Welcome back to school. We hope you had a great summer. Here at School Island, we have been busy updating courses and making many improvements. Thanks to all who offered such great suggestions for making School Island an even better study and review experience! This issue of the School Island Newsletter focuses on introducing many new features and updates for Teachers, Students, and Administrators.

The following is a summary of new features for teachers:

1. Personal Content Sets - Personal Question Sets have been renamed to Personal Content Sets. A Personal Content Set can contain either short answer questions or vocabulary terms, but not both. Short Answer Question sets contain questions that can be imported into Short Answer assignments. Vocabulary sets contain vocabulary that can be imported into Flash Card assignments.
   
   
2. Advanced Editor for Personal Content Sets - When creating content in Personal Content Sets, an Advanced Editor is available for word processing-like editing capabilities, including the ability to add graphics to questions. School Island supplies an Image Library containing images that can be embedded in the content. In addition, teachers can upload their own images for use in their content.
   
   

3. Teacher-Created Vocabulary - Similar to entering their own questions for use in Short Answer assignments, teachers can now enter their own vocabulary terms and definitions for use in Flash Card assignments. This is done via the modified Personal Content Sets, which supports sets of short answer questions or vocabulary terms.

4. Display Number of Assignments Completed - The teacher's Assignment pages now display the number of students who have been assigned an assignment as well as the number students who have completed an assignment. This makes it easier for teachers to know when to start reviewing the results of their assignments without having to click into each assignment detail.

5. Constructed Response Assignments - Teachers can create assignments consisting of up to 20 constructed response questions. Each constructed response question has a Maximum Points value that the teacher can assign for each question answered by their students. This results in a real score and also provides comments as feedback.

6. Controlling Student Access to Constructed Response Questions - Now that teachers can assign Constructed Response questions to their students, some teachers may prefer students not have access to constructed response questions that have not yet been assigned. Teachers can now control student access to constructed response questions, allowing students to access assigned and unassigned questions or just assigned questions.
   

The following is a summary of new features for students and teachers:

1. Extended Assignment Access Control - The Lock Assignment mechanism has been replaced with an Assignment Mode, which supports four modes for Short Answer and Constructed Response assignments.
   
   
   • In Open mode, the student can access all questions as they do now.
   • In Lock mode, the student cannot access the assignment.
   • In Quiz mode, the student can answer all questions, but do not receive any feedback. Specifically, the student is not informed if their answers are correct or incorrect.
   • In Review mode, the student can view previously-answered questions, allowing them to see the question, answer, reason, and vocabulary. They cannot, however, answer any unanswered questions.

   The expected use of this feature is for the teacher who wishes to use an assignment as a quiz. To do so:

   • Assign the assignment then set the assignment to Lock mode.
   • Set the assignment to Quiz mode at the beginning of the quiz.
   • Set the assignment to Lock mode or Review mode at the end of the quiz.
   • Record the score of the assignment.
   • Set the assignment to Open mode to allow students to complete the assignment on their own.
     OR
     Set the assignment (or leave it as) to Review mode, which allows the students to review the questions they answered, but prevent them from answering questions not previously answered (which prevents the score from changing).
     
     
2. Redesigned Student Short Answer Review Page - The Short Answer Review page now displays three links:
   
   
   • Assignments from your teacher;
   • Sessions that you create yourself; and
   • View cumulative progress reports.
   
   Clicking the Assignments From Your Teacher link or Sessions That You Create Yourself link displays a page dedicated to the appropriate session type.
   

The following is a summary of new features for administrators:

1. District Access As An Individual Teacher Option - The administrator's Edit Account/Add Account pages have a "district access" checkbox for teacher accounts. When enabled, the teacher can select students from any school in the district for their classes. This is not only useful for districts that have more individual School Island accounts at neighboring schools, but also have teachers with students from more than one school.
   
   
2. Account Self-Activation No Longer Supported - The account self-activation option has been removed. Please contact Technical Support if you have any questions about creating accounts.
   

For a summary of all updates, go to http://castlesoftware.com/home/NewFeatureLog.htm

Last year's student accounts were deactivated in preparation for the new school year. These accounts are not deleted until new enrollment lists are sent to Tech Support, to allow teachers and administrators time to review sessions and assignments from the summer. However, students with deactivated accounts cannot sign into School Island and teachers cannot add deactivated students to their classes.

Take advantage of our free student pre-enrollment service! Send us an MS Excel file with your 2006-07 student enrollment data. We will archive last year's student data; delete the old accounts; generate the new accounts; then return a list of School Island IDs to you.

Required fields include: last name, first name, and grade, in separate columns.

Optional fields include: preferred ID, preferred password, school-issued identification number.

Be sure to use the labels in bold as the column headers; save the file with your school name followed by "students 2006-07"; and send to School Island Technical Support Services (support@schoolisland.com).

For customers who prefer to handle their own enrollments, please contact School Island Technical Support Services (support@schoolisland.com) to archive last year's student data and delete the existing accounts before uploading (Add Multiple) or inputting new student accounts manually (Add New User). Be sure to follow the Add Multiple instructions carefully; the pre-enrollment file formats do not apply to this feature.

Teacher accounts remain in place from last year to allow teachers to reuse and recycle their previously created assignments. Use your School Island administrator account to add new teacher accounts; delete accounts of teacher who have left the district; or to edit existing accounts for name changes. Contact School Island Technical Support Services (support@schoolisland.com) if you have teachers who are moving from one campus to another. We'll move their accounts and assignments to their new location.

If you have not already done so, take a moment to view your account profile and verify that your e-mail address is current. To view your profile:

1. Sign into your School Island account.
2. Click the Profile link on the Home page. You will need to enter your current password in order to make any changes.
3. Click Submit to save changes.
   

If you have any comments, ideas for future articles, or suggestions for a School Island product feature or enhancement, please send it to support@schoolisland.com. We would love to hear from you!