Read Live v2.1: Release Notes

Released September 2019

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What's New in This Release

Summary

• We've updated Read Live to use the most current web technologies for both the Student Module and the Staff Member Module. 
• We've improved the user interface and usability for the Staff Member Module. The Student Module interface is unchanged to reduce the learning curve for returning students.

Read Live version 2.1 includes the following changes:

• Read Live 2.1 removes all use of Adobe Flash technology. Removing Flash improves Read Live’s security rating and ensures Read Live will not be impacted as web browsers further reduce their support of Flash Player.
• We've freshened up the look of the Staff Member Module, devoting more of the screen to lists, so more students are visible at once.  
• Navigation in the Staff Member Module has been simplified: use the role-sensitive home page or the handy navigation menu to get where you need to go.
• The Staff Member Module is now more responsive to changes in screen resolution.
• We've simplified licensing: licenses no longer need to be distributed to staff members before being assigned to students; staff members can assign licenses at the same time they add the students.
• Roles have been simplified, making it easier to add new staff members. The little-used Data Entry role has been eliminated; other roles have been combined or renamed.  
• We have replaced the concept of homeroom teachers with the concept of homerooms. The benefit?  Now accounts do not have to enroll staff members just for the sake of grouping students into homerooms. Restricting access to just those staff members who are working in the program helps protect student privacy.
• For most reports and documents printed from Read Live, you no longer have to contend with popup blockers. 
• For the Students At-a-Glance report, you now have the option of downloading the report in CSV format, viewable in Microsoft Excel®.
• In this release, the feature enabling staff members to email parents and guardians from within the application has temporarily been disabled.  We will be working to restore this functionality in a future release. You may still download reports and certificates and email them from your own email application.
• Imports of student data now must be scheduled and will take place overnight, during off-peak hours. Moving intensive activities like importing to off-peak hours will improve system performance and stability for the entire community of Read Live users.
• We’ve fixed miscellaneous issues reported since the previous release.

System Requirements

Some of Read Live’s minimum software requirements have changed in this release.  The following are the new requirements for changed items. 

• Windows 10 and higher
• macOS 10.10 and higher
• Google Chrome versions 63 and higher
• Mozilla Firefox versions 60 and higher
• Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 11 and higher
• Apple Safari versions 10 and higher
• We've dropped the requirement for Adobe Flash

See the full list of current system requirements.

Read Naturally Live iPad App

If you are using the Read Naturally Live iPad app, you should upgrade to the latest version for the 2019-2020 school year. This version includes some minor fixes.

Responding if students lost work in the transition

Students' in-progress stories were reset as a part of transitioning to the new software.  We understand that students become frustrated if they have to redo work, and that makes it hard on their teachers. If you did not receive or act on our communications prior to the release, your students may have lost work on their current story when in-progress stories were reset. We sincerely regret that we have been the cause of any student frustration. If this happened to your students, here are some options to ease the pain: 

• If the student hadn't gotten too far along, you may suggest that the student work on other stories before returning to the reset story.
• If the student hadn’t gotten to the Pass step yet, change the student’s Story Options to turn off steps that the student had already completed (for example, the Key Words, Prediction, Cold Timing, and Read Along), and have the student re-do the same story. Turning off steps enables the student to move through the story more quickly. After the student completes the reset story, remember to turn all steps back on, or the student will not get the full benefit of the program.
• If the student had almost finished the story, you might want to have the student work on all the other stories in the level, and then manually advance the student to the next level without having to re-do the reset story.