Group space home page elements

Teachers and group space admins, when given permission to customize their home pages, can use a variety of elements such as calendar, resources, YouTube, Flick, discussions, and blogs to deliver content as soon as a student or parent reaches the group space. 

This will pop open a new window that you can use to select the layout of the Home page, as well as which elements will be displayed. Available elements are shown at the top of the window.

Some elements can be added to the Home page more than once. These elements have a number on the right-hand side of their label at the top of the screen. The number indicates how many copies of that element remain to be placed on the Home screen.

Drag-and-drop an element from the top of the screen down to a column. The dropdown menu at the bottom of the window lets teachers select a single-column, two-column or three-column layout. Elements can be moved up or down a column as desired. Teachers using an iPad or other touchscreen device can tap to move elements rather than click-and-drag.

Available elements

• Activity Stream: Displays a copy of the Activity Stream for this group, including messages from the group admin and group members, as well as events such as new calendar items, new assignments, new resources, and so on. Group admins can hover over an Activity Stream update and click the red "X" icon to delete it.

• Blog: This element allows you to pull in your blog content from the "Blog" tab on the group space.

• Bulletins: Shows the three most recent Bulletins. Group admins can click a "New Bulletin" link directly from the element to post new content or navigate to the Bulletin tab. Users can click the Bulletins button or click "All bulletins" from the element to navigate to that page.

• Calendar: Upcoming class events are displayed, along with a link to pop open the full Calendar. A "Manage Calendar" link lets admins jump directly to the calendar, as well.

• Content: The content element is a blank slate. Editing this element will bring up an empty space that admins can fill with any content they want to post. The full popup editor is available so that rich HTML content can be added. If this element is included on a Home page but is not filled out with content, it will remain invisible to group members. Once something is added to a content element, it becomes visible. Up to six content elements can be added to a Home page.

• Discussions: This element allows you to pull in your discussions content from the "Discussions" tab on the group space.

• Embed: The Embed element allows admins to include content from other sites. Virtually every social media, video-sharing or other content site has some kind of "embed codes" function. The Embed element includes shortcut links to many popular content sites - click on an icon to jump directly to that site. Whenever possible, the link will take users to that site's embedding instructions.
  
  Admins can copy the embed code from another site, click "Settings" on the element, and paste the provided code directly into the Embed element. Forms in Forms Manager also have embed codes, so the Embed element could be a great tool to include a survey or other form on a group page.

• Flickr: The Flickr element accepts the URL of a Flickr stream feed and displays the photos saved there. Users can also set the number of photos to be shown and whether or not the photo titles appear.

• Media: Use the Media element to share content from the group's Media folder. See the Media group space section for more details about using Multimedia Manager within groups.

• Overview: The Overview element is unique in that it cannot be dropped into a column; it will only appear as a header at the top of the home page, spanning across all of the other columns. Removing the Overview element in the Customize window will not move it back up to the list of elements, but will just gray it out. The Overview element's content can be edited by clicking on the pencil icon along its right-hand edge.

• Resources: Resources are files, links or other documents that are meant to be shared among group members. Admins can post content to the Resources group space section and display them on the Home page using this element. The Resources element shows those resource folders that are saved at the top level of the Resources section – nested folders and resources within folders are not displayed.

• RSS: RSS feeds are a way for one website's content to appear on another site. Group admins can copy the RSS feed URL from another site or page, and paste it into this element. Any time the other site publishes new content, that content will appear on the group home page.

• Vimeo: Use this element to include videos posted to Vimeo.com on the group home page.

• Youtube: This element allows YouTube.com videos to be embedded on the group space.