We send the 1.0 version of Contribute Cloud live!

A lot of tweaks and bug fixes during this time. We were updating the system on a weekly basis

Implemented some pretty cool video controls that are for both embedded videos as well as YouTube. Check out the full screen video switching; well worth a look.

Fixed a login but on Firefox, how we missed this one I don’t know! All sorted now.

Video Streaming implementation has been improved too.

Finalized the CSS for the video controls – they are working really nicely now. Check them out!

 

Fixed a canvas size issue that would mean a student had a larger canvas than the teacher. The teacher is now able to Pan up to see anything under the screen.

Google Docs Integration is now Complete. You can now import from Google Docs, Slides and Sheets into Contribute Cloud.

 

Well, we’re finally here with the 1.1 release of Contribute Cloud! Yay! We’ve made some quite major updates to this release as well as fixing some bugs and we think you are going to love it.

Feature Updates

Local File Access – You are now able to access your local files if you are not a cloud storage user.

Image Gallery – we’ve a new live search image gallery so you can search and add images into your workbooks. There are over 1.5m searchable images in the gallery. This is a two-way process so both the presenter and the participants can send images backwards and forwards on the collaborative work area.

Upload Images – if you want to include an image from your own machine in a workbook you can do that in presentation mode. Using a phone or a tablet, you can also access the camera and your photo library too.

Group Chat – Group chat allows you to send messages and links to all your participants. Sharing our a web link has never been so easy to do! We think you are going to love this feature.

Layers – we’ve added layers for objects, annotations, shapes and images so you can send them all to the back or bring them to the front.

Save to iPad and iPhone – we are now able to save our lessons/presentations on iPhone and iPad.

We’ve added the Zoom In, Out and Pan features to the participants view

New Cover Page for PDF Downloads

New Categories for Google Docs, Sheets and Slide

New Slide Previews for Google Drive

Progress and loading bar added to the top of the page so you can see when the page is loading.

Bug Fixes

Eraser in participant mode has been fixed

Arrow has been fixed in participant mode

One page document views has been fixed. This was an issue where single page documents would not show.

Exit Full Screen for the participant has been fixed

Changing colors for some shapes has been fixed

Scrolling on the notifications Toolbar for multiple users

Smaller notifications have been added so that more display on the screen

Save to PDF on iPhone and iPad now opens in a new window so that it can be physically saved to your Cloud Storage or into the Files folder.

Varios CSS issues

Quite a substantial update to the system.

Contribute Cast

We have now added the ability to cast your screen up to the front of class LED. Furthermore, it is not just the browser that is being cast, your whole screen is cast up to the LED.

Contribute Video

Contribute Video gives the teacher or presenter the ability to broadcast their audio and video over the cloud to remote participants. This opens up remote presentations and distance learning opportunities with the software.

New UI for Contribute Cloud

We’ve launched our new UI for Contribute Cloud so our users have plenty of information about the product all in the same location.

Some cool new features have been added in this release. Let’s take a look at the changes.

User Interface – firstly, we have moved the Cast and the Chat windows into the notifications toolbar. Makes much more sense to have it here and takes up less space on the page.

 

Buttons

You are now able to select a button and then press on it again so that it de-selects that particular tool and defaults back to the cursor. This feature is available for all the buttons in Contribute Cloud.

Self Paced Mode and Forced Sync

We are now able to offer the students a self-paced option to browse through the slides, forwards and backwards at their own pace. If the teacher wants to have them look at what they are doing, they are able to press the Sync button and all participants will be brought back to the same screen as the teacher.

The student is able to see if they are not in sync with the teacher as their sync button will be red if they are not viewing the same screen as the teacher.

 

Control what students are able to see

We have added the ability to customise the view of the students. What this means is that the teacher can choose whether the students are in self paced mode or not.

 

Contribute Cast Extension Check

We’ve added a check when a student or participant joins a contribute cloud session to see if they have installed the plugin that we use for casting. If they have not, they are prompted to do so.

 

Pause Screen

Teachers are not able to pause the screens for students removing all the content and the tools. This is a way of stopping the students on their devices so they can listen to verbal instructions for example.

 

Where did that month go! We’ve been busy with Contribute Cloud over the last few weeks and have some new cool features added to the software.

Student Save

Students are now able to save locally the work that they have done on a Contribute Cloud slide. For example, if a teacher delivered a workbook for them to complete, they can complete it and then save what they have done to their local machine. From the bottom of the page, simply click the save icon.

 

The screenshot is saved to your default download directory.

Lesson Recording for Teachers / Presenters

Teachers and presenters are now able to record their lessons to video. This will capture what is being shown on the screen so even if you leave your browser, you are able to record your screen. If you have a microphone connected, you can also record your voice. As soon as you click finish, the video is downloaded to you default download location in WEBM format. We chose this format as it is the smallest video size. This is the record icon and it turns red when recording.

 

Lesson / Presentation Creation – Add All

Creating our content is the most important thing for Contribute Cloud. What we have done is added a feature to speed this up. You can now select multiple files from your local or cloud storage drive, then with one click add them all to your workbooks. This makes things much quicker when you are creating large workbooks.

 

As with every build, we fix a few bugs here and there which we have done. Thanks for reading!

It’s coming into Peak Season now so we’re pushing hard with the software to drive it forward.

Multi-Cast – Boom!

This is one of the updates that we have been waiting for; the addition of Multi-Cast to Contribute Cloud. Multi-Cast enables you to show all your student’s or participant’s screens on the LED at the same time. They are tiled in a scrollable window so you can move up and down the screens. If you want to have one student show in full screen, just click the enlarge button. Close the window and you are back to seeing all your student’s or participant’s screens on your TouchIT LED – this is a seriously cool feature.

 

We’ve also bug fixed some microphone issues that we had with participants joining that would send positive feedback through the speakers. We have added buttons on the student’s/participant’s screens to turn the MIC and Screen Casting on and off – you can find this in the notifications bar.

New Contribute Cast Chrome Plugin and Smart Notebook Viewer

 

We’ve added a new plugin into the Chrome Store to allow you to Cast and Multi-Cast with Contribute Cloud. This has been written and launched by us, TouchIT Technologies.

Please make sure you update your plugin as you will not be able to cast without it.

 

Smart Notebook Viewer

In order to breach the gap between for those customers looking to move over to Contribute Cloud from Smart Technologies’ Notebook software, we’ve added the ability to view your Smart Notebook files directly in our software. They can be uploaded from your local computer, or your cloud drives just like you do with images, Pdfs etc now with Contribute Cloud.

We plan on adding more features to this viewer as we move forward.

Contribute Cloud 2.0 goes live in BETA, check, it out, a whole host of new features. Read more about them here – What’s New in Contribute Cloud 2.0?

Contribute Cloud 2.0 gets an update – check out the latest features in this update in this blog post – contribute-cloud-update-improved-annotation-selective-chat-and-file-transfer-plus-games-come-to-the-cloud

Just a small update this time to Cloud 2.0. This adds the ability to search your workbooks and also adds pagination for your workbooks too. This makes organising your files a little easier and finding the workbooks that you need is faster than ever!

Given the increase in the popularity of the software, we’ve added the licensing feature to protect our users. In order to continue to use the software after the 15 day trial, you will need to enter the serial number of your TouchIT LED.

We also fixed some minor bugs in the software – enjoy!

In addition to being able to use Dropbox and G Drive amongst others, we’ve incorporated our own Cloud Storage into Contribute Cloud. The reason that you may want to use this is that if your School or Organisation does not allow access to Cloud Storage or you want to separate access incase you stay logged in.

We now support multi-zoned games within Contribute Cloud. Gameification of learning.

Contribute Cloud Software Gets Collaborative Gamification Update and now has over 40 Educational Games included.

Minor update and some bug fixes. Introduction of multi-page document now populating in multiple slides instead of inside a document.

Implementation of a Drag and Drop pagination inside of the editor. Now you can drop your files directly into the Editor without having to go through your drives or cloud storage.

Implementation of folders for storing your Workbooks.

Introduction of Voting and Polling into Contribute Cloud.

Voting and Polling in Contribute Cloud enables you to create a set of questions in advance that you can pose to your audience. They are able to respond to these questions and the presenter or teacher can gather the results, display them in graphical form, share them with the participants/students as well as download them when they are done

Minor update and some bug fixes. New library used on the canvas so new implementation of some of the tools on the canvas.

Some general tidying up of the features.

New Drag and Drop File uploader has been added to the Editor.

A reorganization of the tool pallet and the way in which the sub menus for color and thickness have been changes following user feedback. There is a new sub menu on the tool pallet to minimize the amount of clicks needed to accomplish a color change.

Minor update and a bug fix for slide navigation that was not functioning when the slide preview was used for navigation rather than the forward and backward arrows.

New integration with Goole Drive has been added. This improved method of uploading files will be included with all methods of adding files. The major benefit is the multiple select of files from a Google Drive.

UI Update – just cleaning things up for the new year. Happy New Year all!

Minor update and some bug fixes. Changes included the handling of zoomed in events affecting annotations which were causing annotations to jump and not appear in the correct position.

V3 BETA goes live on the site. Version 3 will be launched officially in January 2022 however we are making available a BETA for use on the website. Check it out!

V3 goes live on the site.  Check it out!

A minor update to the software here. Some bug fixes and performance increases have been added. If you find any bugs or glitches, please do let us know. We’re always happy to get them rectified as soon as possible!