Pond is a constantly evolving environment responding to the changing needs of teachers. Our agile approach to ongoing development means Pond users are now familiar with the regular feature releases and updates.

We’ve had several new feature releases and updates in the last couple of weeks; most noticeably @mentions, new email notifications, the introduction of a rich text editor, and we’ve also made a move towards embracing a “more public Pond”.

@mentions

Pond has always encouraged conversations about resources and ideas, but now Pond users can invite fellow users to check out a resource they think they’ll like, or invite them to join a conversation taking place in Pond, simply by mentioning them in a comment.

Email notification digests

Thanks to the new and improved email notifications, when someone is mentioned by a fellow Pondie, they’ll get notified in Pond – and via email. Using the notifications system that keeps Pond users up-to-date, the latest activity is now also grouped and sent as an email update. Not all users visit Pond every day, but they want to know when good things are happening that they’re interested or involved in, and email notifications are a great way to always be in the loop! Users can customise their settings to reflect what things they want to be emailed about.

A more public Pond

Continuing with the theme of Pond becoming more accessible to more people in the education community, resources added to Pond are now publicly visible by default, making sharing resources with the wider education community super easy! Those users wanting to limit access can still do so by choosing to make a resource visible to other signed in Pondies only, and this is a quick and easy selection at the time of adding it to the catalogue.

Editing and formatting contributions made easier!

And one of my personal favourites – when adding a resource that has supporting notes and/or explanations, Pond now has a rich text editor that lets users format their notes any way they like, without needing to know basic short code. Think headings and bullets, as well as your typical bold and italics to make things really clear, plus the ability to simply add hyperlinks to other content. This will be a big time saver for many we think!

There’s always more coming and our next update is never far away. Be sure to check out Pond for yourself to see what’s new! And if you love what you’re seeing be sure to let us know!