of the selected sources/annotations.

 

We’d love to hear your feedback on these capabilities. Let us know!

— The Scrible Team

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Scrible Gets Design Upgrade

(Image credit)

We recently launched long overdue updates to improve Scrible’s UI/UX (user interface and user experience). They improve Scrible’s look and feel, layout and navigation and functionality. Here’s what’s new…

Icons

The icons used across the Library and Toolbar have been updated to a more modern and clean look (see screenshots below).

Toolbar

The Scrible (Web) Toolbar that appears when using our Chrome Extension with webpages now defaults to being docked across the bottom of the webpage.  Grab it anywhere along the dark gripper area along the sides to undock it and move it around the screen or drag it to the top of the screen to dock it there.

Sidebars

The Toolbar was growing too wide with new buttons as we added new features. So, we moved some previous buttons and features to new tabbed Sidebars appearing at the right of the page. The Sidebar Tabs allow for easy access to all of the Sidebars, which are now consistent across the our Web Toolbar, PDF Viewer and the new Book & Print Source Editor.  The exact tabs available to you will vary based on your plan and the type of content you’re viewing (e.g. webpage vs. PDF). Here’s a quick run down of what you can do with the Sidebars:

  • Comments – View and edit comments and replies anchored to passages in the article (a.k.a. source)
  • Collaborators – See who’s currently viewing the article and who’s made annotations and comments.
  • Tags (NEW) – View, create, apply and remove tags for the article
  • Thumbnails (PDF only) – Quickly find and navigate to pages in a PDF file.
  • Information – See what Library the article is located in, move or copy it to another Library, edit the article’s title and description and view, copy and navigate to the original URL for the article.
  • Citation (Edu and Edu Pro Plans only) – Review and edit citation information for the article. For books, quickly capture citation details by searching with the book’s title, ISBN or author name (NEW).
  • Legend (Edu Pro Plan only) – Add a description to an annotation tool type or color to help consistently annotate across all articles in the Library.

Library

In the Library, an Action Drawer of options now appears at the right edge of each source and annotation when you hover over it. The options allow you to act specifically on that source or annotation and includes the ability to edit the source’s information, set its read-only status (lock/unlock), preview its annotations, open the source/annotation, edit its tags or delete it.

 

Outline Editor

For Edu Pro users, we’ve improved the drag and drop experience in the Outline Editor when dragging in new items (e.g. highlighted text as a quote) and moving existing ones.  When dragging an item around the outline, you’ll see rows appear after each existing item in the outline with Drop Zones indicating the different levels of the outline that the dragged item can be inserted at. When you drag and drop annotations into the outline or move existing items around, the Outline Editor automatically renumbers all impacted items to ensure the outline’s numbering and indentation remain correct.  For example, after Roman numeral II, subpoint B, subpoint 3, you can drop a dragged item into the drop zone for subpoint 4, which will insert the item into the outline as subpoint 4 (after subpoint 3). However, dropping the item into the drop zone for Roman numeral III will make the item Roman numeral III and update the previous item that was Roman numeral III to IV.

Papers

Also for Edu Pro users, clicking the name of a paper in the Papers List in the the Papers Tab of the Library will open the paper in an embedded Google Docs Editor right there in the Papers Tab.  This provides easy access to the paper and a quick way to review and edit it.  To access and use our Scrible Writer Google Docs Add-on, simply click the link in the top right corner of the Doc to pop out of this embedded view and expand to view the paper in full screen mode in the standard Google Docs Editor.

 

We’d love to hear your feedback on these new changes. Let us know what you think!

— The Scrible Team

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Scrible at ISTE 2018

The Scrible Team was happy to be at ISTE 2018 in Chicago this year! We loved meeting and sharing our vision with educators of all types, including classroom teachers, librarians (a.k.a. media specialists), instructional coaches, tech directors and more. We were excited to see so much interest and enthusiasm for Scrible Edu!

It was also a great opportunity to see and reconnect with friends and partners! We couldn’t walk far without running into someone we knew!

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Scrible Launches Outlining, Annotation Tagging and New Libraries Interface

NOTE: New Library Layout applies to all Scrible users, but all other changes apply only to Scrible Edu Pro users.  

Out with the old and in with the new!  We’ve made major changes to make our Library interface more intuitive, with a better design and layout. We’ve also added powerful new features. Check out our new transition video above to guide you through the changes!

OVERVIEW
Previously, navigating between separate Libraries and the components of a project (i.e. its Library, Bibliography, Legend, Collaborators, etc.) required too many clicks. Based on your feedback, we’ve eliminated much of that and simplified the layout and navigation of Libraries and project components. We took the opportunity to also make other improvements to Libraries. Details are below, but here’s a summary of the changes:

Library Improvements
• Standardized Libraries – All libraries have all of the same features now.
• New Library Layout – The Library fills more of the page, is less boxy, has new/updated buttons and more.
• Projects → Libraries – The Library (vs. a Project) is once again the main, top-level organizing concept.
• Project Dashboard → Library Tabs – Panels in the old Project Dashboard are now tabs atop the Library.
• Projects Page → Libraries List – You now have a Libraries List at the left vs. a separate page of projects.
• Class Library Changes – Class Libraries are no longer special things. You can add classes to any library.
• Annotations List – Click on a source (article) in your library to see a list of annotations for that source.

We’ve also added awesome new features! Again, details are below, but here’s the summary:

New Features
• Annotation Tagging – Organize (tag) your evidence/comments (annotations), not just sources (articles).
• Annotations Tab – View and full-text search your annotations in a new Annotations Tab in the Library.
• Smart Outline – Drag/drop annotations into an outline. It auto numbers and updates your bibliography!

 

DETAILS

Library Improvements

Standardized Libraries

Previously, My Library lacked some features available in other libraries. Now, libraries are standardized so that all libraries have all the same features. That simplifies things!

New Library Layout

The new Library layout wastes less space since it fills more of the page. It’s also less boxy, with a more modern, continuous layout. It also looks and feels more like a robust desktop application. Nice!

Projects → Libraries

The library (vs. project) is once again the central organizing concept. So, there’s no longer a Projects Tab at the top. The contents of that tab have been absorbed into the new Libraries Tab, which now encompasses all components of a project.

 

Project Dashboard → Library Tabs

The always visible Library Tabs now provide easy access to the various components of a project (e.g. Bibliography, Legend, Papers) that were previously displayed as panels in the previous (now defunct) Project Dashboard. The old Collaborators Panel is now the Collaborators Tab under Library Settings. Library Settings are accessible via the new gear icon to the right of the library name. Use this to invite/add collaborators to your library.

 

Projects Page → Libraries List

The Libraries Nub to the left of the library name can be toggled to show/hide the Libraries List, which serves the same purpose as the previous (now defunct) Projects Page. The Libraries List displays all of your libraries, including libraries you own and shared with others as well as libraries others have shared with you. The previous concept of a Project Library is now just a library in this Libraries List. So now, just treat, designate and think of each such library as a separate project.

You can now easily move a source (e.g. article) from the library you’re currently viewing to another one simply by dragging and dropping it to that destination library’s name in the Libraries List. So easy!

 

Class Library Changes

Since this Libraries List is comprehensive, we’ve done away with the concept of a separate/special Class Library, which previously appeared in the Libraries Tab (now gone) under the top-level Classroom Tab. A Class Library was autogenerated every time you created a class. Instead, now, you can just add a class to any library and it becomes a class library. Magic!

Like before, you can still manage the permissions that a class has for a library.

 

Annotations List

A new Annotations List feature allows you to see all annotations for a selected source (e.g. article) in the library. Click the arrow at the right end of a source in the Sources Tab of a library to browse its annotations. That slides out the Annotations List from the right, which lists the annotations for that source. From there, you can share an annotation, manage its tags, view it in full form in the Library and open the source (e.g. article) to view the annotation in its original context.

 

New Features

Annotation Tagging

You can now tag specific annotations (e.g. highlighted evidence and comments), not just sources (e.g. articles). When you’ve annotated a source (e.g. a webpage or PDF), you can tag the annotations right then and there. For highlights, underlines and other text style annotations, click on the annotation to view its Annotation Context Menu and then click the tag icon in the Menu. For comments, just click the tag icon shown below the timestamp in the title area of the comment.

 

This brings up the Annotation Tags Window, which you can use to add and remove tags for the selected annotation.

Tags applied to annotations roll up to the encompassing source. So, in the example shown here, where the tag Report, is added to the pink highlight in the article titled, ‘Millions missing out’: aid fails…, viewing the article in the Library later shows the same tag applied to the article as a whole.

 

Annotations Tab

Under the new Annotations Tab in the Library, you can view, browse, full-text search, tag and filter all of your annotations across all sources in your library. This gives you more granularity in organizing your information… at the evidence and comment (i.e. annotation) level and not just at the article (i.e. source) level.

 

Smart Outline

Our new Smart Outline appears under the Outline Tab in the Library. Here, your sources and annotations are accessible via the Library Sidebar on the right hand side. Click on the arrow at the right edge of a source to dig a level deeper and browse its annotations. Alternatively, use the search field to search the library for relevant annotations.

In either case, once annotations are visible in the Library Sidebar, you can drag them leftward and drop them into the body of the outline. Each added item’s corresponding source is automagically added to your bibliography and the corresponding inline parenthetical citation is shown below the item in the outline (not illustrated here).

Each added item is automatically numbered according to its location in the outline hierarchy. Hovering over any item displays icons to the left allowing you to delete the item, add a subsequent item at the same level, indent/outdent the item or drag it to another location in the outline. If you drag it, you’ll see a preview of its new number as it’s being dragged. Whether you indent, outdent or drag and drop an item, its number in the outline is automatically updated. Sweet!

You can edit/tweak the item’s text as needed. You can also just type your own thoughts into the field for an item in the outline. The outline can later be copied and pasted into a document.

So that’s the new Scrible!  You can always refer to the video above to see the changes and new features in action. We’ll be updating our training and support materials to reflect them.  If you like the new stuff or if you stumble upon any problems or have any questions, please let us know!  We’re always here to help!

– The Scrible Team

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Scrible at MSLA 2018 Conference

Our Scrible Team was thrilled to attend and sponsor the Massachusetts School Library Association (MSLA) 2018 Conference in Worcester, Massachusetts! MSLA works to ensure that every school has a library program that’s integrated across grades and subjects and has a significant, measurable impact on student success. Thanks and congrats to MSLA and the Conference planners for hosting an amazing event that focused on the needs of Massachusetts school libraries and media specialists.

Sponsorship
We were a Silver Sponsor because school librarians are our peops and we’re excited to work with Bay State media specialists!

Mass Librarians
Our CEO, Victor, and Teaching Specialist, Dacey, tag-teamed a booth to demo key features of the Scrible Edu platform. We had meaningful conversations and everyone loved Scrible. It was great to see familiar faces and meet new librarians. We gathered feedback on new features for media specialists and learned how school libraries operate in Massachusetts. We’re looking forward to working with the many folks we met at the Conference!
 

Speakers and Awardees
Day 1 of the Conference concluded with a dinner, awards ceremony and closing keynote by Jennifer​ ​Casa-Todd​ titled Empowering​ ​Students​ To​ Be​ ​Digital​ ​Leaders. The Awards were an opportunity for the Bay State’s school library community to recognize and celebrate its notable advocates, leaders and innovative and impactful librarians. Our CEO was happy to meet Service Awardee Greg Pronevitz, an experienced and widely respected advocate for Massachusetts libraries, and catch up with Opening Keynote Speaker Tom Murray, Director of Innovation for Future Ready Schools.
  

Library, Technology and Media… OH MY!!  We had an awesome time at MSLA and look forward to working with Massachusetts librarians to support research, writing, media literacy and technology skills across the Bay State!

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