A Deep Dive Into Our PREMIUM Product Updates

We listened to your feedback and have designed a more intuitive way to manage your assignments and student submissions. We’ve heard questions such as…

• How can I see all of my assignments for a specific class? Or all of my active assignments?
• How challenging are the stories? Will my students be able to understand them?
• Can I see interactive transcripts for all the current events?
• Why are some stories streamed and others link off to other sites?
• Can I use Listenwise with Google Classroom?
• What if I want students to listen to a story from their own tablets without submitting an assignment?

We are very excited to share this new functionality, which now provides a lot more options for using Listenwise in the classroom. Log in now to check out the new functionality.

Easier management of assignments:

• Dashboard update: Now the left dashboard column is your quick view of active assignments. You can quickly get into the work of reviewing submissions.
• The biggest change for users is the redesigned workflow for assignments and classes for maximum ease-of-use:
  • Classes page: This is now your go to place for your student submissions and class-by-class information, not just class lists and enrollment.
    • See your assignments organized by class, with an easy way see and act on everything related to that class.
    • You still go here to create a new class or check class rosters. Just click the class name to get the list of students.
  • Assignments page: This is now your reusable content library, with all the assignments you have created alphabetically organized by title. (To manage active assignments, you now go to the Classes page.)
    • You can review previous assignments, make adjustments, and assign to new classes or students.

New instructional resources

• Language Challenge levels – As you are searching the Listenwise collections, you will notice a new symbol (kind of like cell phone service bars), indicating a low, medium, or high Language Challenge. This will help you gauge if the story is appropriate for your students’ listening comprehension skills.
• Current events with streaming audio – No more linking off to other sites to get our current events. For new current events this school year, you’ll be able to stream the stories directly on our site, and they’ll come with transcripts and slower audio for our PREMIUM users.
• Great new lessons – We’ve added many new lessons to our collections! Check out a few of our favorites:
  • Life in Russia under President Vladimir Putin
  • Slaves and the American Revolution
  • Motivation for Writing ‘A Raisin in the Sun’

More flexibility for student access:

• Student Listening Links!  Sometimes you just want a quick way to give students access to a great podcast. Maybe you’re combining it into an assignment with other tools and resources or don’t need students to submit any online work. For those times that you aren’t creating a full Listenwise assignment, you can now use Listening Links. Copy the link to share with students directly or use our share to Google Classroom feature. Your students will see the audio player and have access to the interactive transcript and slower audio option, while listening to the story on their own device. It’s a streamlined student view without the other learning resources or activities of our full blown assignments. (After clicking the link, students will simply login in order to see the interactive transcripts or listen to the slower version.)
• Learning Management System integration – We now offer options for Premium schools to include Listenwise as a tool in their LMS (e.g. Schoology) and use their LMS credentials for single sign on. Teachers can also share assignments or listening links to their own Google Classroom.

As you start to think about what you will be teaching this fall, make sure to search our large database of lessons, read this blog about ideas you can use to get started with Listenwise, or these teaching strategies to support your instruction!

We love trying new things and hearing your feedback to continuously make Listenwise the best it can be.  Please share your input with us! We want to continue to provide a useful product for teaching and learning that supports your students’ needs.

We hope you enjoy these new features!