My Big Campus

My Big Campus is a web-based social learning network developed for K-12 school districts. Designed with built-in safety features, the service provides a monitored and secure means of providing social media tools in classrooms.

Overview

The platform has a Facebook-like user interface, making it recognizable to students and teachers. This familiarity aids in classroom use and encourages collaboration. My Big Campus is specifically designed for K12 education and includes digital classroom tools allowing educators to create and post assignments, build calendars, and utilize assessment tools for quizzes and polls. Students use My Big Campus to collaborate, share resources, and manage their class schedule and assignments.

The My Big Campus Educational Resource Library is a collection of online resources shared among My Big Campus users. The resource library is pre-embedded with educational videos, wikis, documents, and websites; and teachers can add to the library as they come across educational resources online. Educational videos on YouTube can also be entered in the resource library, but the additional links and peripheral images and ads commonly found with YouTube videos are stripped away.

My Big Campus also has a mobile device app for iOS and Android.

Features

Features included in the application are:

Educational Resource Library
YouTube videos stripped of peripheral content
Assignments (view, complete, submit)
Threaded discussions
File storage in the cloud
File uploads with virus scanning
Image uploads with skin-tone analysis
Messaging system
Calendars with flexible events
CIPA-compliant filtering
Authenticated user access
Profanity interception
Quick Links to top content

In its latest version 3.0 users have the ability to stash bundles that are made and assigned by the teacher. To "stash" is to store on a device for offline viewer.

Bundles

My Big Campus Bundles is a feature developed to allow teachers to create and share self-contained, standards-based lessons. To create a bundle teachers can collect resources from the Educational Resource Library, their own collections, or collections from other teachers, and store them in one location within My Big Campus. Bundles are titled and categorized by its creator in the Bundle Exchange according to topic. Bundles can be rated and commented on for sharing with other educators in the same school or the entire My Big Campus community. Bundles are also incorporated with ISTE NETS Tech Standards to help teachers prepare students for a digital future.

My Big Campus Mobile App

My Big Campus is available as an iOS and Android application for mobile devices, such as iPads, Android tablets, smart phones & laptops. The app is used to supplement and support lessons and activities taught in the classroom setting. Some of the platform features included in the app are:

Calendar (used for posting assignments, tests, due dates, reminders and events)
Schoolwork (posting, receiving & grading assignments)
Educational Resource Library (add and retrieve resources)
Group discussions
Edutalk (communication tool for educators to share information and resources in a Twitter-like format stream)<

Because of security issues involved with online discussions outside the classroom, educators have stirred away from using social networking sites for collaboration, such as Facebook. In the My Big Campus app group discussions are monitored for profanity and not open to the public. <

History

The resource was created by LightSpeed Systems' developers in 2009. The beta version was released in November 2009 with current Lightspeed Systems' customers. The official version was released in February 2010. In July 2011, it was made available to teachers and students everywhere.