This weekend, we released the latest version of Helium, Dingo! For those of you keeping track, this is the second public beta release of Helium, and we’ve versioned it 0.4.0.

First, let’s recap. What is Helium? It’s a new take on student success and organization. An innovative revamp of Get Organized, Helium is an online student planner with every tool you’ll need for schedule management, assignment organization, and grade tracking in a sleek, easy-to-use, online format.

What’s in This Release?

Good question. Here are, in our opinion, the coolest new features that are now available to you:

Reminders
Before we said Helium would help you never miss an assignment again. And we meant that. But now we really mean it, because when creating assignments in Helium, you can now add reminders! These reminders will be sent to you, either through a popup within Helium or via email, at the time of your choosing.

Want to be reminded to start working on a project one week before it’s due?  Would it be helpful to have another 30 minutes before you need to turn it in? No problem!  Add as many reminders as you need to stay on top of your coursework.

Events
Looking for a way to integrate your non-academic calendar with your schoolwork? Maybe it’s a meeting for an org you’re a part of at school, or maybe Maroon 5 is going to be in concert next weekend.

Or maybe you’re more of the Justin Beiber type. Whatever. You know, do your thing. The point is Helium is now not only a planner for your classwork, it’s a fully-featured calendar for your social life and extracurriculars as well.

Bonus: The reminders we mentioned before? You can add them to events as well.

Clone Assignments and Events
You’ve carefully detailed the requirements for the reading assignment due this Friday, categorized it for grading, added reminders, attached the notes … and now you realize the next chapter is due next Friday. Good news, now you don’t have to retype all of that again.

By cloning an assignment or event, everything related to it on the calendar (including reminders and attachments) will be cloned as well! Now, simply drag the cloned assignment to next Friday. Another reading assignment yet again the Friday after? Rinse and repeat.

Attachments for Classes, Assignments, and Events
We blew our cover here by mentioning it with the last feature, but you can now attach files to classes, assignments, and events. Classes have syllabi, professors send PDFs of class notes, and readings have accompanying assignments. Or maybe you finished your project in the computer lab and need an easy way to access it from your laptop back in your room.

Drag-and-drop your files, then click “Save” to attach them. Next time you open this class, assignment, or event, a download of the attachment is just one click away.

Hover Over Assignments and Events for a Quick Look
If you hover your cursor over assignments and events in Month, Week, or Day view, you will be shown a brief summary of this item’s details without having to click on it or open the assignment or event. Check the class information, review a past grade, take a peek at the materials you need to bring with you to study, or download an attachment—it’s all right there for you.

And More …
In addition to the big new features, you’ll find minor tweaks and improvements around Helium, many of which were suggested by users like you, and you’ll also notice performance improvements and bugs fixed in this release.

Tell Me More About Dingos

Our current release is the Dingo! Dingos primarily are wild neighbors to our Aussie friends, though they can also be found in parts of southeast Asia. They have a bit of a love/hate relationship with their human neighbors, who partially consider them pests and partially credit them for keeping rabbits, rats, and kangaroos (yes, kangaroos) at bay.

An iconic aspect of Australian culture and history, we also think Dingos are cool because of their complex conversation system that, unlike that of Fido who just noticed the mailman out front, is only 5% barking.

What Else is Coming?

We’re not going to spoil what’s coming in the next release, but here are a few minor improvements that we’ll be rolling out as updates to Dingo in the near future:

• Improvements to grading
• Improvements to filtering and searching
• Improved mobile compatibility
• Reminders sent to your phone
• …

The End

That’s all for now. Request an invite today to get started using Helium, and we’ll let you know as soon as more features are ready to be released!

www.heliumedu.com