Over the past year Alaress has been extending Schoolbox, Learning Management System (LMS) and a Community Portal software to provide a mobile specific interface. We have been receiving feedback from our clients that iPhones, Androids and iPads are now being used in and around the classroom by teachers, students and parents alike. Schoolbox has always been functional on these devices but has not made the most of touch based interfaces. So we are releasing our new interface, Schoolbox Mobile specifically designed for on the go, mobile content delivery.
This interface will run as a webapp from your existing Schoolbox server in the users mobile browser. Your server will be configured to automatically detect mobile users and present the mobile interface rather than the traditional interface. Of course users will be able to swap back if required.
The Schoolbox mobile interface will be released as an additional module available separately from the core product. Schoolbox mobile will require you to be running at least version 12.5 (to be released in October).
We will announce further details including pricing and exact functionality at the user group meetup in September.
Behind the scenes Schoolbox mobile is leading the development of a new backend code base called Giza to bring our system up to date with the latest programming methodolgies and practices. This improvement behind the scenes will ensure our continued code quality and reduce feature development time.
Looking further into the future we have started a design project named Babylon to reimagine the Schoolbox interface. Learning from modern web applications like facebook, google+ and our mobile interface we will begin to bring changes to the look and feel of Schoolbox. You will start to see the changes for this coming through in 12.5 with much greater use of imagery and interface style. With major changes planned to the navigation being delivered in version 13.0. Stay tuned to our blog to see sneak peaks of the 12.5 interfaces that have been already designed.
