New Features on Scran

A range of  changes has been released on the Scran system to improve your user experience.

Home Access for Scottish Teachers 

Scottish Local Authority teachers now have full free access to Scran at home for preparation. Click for further details or how to sign up.

Pathfinders

Pathfinder Types are now indicated in the Pathfinder Hierarchy when you browse.  This lets you see instantly those Pathfinders that contain only images, images and narrative, and images, narrative and additional learning resources.

My Stuff

Stuff has been improved with a drop down menu which allows you to move between personal, institutional and network stuff.

Network Stuff is a new addition which allows groups of institutions to set up a shareable Subject Network.  Anything dropped into this can be seen by any other member of the network and copied down to their own institutional or personal stuff.

Remember that the copy function in Stuff copies to any other user - you just have to know the username and put this in the copy to field.

Library Stuff users sometimes do not have an email but that's no reason not to allow readers in the library to store their stuff.  So a user can set up their own personal stuff without an email address. Other users can change their email address in their Stuff profile.

Geographical Search

Geo-Search has been fully switched on in Geographical search. That means you can define a geographical search area and the system will search for materials from that area. Note that about half the total records have been geo-tagged.

Searching

Search fields (including simple, advanced and fielded searches) now all work in a "Google" compliant way. So you can use AND, NOT or + and - just as you do in Google. 

Search Result options are now tidied up in a drop down menu and include toggling between alphabetical and relevance listings.

Video and Audio Access 

The Movie and Audio links and players have been tidied up so that you can access Windows Media players or Quicktime players directly.

Miscellaneous

The Zoom View interface has been tidied up.

Converting Pathfinders to Websites now carries across the educational metadata in a form that should be readable by external VLEs, electronic whiteboards etc.

Starters have been tidied up to match the general Scran interface.  These are simple progression sequences with a storyline for early years, special and primary.

News has been redesigned with sector newsletters moved to a separate archive.
 
Free site searches now allow users to find other resources from the same contributors.