JoySchooler + Schoology
Installed once. Yours everywhere.
A system administrator adds JoySchooler as an LTI 1.3 app for the whole organisation. From then on any teacher adds a lesson series to any course from inside Schoology, and every student opens it without a second sign-in.
- Who sets it up
- A Schoology System Admin, once, for the organisation.
- How long
- About fifteen minutes, once
Start to finish
From nothing to a class that runs itself.
Install
One app, organisation-wide.
Your System Admin adds JoySchooler under School Management → Integration → LTI 1.3 Apps, pastes four URLs, and installs it for the organisation. Every course gets it.
Add
From the material you were already adding.
In a course, add JoySchooler as material. Your lesson series are listed with what they cover; choose one, or choose the lessons.
The aha
Sections, not courses.
A Schoology course can hold several sections with different teachers and different children. JoySchooler maps a class to the SECTION, so Period 3 and Period 5 are two classes with two rosters and two sets of work — which is how you actually teach them.
Students
They click it. They are in.
Schoology says who the learner is. No account creation, no class code, no third password to forget. Their work resumes exactly where they left it.
Grades
Into the Schoology gradebook.
The gradebook column comes with the material; the score arrives in it. Open a learner and JoySchooler shows the reasoning behind the number.
Watch it happen
The whole thing, in under a minute.
Under a minute: the organisation install, adding a series, and grades finding their way back.
Only here
Next year's course keeps this year's setup.
Copy a course and every JoySchooler item comes with it as a fresh instance — same content, same points, same grading setup, and none of the previous cohort's attempts or scores. Nobody re-adds anything in August.
Everything it does
The whole list, including what it cannot do.
These are the same capability flags the product itself reads. If one is off here, the control for it is not shown in JoySchooler either — a form that offers something the LMS cannot honour is worse than one that offers less.
Bring your classes in optional API key
Pick the sections you teach and JoySchooler makes a class for each one.
Bring your students in
The roster arrives with them. No class codes, no spreadsheet, no typing names.
Students just sign in
A learner signs in with the address their school already gave them and lands in your class with their work waiting.
Post work from JoySchooler optional API key
Assign a lesson series here and it appears as an assignment there, with a link that opens the work.
Assign from inside your LMS
Add JoySchooler to a module or an assignment without leaving the page you were already on.
Grades come back on their own
A finished conversation is assessed, and the score lands in your gradebook column.
Release grades to students
Choose whether a score is visible to the learner or held until you say so.
Grades only you can see
A score written where the learner cannot see it until you release it.
See who has turned in
Finished, in progress, not started — per learner, next to their score.
Put it in the right place optional API key
Choose the topic or module the assignment belongs to.
Assign to named students optional API key
Give a lesson series to four learners rather than to the whole class.
Save it as a draft
Set the assignment up now and publish it when you are ready.
Post it at a set time
Write it tonight, let it appear at nine tomorrow.
Live roster updates
A student added to your class shows up here within seconds, not at the next sync.
Survives a course copy
Copy last year's course and every JoySchooler assignment comes with it — clean, with none of last year's attempts or grades.
Runs inside the LMS
Students do the work without leaving the page. You review it there too.
Worth knowing
What we would tell you on the phone.
- Schoology has no draft state for an item created over LTI, so a JoySchooler assignment is created live. Set it up when you want students to see it.
- There is no scheduled publish and no teacher-only draft grade; JoySchooler shows neither control rather than offering one it cannot honour.
- Schoology pushes no roster events to a tool, so the roster refreshes on a schedule and on every launch.
- Schoology reads a date with no timezone as school-local. JoySchooler sends dates as an explicit instant so a deadline does not quietly move.
- Listing courses from inside JoySchooler and creating assignments from here need an optional institution API key, set up once by an administrator. Without it you add JoySchooler from inside Schoology, which is where you were anyway.
For whoever runs your systems
Everything your IT person needs, on one page.
An admin adds an LTI 1.3 app with four values from JoySchooler, then copies Schoology's four back. The setup guide has the exact screens, the exact values to paste, every permission we ask for and why, what we store, and the four things that go wrong.
Side by side
If your school runs more than one.
| Capability | Classroom | Canvas | Schoology |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bring your classes in | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your students in | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Students just sign in | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Post work from JoySchooler | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Assign from inside your LMS | No | Yes | Yes |
| Grades come back on their own | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Release grades to students | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Grades only you can see | Yes | No | No |
| See who has turned in | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Put it in the right place | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Assign to named students | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Save it as a draft | Yes | Yes | No |
| Post it at a set time | Yes | No | No |
| Live roster updates | Yes | No | No |
| Survives a course copy | No | Yes | Yes |
| Runs inside the LMS | Yes | No | No |
Questions
The ones teachers actually ask.
- Organisation-level or course-level install?
- Organisation. A course-level install works, but it gives every course its own deployment id, which means the same tool looks like many installations and nothing is shared between them.
- What can JoySchooler see?
- The roster of a section it has been launched from, and the gradebook column for its own material. Not your other courses, not your other materials, not anything a launch has not handed it.
- Is there a password or key stored for our Schoology?
- Not for the parts that matter. LTI needs no stored credential at all. The optional REST key, if your administrator sets one up, is an institution key stored encrypted and used only to list courses and create assignments from JoySchooler.
- Do teachers need to do anything after the install?
- No. Their first launch is their sign-up. A teacher who has never heard of JoySchooler can add a lesson series in the time it takes to add any other material.
Your classes are already there. Bring them across.
Every lesson is a one-to-one Socratic conversation: JoySchooler asks the questions, the learner does the reasoning, and you read how they got there.