Curriculum builder

Basic instructions for building curriculum in AMP Workshops and getting it in front of teachers. The builder is new; the last section says what to do where it is rough.

What you are building

• A lesson belongs to one curriculum. You create the curriculum first.
• A day points at a lesson; it does not contain it. The same lesson can appear on several days. Edit the lesson once and every day that uses it sees the change once you publish.

Where things live

Sign in with a staff account. The sidebar has a Curriculum group with two entries:

• Curricula is the list of curricula. Click one to open it. Inside a curriculum, click a segment to open its day planner.
• Lessons is the lesson library. Click a lesson to open its documentation editor.

Everything else you need is reached by clicking rows inside those two pages.

1. Create a curriculum

1. Sidebar → Curricula.
2. Press New curriculum. A panel opens in place.
3. Type a Name and press Create.
4. You land on the new curriculum’s page.

Only a name is required. The curriculum’s web address is minted from the first name you type and never changes, so renaming later will not break links.

On the curriculum page

• Rename sits next to the title. Edit Curriculum name, then Save.
• New segment starts a segment. See section 2.
• Who is running this lists teachers assigned to this curriculum and how far along they are: Not begun / Behind / On track / Finished. Remind N teachers emails everyone who is behind. Assignments themselves are made on the Team page, not here.
• Who can edit this: by default every organizer can edit. Press ＋ Name to restrict editing to specific people. Admins can always edit. Removing the last named person opens it back up to everyone.
• Where it is offered: the states or districts where a teacher can pick this curriculum up on their own. Choose a state under Add a state, optionally narrow to one district, press Add. Or press Offer everywhere. If the list is empty the page says Offered nowhere: only teachers you assign directly can use it.
• Front page: tick Show this on the public landing page to feature it, write the blurb under What it says on the front page (240 characters max), press Save front page.

2. Add segments and plan the days

1. On the curriculum page, press New segment, type a Name, Create.
2. You land in the day planner. The segment starts with one empty day.

The planner has two panels.

Days (left)

• One row per day. Use ↑ ↓ to reorder and ✕ to remove a day.
• + Add day adds a day at the end. Days are always renumbered 1, 2, 3… for you.

Day N (right), for the day you selected

• Title: what happens this day.
• Objectives — one per line.
• Teacher notes.
• What the class does: the items for the day. Add one with + lesson, + activity, + survey, + assessment, + prep. Every item gets a title and a length in minutes (defaults to 15).
  • A lesson item has a Which lesson dropdown listing every lesson in the library. Create the lesson first (section 3) if it is not there yet.
  • A survey item asks you to Paste the survey’s address and press Attach. It checks the link and shows the survey’s name and question count. Change swaps it for another.
  • ↑ ↓ ✕ reorder or remove items within the day.

Save draft saves the whole plan. It reads Saved when there is nothing new to save. Drafts can be as rough as you like: empty days, untitled items, all fine.

Publish checks the plan first. To publish, every day needs a title and at least one item, every item needs a title, every lesson item needs a lesson picked, and every survey item needs a survey attached. If anything is missing you see Not ready to publish — N to fix with the list, and nothing is sent. When it passes you see Published as version N, and the header switches from NEVER PUBLISHED to PUBLISHED vN.

3. Create a lesson

1. Sidebar → Lessons.
2. Press New lesson, type a Name. If you have more than one curriculum a Curriculum dropdown appears; pick which one this lesson belongs to.
3. Press Create. You land in the lesson’s documentation editor.

If New lesson is not there, you have no curricula yet. Go back to section 1.

The documentation editor

What the teacher reads (left):

• ＋ Attach a document: handouts and readings the teacher gets before class. Accepts .pdf, .doc, .docx, .txt, .md, .png, .jpg, .jpeg, up to 20 MB each. Save the lesson once before attaching.
• Title.
• Objectives, Materials, Activities, Assessment, Differentiation, Vocabulary: each is a box where you type one item per line.
• Teacher notes — what to say, what to watch for.

About this lesson (right): Grade levels, Subject, Minutes of class time, Prep time in minutes, Standards.

Save draft and Publish work exactly as in the day planner. A lesson only needs a title to publish. A lesson with documentation and no slides is a complete lesson. The editor says so itself: “a field walk has plenty to prepare and nothing to project.”

4. Import a PowerPoint deck

The slides a class watches come from a PowerPoint file. You do not build slides in the app; you import them.

1. At the bottom of the documentation editor, under The lesson the room watches, choose a file with Import a PowerPoint (or Replace the deck if one is already attached). Accepts .pptx and .ppsx.
2. Wait while it reads: Reading the deck and storing its images…
3. On success you see a summary like Imported — 7 slides · 3 videos linked · 9 images · 4 working controls · about 3 min unattended.
4. If part of the deck could not come through, a panel titled Some of this deck did not come through lists what was skipped.

Getting a deck that imports cleanly

• Video must be a Vimeo link on the slide. An embedded video file or a YouTube link looks the same in PowerPoint and cannot be brought across. Upload the video to Vimeo and put the Vimeo link on the slide.
• Text keeps its size, color, bold and alignment, but one style per text box. If a box mixes styles, the first one wins.
• Slide transitions and timings drive the fades and the running clock in the player, so set them in PowerPoint if you want the deck to run unattended.

Checking what was imported

Once a deck is attached the editor shows A timed lesson is attached — N scenes, N assets with a link See what is in it →. That opens the deck inspector:

• Scenes rail on the left. Click a number to view that scene.
• The scene renders in the middle, with a Timeline underneath showing when each element fades in.
• Click an element to see its details on the right: type, enter, at, position and size.

The inspector is read-only on purpose. To change anything, fix the PowerPoint and import it again with Replace the deck. That way the deck in the app always matches the file you have.

5. Publish, and what a teacher sees

Publishing is per lesson and per segment, and each publish creates a numbered version.

• Publishing a lesson puts it under Ready to teach on every teacher’s home page, with a prep page (documentation, attachments) and a deliver page (the deck). Teachers always see the latest published version, never your draft, so you can keep editing without disturbing them.
• Publishing a segment makes its day plan the teacher’s schedule and updates the progress shown under Who is running this.

On the Curricula list each curriculum shows where it stands: No lessons, Draft (lessons exist, none published), In progress (some published), or Ready (all published). Segment rows show Ready or N to fix using the same checks as the Publish button.

6. A typical first build, start to finish

1. Curricula → New curriculum → name it.
2. New segment → name it → Save draft. Add the days you know about.
3. Lessons → New lesson for each lesson → fill in the documentation → Import a PowerPoint → Save draft → Publish.
4. Back in the segment’s day planner: on each day, + lesson, pick the lesson under Which lesson, set the minutes → Save draft → Publish.
5. On the curriculum page, set Where it is offered (or assign teachers on the Team page), and tick Show this on the public landing page if it should be visible there.

When something goes wrong

The builder is new and may have bugs. If it misbehaves:

• A save fails saying someone else saved. Two people edited the same thing. Reload the page to get their version, then make your change again. Yours was not merged, so keep a copy of anything long.
• An import fails with Could not read that deck. Open the file in PowerPoint, use Save As to write a fresh .pptx, and try again. If it still fails, send the file to Cameron.
• A survey shows No hubId — re-attach by pasting the address. The link was attached before a field it needs existed. Press Change, paste the survey address again, Attach.
• A page is blank or shows an error box. Reload once. If it happens again, note the page address and what you clicked just before, and send that to Cameron.

When reporting anything, the three things that help most are: the page address, what you pressed, and the exact wording of any message on screen.