If you’ve spent a few minutes on our new website, you have no doubt noticed a lot of changes, including new product names. I’d like to help you quickly make sense of it all.
The reason for the changes is really quite simple. For years Career Cruising was a single product company and it made sense for Career Cruising (the company), to provide Career Cruising (the product).
In our ongoing mission to engage and inspire individuals of all ages to achieve their full potential in school, career and life, we now deliver a full suite of career development resources. To keep them straight, avoid confusion, and prepare for future growth and enhancements, we have given them all new names.
Here is a summary of the products you already know:
- Career Cruising is now ccSpringboard;
- Course Planner is ccPathfinder;
- Application Planner is ccAchieve; and
- Network is ccInspire.
Collectively, these components comprise ccEngage, our complete solution of bundled products and services configured to fit your needs.
There are also two new components we are adding to the suite of ccEngage: ccTheRealGame and ccSpark! ccTheRealGame is a role playing game that brings the real world into the classroom by allowing students to imagine life as an adult, make adult decisions and experience the consequences. The Real Game Series’ reputation for engaging students more than any other classroom-based career program has led to its use in more than 50,000 classrooms around the world each year.
ccSpark! is a K-5 digital learning game that introduces students to careers and helps them develop life-planning and social skills. Students will love the activities and characters that await them in the fictional town of Sparkdale. Educators will appreciate the fully integrated activities and alignment with career education curricula. ccSpark! will be released in time for the 2012-2013 school year.
Please note that while the names have changed, the products themselves and the user experience have not. This ensures continued, seamless use of the complete career development tools, assessments, planners and other resources you have come to know.
Please contact your account manager if you have any questions at all.
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Jeff Harris
Beth, thank you very much for your post. I can assure you we didn't take any of these changes lightly!
For students, the product names really should be irrelevant - all they need to do is log in and the product(s) their school uses will be available to them. We spent a lot of time debating the pros and cons of moving the login, and in the end we felt the new location in the top right would be best - it's at the very top of the page and most websites now locate their user authentication in the top right corner. That said, we appreciate that any change at all can cause problems.
Our hope is that this becomes the new normal for students very quickly. If students were to continue encountering problems, we could revisit the location of the login.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
Beth Lawrence
Oh my, wasn't expecting this change. Just worked with 60 students the day before the e-mail notice. Now the teacher and her students are asking what happened to the site and where's the tab to get them to Career Cruising so they can log-in. Sorry you felt you needed a name change. It worked well for students.
Toni Minchella
Congratulations on the new look and new products/offerings! So exciting to have been a part of Career Cruising and these new changes make me miss being there even more. Looking forward to seeing how it all comes together!
And hello to my old Michigan and California clients! Hope the changes to Career Cruising make it even EASIER to implement the program into your classrooms!
Jeff Harris
Tonya,
The interface of the student/client side of our tools is our current priority for interface redesign. The administrative pages will come next.
Tonya
What about the administration page????
Kyle Phillips
@JasonK We're on it. The same people who helped us build what you see now will be working with us on a redesign of ccSpringboard as well. Same great tools, just a newer look, with some additional features. Look to see changes in mid-late August. We will keep you posted on those developments via newsletter.
Jeff Harris
Sue,
The export to Word function should now be working. Sorry for the trouble!
Jason K.
At first, based on the email I received, I thought the traditional Career Cruising webpage and tools would be refomatted/branded. What I found was that the only redesign applied to other "tools" or products that must be purchased.
I really believe that "ccSpringboard" could use a facelift on it's own. I know that my students would be more visually engaged if their ccSpringboard session resembled the new remodeled advertising version on the homepage.
Good start, but Careear Cruising needs an overhaul not just a pretty portal.
Matt McQuillen
Laura & Gale: Our developers are working on fixing the login issue you are experiencing. Has to do with the fact that www.careercruising.com is now public.careercruising.com.
Our apologies.
Laura Bargas
Wow! What a surpirse - didn't see that coming! Like the comment above, will the login procedure change back so we don't have to put in our school's login information and allow students to login directly through their portfolios? I still have had time to explore the new format. It would be helpful to have a transitionary design time so users can get used to the changes and not think they are on the wrong site. I hope to be able to particpate in the seminars next week. I'm excited to use explore the ccSpark with my own children!
Sue Giles
We are having trouble exporting to Microsoft Word. Could you please address or let me know what procedure changes we need?
Gale Kelly
I had a student try to log in to it today, had to enter school info first then access career cruising that way. It was easier before when students can just enter their information at login instead of having to remember schools. Is this going to stay this way, or will students have direct access to their accounts at login?
Thank you for your time.
Kyle Phillips
@Michele The website access is exactly the same! The login now appears at the top of the page instead of the middle left previously. It will also appear at the top of the screen as an option when you click away from the home page so that you don't have to go back to this home page to login.
ccSpark! is a product we've been working on for awhile and are really, really excited about. I'm hoping to have some additional information available on the different components within the next month and some online demonstrations ready for late April/early May. We do have pricing and bundling available for these options now for people who are looking at upcoming budgets and may want to consider licensing this resource when it's available in late August (target date).
We'll take Apple-esque as a compliment. (I hope? :)) Truthfully, while we've spent a great deal of time working on building some great features and components for clients over the years, we haven't done a great job of talking about them. We're hoping our new site does a much better job of communicating what we do and what we're trying to offer to clients. We very much welcome your comments on how we're doing, whether you like these changes or not. All the best!
Kyle Phillips
@Cathy Thank you for the feedback With ‘ccSpringboard’, we’re trying to evoke images of launching, starting, springing into a new career. The ‘cc’ in front of each of the product names represents Career Cruising so we’re hoping that a ‘career springboard’ and not images of a diving board are what people associate the program with. From your comment, though, it's clear that we'll need to work on how we talk about this product so that Springboard and Career Cruising are better linked for those visiting our site. Thank you for sharing!
I should also note that we will be launching a library-specific section of the site very soon (2 to 3 weeks) that more directly addresses the ways that patrons use our resources.
Michele Pava
Is the access website the same? I can't see any of the changes you describe in the post above. I am very interested in the K-5 components, especially as we try to differentiate for our Special Education students. I must agree that the name change seems an odd choice. The whole "cc" thing sounds like someone graduated from the School of Apple Marketing. I'll keep an eye out for the changes! Thanks!
Cathy Markwiese
As a library customer, your new name takes users farther away from brand recognition. If you are skimming down a list of database names, ccSpringboard is just as likely to be about swimming as anything else - there's no instantaneous user recognition about the purpose of your product. I'm not so sure this is a good move.