Ready to fully enjoy this festive time of year, we at School Island are decked out in our finest ... features, of course. Thanks to your incredible suggestions, School Island continues to be a wonderful study and review experience! In this issue, learn about new features and updates. Also, in this issue... find out what schools have to say about School Island!

The Assignment Mode setting - which allows teachers to control student access to their assignments - has been enhanced. It now includes a date range option called "Open From/To". When selected in Assignment Mode, two Calendar selection icons display, which allow administrators and teachers to specify a "From" date and a "To" date for specifying a range of dates that an assignment is available to the students in Open mode. To set the date range when in assignment mode:

1. Check all or some of the students.
2. Select Assignment Mode from the Mode dropdown list.
3. Select Open From/To.
4. Click the Calendar icon to select the From date.
5. Click the Calendar icon to select the To date.
6. Click the action link ("Add", "Assign", or "Assignment Mode") depending on the page.

• Assignments whose "From" date is in the future are not displayed in their assignment lists.
• Assignments whose "To" date has passed act as "Locked" assignments, which means they will not be able to view the assignment.
  

When sharing an assignment containing questions from one of your Personal Content Sets with another teacher, the personal questions are only included in the assignment if shared with a teacher in your school or district.

Note: Do not use copyrighted material in your Personal Content Sets because doing so may violate existing copyright laws.

Flash Card assignments now support the following Assignment modes:

• Open, which allows students to access the flash card assignment.
• Lock, which prevents students from accessing a flash card assignment.
• Open From/To, which allows students to access a flash card assignment within the specified date range.
  

What people are saying about School Island ...

I am an Earth Science Teacher at Horseheads School District in the Southern Tier of New York State. I absolutely love your site. It has had such a positive impact on me as a teacher and on my students. Honestly, I could write about the benefits of your web-based assessment tool for hours, since this site was indirectly part of an action research I did for my Masters in Educational Technology.

My problem statement was that inclusive classrooms are not meeting the needs of special education students in a secondary science setting. The solution is properly integrated educational technology in a student-centered, self-directed environment with the students working cooperatively and technology as the learning medium. In this setting, the teacher removes him/herself as the focal point and becomes an active facilitator.

School Island was one of the tools that the students would be using in this environment. What I discovered was that "all" students demonstrated an increase in achievement in this setting -- not only have the special needs students, but the regular education students as well.

Here is a list of just some of my students' achievements using School Island:

• Students could use School Island in conjunction with a text-to-speech program we have to meet some special needs.
• Students received immediate feedback and were able to see patterns in areas of individual weaknesses.
• Even though those with needs required the most help with vocabulary, all students were helped by the vocabulary assistant and flash-card creator.
• Enormous life skills were developed by learning how to do their own item analysis. Students learned early on how to "help themselves" to study and to focus their attention on areas of individual needs. Students began paying attention to specific questions or themes that they were missing so that they would "study" those specific areas before the test.
• At the end of the semester, students would do an analysis of all their quizzes throughout the semester. That way, when they began to study for the Regents examination, they had data right in front of them that directed them as to where each of them needed the most help.
• It is a new medium for taking a quiz and one the most students are more comfortable with. They are used to "playing" while on a computer. So, when they begin one of the quizzes on School Island, already the stress levels are reduced.
• Organization is often an obstacle for students with disabilities. With School Island, students are able to easily organize their assignments, and homework/tests that are due, because the software does it for them.
• Practice, practice, practice. Anyone who teaches a regents class knows that we really have at least two jobs. The first goal is to have the students grasp the concept. The second goal is to show the student how to transfer that knowledge to a "Regents style question." Some students can accomplish both without much of a problem, but for most that is the toughest obstacle to overcome. If students learn how to identify their weakness as stated previously, then they can create their own assessments to practice the transfer of knowledge.
• Parental involvement has increased. Although not all students can get online at home, the number of students with that capability is increasing every year. I have had parents that have been very active and either wanted to know how their child was doing or wanted to learn how they could help. Now the parents were able to log-in to their child account and see the results of their testing, see if they had incomplete assignments and observe where their weakness was. Communication between teacher and parent became much more meaningful and effective.

The conclusion of my action research found the following results for Earth Science. Keep in mind that School Island was a critical component of the research; however, it was a combination of altering the teaching philosophy, classroom setting and addition of other instructional technology techniques that contributed to the overall results.

1. Students with an IEP or 504 plan's passing rate increased 25%.
2. Regular education students increased their passing rates by 12%.
3. Regular education students increased there mastery level (score of 85% or higher) performance by over 17%.

The students are not the only ones who benefit by using School Island. I have become a much more effective teacher. Like the students, the item analysis gives me insight as to how well I covered a certain topic, keeping me honest with the students and myself. I always did item analysis, but there is nothing like having the students complete an assessment on School Island and receiving a "live" item analysis. Right then and there, I can determine whether I need to review certain material while it is fresh in their minds instead of waiting until the next day. Going beyond the general class, I can pin-point the individual areas of weaknesses with the students. Therefore, when the students come in for extra help, I can easily identify what I should be working on with them and/or communicate with their parents to give advice where they specifically need assistance.

Peter Baccile
Earth Science teacher
Horseheads HS

I wanted to let you know about the fantastic job that your presenter did last week. As per our contract, all conference days have evaluations. She scored a perfect 5/5 on all categories. I have been at Spencer-Van Etten for over 20 years and there has never been such a positive response to any presentation. That's three conference days a year with at least two presentations per conference day. The School Island software in itself is great, but your training truly makes it a fantastic product!

Tom Sherwood
Dean of Students/Science and Technology Chair/Science Teacher
Spencer Van Etten High School

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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!