ClassJump, Inc has received a substantial donation that is to be used exclusively for upgrading what is offered here! This money is not be to used for hosting, only for improving the services offered and adding additional services.
Yes, we will still have to raise money for our server to pay for hosting, but at least we can now dig in and make ClassJump better by offering new and improved services.
So, who better to ask what's needed than the great teachers who use the site?
What's on your wish list? During our last upgrade which took place at the end of 2011, many teachers wanted instant messaging. I tried to make this happen, but fell short. Perhaps it's something that should be done now? Post your ideas in the comment area below!
If you have great ideas, post them here as a comment.
This upgrade will be in production over the next six months and will be released in late summer, 2013. I'm looking for ideas from you!
Let the ideas for making ClassJump.com better begin!
Robert Zimmerman
Executive Director, ClassJump, Inc
ClassJump is a 501(3)(c) non-profit public charity
When done well, teaching is probably the hardest profession there is.
I want to thank all the teachers who are here at ClassJump and work hard each and every day on behalf of their students. I created this site for you.
I hope that ClassJump helps you encourage and inspire your students. That's why it's here, that's why it's free and that's the only mission.
There's no political agenda here. ClassJump welcomes all, regardless of political beliefs, religious beliefs, or economic standing.
Great News!
ClassJump has already raised enough funds to pay for our server until March 15th, 2013!
Financial contributions ranging from $1 to $100 flooded in after my cry for help in October of last year. Most of the contributions were gratefully receieved online, but many were also welcomed by standard mail. Many of the envelopes I received were accompanied by heart-warming letters, which I appreciated so much.
Thanks to everyone who's helping keep ClassJump here.
If you're new here, this is how ClassJump stays online for you
ClassJump, Inc is a 501(c)(3) non-profit public charity. 100% of all tax-deductible contributions go to paying for the cost of your server, that you, your students, your parents and school hopefully enjoy using.
ClassJump has no paid staff. As executive director of ClassJump, Inc, I have never received a thin dime of compensation and have no intentions of ever doing so.
The cost of maintaining this HUGE server with almost 16,000 schools and well over half a million students clambering for information day and night is $650 a month.
Many thanks to each and every hard-working teacher
You're making a difference in the lives of children. ClassJump is here to help make your job easier and more productive.
Best Wishes,
ROBERT ZIMMERMAN
Executive Director, ClassJump, Inc
On October 22nd I posted this article, in which I reported that we were $1,295 short of achieving our Fall Fund Raising Goal of $1,950.
I am amazed and gratified to report that in less than three days, we received every bit of the funding dollars needed to pay for the ClassJump server costs for this quarter of 2012.
Donations ranging from $100 to $5 literally flooded in, one after another. Also gladly and humbly received were dozens and dozens of letters of support and thanks. I can not even begin to tell you how much this support means for the thousands of teachers, students and parents who count on ClassJump to be here for them each and every day.
As the unpaid executive director, it's enormously heart-warming to know that what is being offered here is not only appreciated, but supported.
I want to thank everyone who chipped in. Without you, ClassJump would be sliding down the rocky slope into internet history.
With warm regards,
Robert Zimmerman
Executive Director
ClassJump, Inc - a 501(C)(3) non-profit public charity
Each quarter, ClassJump must raise exactly $1,950 to pay for the cost of the server that everyone here uses. Our upcoming quarter ends on November 15th. That's when the bill for our wonderful server will land on my desk and stare up at me.
As of this writing, ClassJump has received $655 since our last successful quarterly fund raiser. Math was never my personal strong suit, but simple subtraction was never much of a problem. We're currently short $1,295 and have less than 30 days to satisfy our cold and insistent financial obligations.
ClassJump has no paid staff. As the Executive Director of the 501(3)(c) that is ClassJump. Inc, I have never received a single pay check and I have no intentions of ever doing so.
ClassJump operates on a few simple ideals
Provide web sites to teachers no matter where they are or what type of school they work for
Never place advertising in front of children
Never share anyone's personal information for any reason
Do the right things for the right reasons
Providing a web server as large and robust at ClassJump is not free
The server that ClassJump is on is in a large, air-conditioned data center. The amount of data that we transfer on any given day is often staggering. Transferring data, like transferring a ton of freight by land and sea, does not come cheap.
There are over 33,000 teachers here.
The annual cost of keeping ClassJump here is $7,800
$7,800 divided by 33,000 is around 25 ¢ per teacher, per year
If we are not supported, we're gone. It's as simple as that.
About that last sentence. Back in High School, my favorite English teacher remarked that I was a bit too blunt. She wanted me to try my best to 'soften the edges' of my papers, to guide the reader more gently to conclusions, rather than dropping the facts on them one on top of another. Like the advanced math lessons I struggled with, I guess I never got very good at literary subtlety either. Sorry, Mrs. Ransmier!
Welcome back to all of the returning teachers and the thousands of new teachers who have just signed up and decided to use ClassJump.com this school semester!
For teachers who are just arriving here for the first time, you may be asking yourself how ClassJump is able to provide this service at no charge, without putting advertisments in front of you and your students. Good question!
The answer is, ClassJump is a 501(3)C non-profit public charity, and we count on small donations, one at a time, to keep all of this here for you.
The cost to maintain our server for you, your parents and your students is exactly $650 each month. We pay our bill quarterly, in the amount of $1,950. That's $7,800 a year in total costs.
We have NO PAID STAFF. Every single penny collected goes back into paying for the web server you use and depend on.
Okay, let's do some simple math. We now have over 30,000 teachers using the site. 30,000 divided by 7,800, rounded up a wee bit is $4.00 a year per teacher, per year.
Believe it or not, nothing is actually free
Is ClassJump worth $4.00 a year to you?
As of this writing, we are short exactly $267.00 for the quarterly payment (DUE NOW, NOW, NOW) to cover the cost of the server that you are interacting with.
What happens if ClassJump.com doesn't have anough money to pay for our server?
Pretty simple answer to that question: The lights go out. We aren't here any more.
Thanks SO MUCH to the teachers who have recently donated (tax free) to the ClassJump non-profit. You are making this happen for everyone here. If you have never supported, now is the time to step forward.
I'm sorry to report that at or around midnight on May 14th, ClassJump lost an entire days worth of data.
How in the world does this happen? This data loss occured during a normally scheduled backup of our server and an error occured during the backup. We restored all the data that was on the server prior to May 14th, but for the 24 hours between midnight on May 13th and midnight on May 14th, all data was lost and can not be brought back.
What does it mean? It means that anything you may have stored on our server on Monday, May 14th is no longer available. You will need to store it again.
There's not anything I can do except to say I'm very sorry.
This data crash occurred during a very important fund-raising day for ClassJump
I want to thank everyone who contributed to our Spring Fund Raiser yesterday. If you contributed, we do have all contributions from yesterday intact. This morning I have gone through all the contributions from yesterday and entered them one by one back into the database.
Yesterday was a huge day for donations, and we were able to raise enough money to pay for the next 3 months of hosting, which costs $650 per month. Thank goodness that we were able to save all of those important funds that were contributed.
Once again, I'm sorry if you lost homework or message board posts or any other information from May 14th
We do our very best to make sure that our server is running in a reliable way. No system is exactly perfect and this has been a very humbling experience for me.
Best wishes to everyone,
Robert Zimmerman
Executive Director
ClassJump, Inc a 501(3)C non-profit public charity
ClassJump.com operates solely on the donations of generous teachers, parents and people who simply appreciate what we offer. It costs our non-profit $650 every month to keep the ClassJump server running for everyone here. This month, we came up $100 short of our funding needs and the balance was taken out of my own pocket to pay for the services that you use and enjoy here.
To cover the cost of our next six months, ClassJump needs to raise $3,900 by May 15th!
I hope you will help spread the word to parents, friends and family. ClassJump is a 501(3)C non-profit public charity. We have no paid staff here - and every single dollar we raise goes straight back into paying for the cost of maintaining our server.
Our costs would be $850 a month if it were not for the generous $200 monthly contribution made to us by our hosting provider, Purplecat.net. We are very grateful to this fine company for stepping up for all the teachers, students and parents who depend on what we offer.
Back in early October of this year, I announced that ClassJump would be upgrading our software for 2012. More than one hundred teachers and students provided great suggestions within the comments on that article. We used lots of them, so thanks for all the great suggestions!
As of today, ClassJump will be running our newest version of our free software. I hope that everyone finds it to be easier to use and beneficial!
Some of the BIG CHANGES include...
Private photo albums - you can now place a password on any photo album and keep unwanted visitors from seeing your photos.
Text Editor - The new text editor will make it easier for you to format your pages in a way that is attractive and useful. Includes an easy way to place links within your text.
Calendar option - You can now view your upcoming assignments and events in a Calendar View, as well as a list view.
Document Categories - This creates folders for your different documents so that they can be organized more effectively.
And a lot more! As you explore the new tools and options you will see that we (two guys with four computers wrote every bit of this for you) have tried our best to carefully provide everyone with a much more useful and productive site. It was always pretty great, now it's just better!
Oh - almost forgot! The registration process for new accounts has been given a complete overhaul, which will make it nearly impossible for students to create fake teacher accounts, which had been something of a nagging problem in the past.
One more thing! In the past your subscribers were notified each and every time you updated your site. Going forward, these notifications will be grouped together as one email, instead of lots of different ones.
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Please keep in mind that ClassJump is a 501(3)C non-profit public charity. We count on your tax-deductible contributions to pay for the server that serves you.
ClassJump.com will get a big upgrade between Christmas and New Years! The code is aleady being written and tested right now.
I'm posting this because I want to hear your ideas! What's your wish list? Post your ideas for improvements below in the comment area!
Here are some of the changes that are coming:
• Your admin areas will no longer appear as "pop-ups." You will add to your calendar and manage your students right there within your website screen.
• The way in which you edit fonts and colors for your site is also getting a big upgrade. It will be a LOT easier to manage.
• We're adding a nifty text editor for everyone, which behaves a lot like a tool bar within a word processing program. You'll be able to drag over any text and make it a link, make it bold, make it a different size...whatever you like! Additionally, there will be a separate area within the editor for adding your own HTML, which will instantly preview for you in the editor screen!
• We're adding a few new features too. You will be able to archive a class in the future, with one click, you'll be able to place it out of view for as long as you wish. You will also be able to order your classes in any way that you wish. Right now, classes are listed alphabetically, which isn't always the best solution. You'll be able to order them in any way that suits you after we release the new version.
• Right now, when you have people who subscribe to a class, we send them an email every time you update a class.This isn't such a great system, because you might update your class ten times in one day, and who wants to get ten emails? The answer is nobody does! This is going to be much friendlier in the future. No matter how many times you change a class in a day, there will be only one email to your subscribers, alerting them that you have added new items to a class.
• At the beginning or end of a semester, you will be able to clear out all students registered for a class with one click. You will no longer be forced to do this one student at a time. Also, within your student area, you'll get a much better interface for leaving messages and picking up documents.
• Photo albums will now have an option for password protection, so that only people who are authorized to look will be able to.
Some things we are not doing....
• We are not and will never allow for password protection for entire sites. We have tried this in the past and the results were a disaster. Students and parents would forget the credentials and nothing short of total chaos ensued. Teachers have asked for this option in the past - and please trust me on this one - it's causes way more trouble than can be imagined for everyone.
• We are also not going to be allowing for open-ended design choices for pages. The format, in general, will stay the same. Open-ended design for individual pages causes a "hunt and peck" result for students and parents. Once a student and parent become familiar with where to look for things on one page, they then know how to do it on all pages. A standard format for each page makes things easier for everyone to find what they are looking for. Your pages will look slightly different, however. They will be a lot easier on the eyes.
And now - let's hear your ideas! Post them here as a comment. I'll be looking this over and commenting on the ones we will make happen!
Before signing off, I want to thank our new hosting partners at Purplecat.net for donating $200 a month to the cost of our new server. They also donated $1,200 to ClassJump, which waived the set up fee for our new home! These are great people! Thanks so much Purplecat!
Best Wishes to everyone,
Robert Zimmerman
ClassJump, Inc is a 501(3)c non-profit public charity
At midnight, ClassJump.com moved to a new web server and the move was a long one! Over 1,000 miles away from our original home in Austin Texas! Our new, much faster and more reliable web server is located in Asheville, North Carolina and maintained by the great guys at PurpleCat.net.
ClassJump experienced some MAJOR growing pains this year! I was in no way prepared for how much our service would be needed. To say that our server was slowing down would be a terrible understatement. My email in-box was so full of cries for help, that I could not answer all of them. Instead of spending my time answering emails, I spent my time taking action and getting ClassJump onto a faster web server that could keep up with and exceed the demand.
The move took a bit longer than I hoped for, but getting over a quarter of a million documents, such as PDF's and Word files moved, along with over 400,000 student accounts transferred over 1,000 miles and housed safely again is no easy business. I relied on the amazing guys at PurpleCat to make sure we landed safely in our new home and they did an amazing job.
I want to apologize to everyone for the recent slow-down. I know that you count on what we do here and I am personally very humbled by the experience. I used all of my personal resources to make the changes necessary and did so as quickly and efficiently as humanly possible.
Going forward, we are in very good hands with PurpleCat and it's a guarantee that with these new wizards in our corner, we will never experience the type of service interuptions that ClassJump has experinced this school year.
Best Wishes to everyone,
Robert Zimmerman
Executive Director, ClassJump, Inc
ClassJump, Inc is a 501 (3)C non-profit public charity
