It's harvest time..

 Thanks to your suggestions, School Island has a bountiful of features to share with you. In this issue, learn about our latest features as well as about a new trend - collaboration in education - and how you can use School Island to maximize your collaboration efforts. Also in this issue, learn more about upcoming conferences/workshops.

Enrollments

If you have not done so already, please send in your student enrollments. Also, take a few minutes to "houseclean" your teacher and administrative accounts. For more information, click the 7/24 ***Important Account Info for Admins*** link in the Information Center portion of the Administrator Home page.

For Teachers

Intermediate Science Update

The Life Science and Earth Science components of Intermediate Science have been revised to bring the content more in line with Middle School Science curriculum. The terminology and wording used in many questions have been adjusted to a more appropriate reading level. In addition, many illustrations have been added to questions and to the vocabulary definitions.

For Administrators

Move Accounts to Another School

Occasionally, students and teachers move to a different school within the district during the school year. If you are a District Administrator (someone administrating at more than one school), then you can now use the Accounts page to move a student or teacher account to another school within your district. There are now two ways to do this:

• Moving one account
• Moving multiple accounts

To move one account using the Accounts page:

1. Click the Edit icon for the account you wish to move. The Edit Account page for the selected account displays.
2. Select the destination school from the Move user to drop-down menu. School Island immediately removes the account from the current school's account list and moves it to the specified school's account list.

To move multiple accounts using the Accounts page:

1. Notice each account listed on the Accounts page includes a checkbox. This check box allows you to select one or more accounts.
2. Check the checkbox beside each account you wish to move.
3. Select the destination school from the Move user to drop-down menu located at the bottom of the Accounts page.
4. Click the Move link beside the Move user to drop-down menu. School Island immediately removes the selected accounts from the current school's account list and moves them to the specified school's account list.

Statistics & Surveys

Surveys

Surveys show that professional development activities among Northwest teachers regularly involve collaboration with peers. Moreover, four-fifths of Northwest teachers say they make a conscious effort to coordinate the content of their instruction with their colleagues. Despite those statistics, teachers and administrators across the region agree that more collaboration is needed in their schools (http://www.nwrel.org/nwedu/11-01/region/).

Quick Links

Collaboration Links

Want more information supporting collaboration? Check out:

• Accelerating Developmental Education: The Case for Collaboration.
• Guidelines for Effective Collaboration
• Models for Collaboration
• E-Pals Classroom Exchange
• Collaboration Projects

School Island Supports Collaboration

School Island makes collaboration easier. With its shared assignment feature, teachers may share any other their assignments with their peers. In addition, when creating assignments, teachers may use School Island's import feature to include questions from published and public assignments in their assignments. Lastly, teachers may submit an assignment as a benchmark or use a benchmarked assignment. For more information on these and other features, refer to the School Island for Teachers Handbook.

October 7-8-9:  NC Principals and Assistant Principals (PAPA ) Conference - Wilmington, NC    

Maureen O'Brien

On behalf of the School Island family, we wish to extend our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Maureen O’Brien of Warwick Valley.  It is with great sadness that we learned of her passing.  Always the professional and simply a nice person, Maureen could be counted on to share ideas and in so doing, it was evident she really cared about helping her colleagues and the students. Maureen has been a part of our lives for almost nine years. Her voice on the phone, visits to her school, and seeing her at meetings each year, will be missed.

As a member of the School Island family, this is your newsletter. If you have any comments, ideas for future newsletter articles, or suggestions for a School Island product feature or enhancement, please send them to support@schoolisland.com. We would love to hear from you!