WATnow

WATnow is a Chrome extension for University of Waterloo students. It reads your deadlines from Learn and lists them in a side panel next to whatever you're working on. It also works at several other Ontario universities that use Brightspace. You pick your school when you first open the panel Waterloo students can also connect Crowdmark. WATnow then lists your Crowdmark assignments with your Learn ones and drops each one once you've handed it in. Crowdmark stays off until you click Connect Crowdmark in the panel and allow it in Chrome. When you open the panel, WATnow goes through each of your courses on Learn, or your school's course site, and collects assignments, quizzes, labs, discussions and other dated items. It sorts them into Overdue, Today, This week, Next week and Later. Clicking an item opens it where it was posted. WATnow checks your courses again every 30 minutes while Chrome is open, and once more shortly after Chrome starts if the last check is older than that. If a prof moves a due date, the item shows the new date highlighted with the old date crossed out underneath, so you don't have to fix a calendar by hand. If WATnow can't reach your course site, for example when your laptop is offline, it keeps showing the list it last read and keeps your reminders, then tries again at the next check. Reminders Assignments, labs, quizzes, discussions and other dated items each get their own lead time, set on a slider that runs from seven days before the due date down to one day before, or the morning it's due. You can switch off a whole kind of item, and you can switch off reminders for a course. Reminders stop once Learn or Crowdmark shows you submitted. If you check off an assignment, quiz or Crowdmark item yourself and no submission shows up, WATnow still sends the last reminder before it's due and marks the item in the list so you can open it and hand it in. Before a reminder about an assignment or quiz goes out, WATnow checks again whether you've handed it in. Anything that's not a part of Learn or Crowdmark is the user's own responsibility. Calendar The calendar button in the panel takes you to Export my deadlines, which saves your deadlines as an .ics file you can import into your calendar app. If a date changes later, importing the new file moves that one deadline instead of adding a second copy of everything. Privacy WATnow reads your course site, and Crowdmark if you connect it, with the session you're already signed in with, so it never sees your password. Everything it reads is saved on your computer. The only thing it sends anywhere is an anonymous count when you install it and when you use it, carrying a random ID, the version number and the date you installed it, so we can tell how many people use it and whether they keep using it. The full policy is at https://watnow.ugmi.ca/privacy/ WATnow is free. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by D2L, Crowdmark or any university.