April showers brought a beautiful bouquet of May flowers in the form of blossoming relationships with many of our educators along with an abundance of new School Island features! In this issue, read our feature article to learn how one educator is working with School Island as we strive to continuously improve the best study and review experience around! Also in this newsletter, find out about our latest features/updates.

Dr. Lawrence Volk is a math and science teacher at John T. Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC as well as a popular speaker at Math and Science conferences. Larry is also a great advocate of School Island having served as a consultant during the development of the successful School Island course in Physical Science. His Teacher's Bag of Tricks website (www.teachersbagoftricks.com) contains plenty of practical advice for teachers. In a recent posting, "Working with Companies", Larry shared this insight with his readers. While conference attendees often see him chatting with other teachers in a conference booth, he isn't working for any particular company. Rather, he lends his support to the many products that help kids learn and make the classroom a better place. The following article is an excerpt from "Working with Companies" and is reprinted here with his permission.

"... I hope all teachers and companies that work together to improve learning would e-mail me at bagoftricks@msn.com with other ways teachers and companies can work together. A teacher working with a company while they still teach- is that wrong? Why not work with companies! I do mean "work with" a company, not "work for" a company. I see this interaction in the role of advocating for something I use in my [class]room.

When I am at a conference telling people about [a] company's product, it is not only a company I know, but often it is also a person within the company that I have formed both a professional and a personal relationship with. If you start to examine the role of teachers and begin to establish relationships with the education companies we are exposed to and often have to evaluate, then it was worth the time to post this column.

School Island by Castle Software - There is another company with a similar name, but not at all similar in product (not of similar quality either- in my opinion). This is the best "bang for the Internet buck" I have seen out there. I met [Prof Bill] Bill Ingui, President of Castle Software at a conference and followed up [with him] on a free four week trial offer. I called the 800 number and asked for more time. They gave me more time to evaluate this product. After my principal purchased a semester for a few students, we have grown to our whole school, and hopefully soon our district will use this Internet tool as well.

...I was doing one of my "Teacher's Bag of Tricks" workshops at another school district on a Saturday morning. We ran into a wall between the Internet program and the district firewall. So I called Prof. Bill on the cell to get some help. He got back to me within 30 minutes with ideas and help. Help on a Saturday before 10AM! That's special."

School Island continues to be an integral part of every classroom as a direct result of contributions made by our users. If you have suggestions, please write to Prof. Bill at billi@schoolisland.com and share your ideas with us so that all School Island family members benefit.

New Features/Updates

Overview

The Administrator Reports page includes a link to the Class Details Report, which allows the Administrator to view various course and assignment usage reports based on a specific class. Prior to reviewing a specific report, an Administrator can now display and review the names of students in the selected class. This may be accomplished by clicking the Class Roster link to the right of the Class drop-down list.

Course Reports

To view a Course Report:

1. Select a teacher from the Teacher drop-down list.
2. Select a class from the Class drop-down list.
3. Optional: Click the Class Roster link to the right of the Class drop-down list to display and review the list of students in the selected class.
4. Select a course from the Course drop-down list.
5. Click on one of the available report links:
   • Short Answer Cumulative Class Report - displays an assessment of all short answer questions from the selected course.
   • All Activities Questions Answered Report - displays the number of questions answered per student in the selected class for each activity type.
   • Short Answer Score Summary Report - displays a summary of sessions and questions answered, including the number of correct and incorrect, for each student in the selected class.
     

Short Answer Assignment Reports

To view a Short Answer Assignment Report:

1. Select a teacher from the Teacher drop-down list.
2. Select a class from the Class drop-down list.
3. Optional: Click the Class Roster link to the right of the Class drop-down list to display and review the list of students in the selected class.
4. Select the desired course and assignment from the Course: Assignment drop-down list.
5. Click on one of the available report links:
   • Display Assignment - displays assignment questions for the selected course in a separate pop-up window.
   • Cumulative Assignment Report - displays a cumulative assignment report for all students in the selected class.
   • Assignment Scores Report - displays the scores for the assignment for each student in the selected class.

The new Student Details Report allows Administrators to track individual students. Accessible from the Accounts page and the Class Details page (Class Roster window), this report includes tabs for displaying the following information:

• Classes - a list of classes that the student is in.
• Short Answer - a list of Short Answer sessions (assigned and self-generated) for a selected course, including score and a Session Report.
• Flash Card - a list of Flash Card assignments for a selected course, including the status of the each assignment.
• Constructed Response (for select courses containing this activity) - a list of Constructed Response assignments for a selected course, including the status of each assignment.
• DBQ (for select courses containing this activity) - a list of DBQ assignments for a selected course, including the status of each assignment.
• Math Skills (for select courses containing this activity) - a list of Math Skills with scores for each unit and skill.
  

When a teacher shares an assignment with another teacher, the teacher receiving the shared assignment now receives a message alert on the Teacher Home page. Located below the Information Center, this alert contains information about the shared assignment.To view a message, click the associated message link. The selected message displays with the following information:

• The name of the teacher sharing the assignment
• The name of the assignment
• The course associated with the assignment
• The activity associated with the assignment

In addition to viewing, you also have the option of deleting old messages.

For courses including correlations to state standards, teachers may now use a specific state learning standard as part of the criteria for selecting questions for an assignment. A new criteria, "Select Related Standard", may now be found on the Question Selection page for a given assignment. To include a standard in the question criteria:

1. Check the associated check box.
2. Select the appropriate state curriculum.
3. Select the desired standard.

Links are available for displaying the selected standard as well as for viewing view all standards for the state curriculum. When used with other criteria, the Learning Standard Question filter only selects questions in the units/sections that are correlated to the selected standard.

The Reports page has been modified. The Assignment Report type has been split into two separate report typess:

• Assignment (single) - provides a cumulative report for a single assignment.
• Assignment (all) - reports scores for all assignments, with a drop-down list option for specifying the desired time period.
  

Four "Working with Numbers" Math Skills have been added to the Elementary Math Skill Review activity. The new Basic-level skills are:

• Addition up to 12 + 12
• Subtraction with answers up to 12
• Multiplication up to 12 x 12
• Division with quotient up to 12
  

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!