Purple Mash Shared Folders Welcome to the new version of the Purple Mash online documents! With this version teachers can easily access pupil s individual work folders. Teachers can also create shared folders which all teachers and pupils can save to. Example of viewing files in a shared folder: Example of opening work from a shared folder:
Note: Currently these new features are only available to schools that login to Purple Mash using 2Lasso. Schools that login through their Learning Platform using methods such as Shibboleth will not be able to access it. Getting Started: 1. Log in to Purple Mash as administrator. 2. Choose teachers 3. Choose which pupils have access to the shared folders 1. Log in to Purple Mash as administrator. Go to www.purplemash.com and login as administrator. Your admin login usually starts with admin or teacher. Initially, only your admin login will have the new features enabled, however from the admin login you can enable the new features for teachers and pupils. 2. Choose teachers Once logged in as administrator, click the the Online Docs tab. Once this has loaded, click the purple spanner button near the top right The settings window will pop up. This window is only accessible to the administrator. Click the 2 nd tab which is labelled choose teachers. This will initially display a list of all the 2lasso logins you have created on the left, treating them all as pupils (if you haven t created any logins yet, you can do so by going to www.purplemash.com/2lasso) From this list, you can select any login and click the > button to assign that login as a teacher. Teachers can do a number of things which pupils cannot do, such as setting up shared folders (see below for a full list.) To speed things up, you can select multiple users at the same time and assign them to be teachers as follows: Select a user. Now hold down SHIFT and click a 2 nd user to select all users between them (OR: select a user. Now hold down CTRL and click to select a 2 nd user as well. Repeat to continue selecting more users. Hold down CTRL and click an already selected user to unselect.) 3. Choose which pupils have access to the shared folders Still in the settings window, click on the 1 st tab to choose which pupils get access to the shared folders. By default, no pupils get access to the shared folders. This allows you to introduce the shared folders to groups of pupils as you see fit. You may also choose to leave
the younger pupils to not have access to the shared folders; in this case when they use a program such as 2Paint, they will only get the option to open or save from their My Work area. Teachers automatically get access to shared folders you don t have to switch them on using this tab. You can select multiple users here in the same way as above. (Note: The third tab in the settings window, entitled teacher settings, allows you to change the following option: When a teacher opens a file from the online docs area, it opens in a new browser window rather than the current window. This can be useful when the teacher intends to view many different work files from different pupils (When a pupil opens a file, it opens in the same browser window.) If your school has security settings which prevent new browser windows from popping up, you may experience problems when trying to open files when logged in as a teacher. If so, you can switch off this feature on this 3 rd tab.) Teacher features This section provides information on the features only available to teachers (and the administrator) 1. Setting up shared folders 2. Accessing pupil s individual work folders 3. Adding comments 4. Other things teachers can do 1. Setting up shared folders - Login as a teacher and go to the online docs tab. - To create a new shared folder simply click New Folder or New Subfolder You can only have 2 levels of folders. Typically the first level of folders could be for different classes, and the subfolders could be based on topics or projects within a particular class however these are just suggestions and you can organise the folders as best suits you (note that even if you name folders according to different classes, any pupil will still be able to save to any folder). Once you have created a shared folder, the next time you launch any Purple Mash program (such as 2Paint), when you click open or save you will get an option to choose that shared folder as the target location. Teachers can also delete and rename shared folders 2. Accessing pupil s individual work folders Teachers have the ability to access the individual work folders for each pupil. Once you re logged in as a teacher, go to the online docs tab. On the left, under the My Work folder you will see a Pupils folder. My Work is your individual save folder - each teacher and pupil has one. Pupils is a folder which contains all the individual work folders for all pupils at your school. This enables teachers to easily access pupil s saved work. The Pupils folder is only shown to teachers, so pupils cannot access each other s individual work folders. Since the Pupils folder can potentially contain hundreds of individual work folders, you can use the following shortcut to save having to scroll them all:
- Click on the Pupils folder. There may be a slight delay while the pupil folders load up. - Notice that the search box title will have changed from search to pupil. - You can now search for a pupil s name by simply typing in the search box. As you type, the pupil folder list will automatically update to show only those pupil names that match what you have typed. - Some schools have chosen to create pupil login names which contain the year group as part of the login name, eg Daniel05 where 05 represents the year the pupil started at the school. The advantage of doing this is that you can then type 05 in the pupil filter and only the pupils in that year group will be displayed. 3. Adding Comments Teachers can add a comment to any piece of saved work. Pupil s can then view these comments. Pupils can only view comments made for their own saved work. The first line of the comment will be displayed on screen in blue and you can move the mouse on top of it to get a pop-up display of the full comment. If you re logged in as a teacher and are viewing your own My Work folder, the Add Comment button will not appear. 4. Other things teachers can do - Move, delete or rename any file (pupils can only move or delete their own work) - Open files in a new browser window (useful when viewing many pupil s files) - Select multiple files in list view (using the same method as described above for selecting multiple teachers in the Settings window), and open / move / delete them. Using the Shared Folders This section goes into more detail about some of the new features available to both teachers and pupils. 1. Switching between Picture and List view 2. Search 3. Recent Work 4. Permissions 1. Switching between Picture and List view You can switch between picture and list view using these 2 buttons. From either view you can - open a file - drag a file to a different folder - drag a file to the bin (bottom right) In List view you can also - Click on a column to sort by that column - Rename a file
List view works slightly differently to picture view. In picture view you can open a file by clicking on it once. In list view if you click on file this will select the file rather than open it. Now that the file is selected, you can rename/move/delete it. To open the file in list view you need to doubleclick it. 2. Search You can search for files in the current folder by typing in the search box. You can search based on file name, creator name, file type, and date last modified. As you type, the list of files shown will automatically be filtered based on what you have typed. 3. Recent Work The recent work button (on the top left) helps you find files you have recently been working on. From here, you can view the folder location of these files and also launch them directly. You cannot move or delete files from this section to do so, you need to go to the folder in which the file itself is located. 4. Permissions Once a file has been saved to a shared folder, it becomes visible to all teachers and pupils who have access to the shared folders. Teachers and pupils will then be able to open and view the file. They will also be able to modify the work and resave it, although they will need to save it as a file with a different name; only the original author has permission to save over the original file. If you open someone else s file and edit and resave it as a different file, a record is still kept of the name of the original author. 2Simple Software 020 8203 1781 www.2simple.com info@2simple.com