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Happy Holidays!!!
Ready to take in all the holiday festivities, School Island
is decked out in its finest ... features, of course. Thanks
to your incredible suggestions, School Island continues
to be the best study and review experience around! In this
issue, learn about new features and updates. Also, in this
issue... find out about the Top Five Education trends. |
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New
Features / Updates |
For
Teachers & Administrators
Assignment Cumulative Reports
The Assignment Cumulative Reports
now display an answer distribution
for each question in the assignment. This distribution is found
in the Question section near the top of the report, to
the right of the question number. For each question, the number
of students who selected each possible multiple choice answer is
displayed. For example:
1: 10 2: 5 3: 7 4: 5
Note: Answer choices for older assignments were not stored;
therefore, you may see "data not stored" for some assignments.
More on
Assignment Cumulative Reports
The Assignment Class Cumulative
Report allows you to view actual student answers to
individual questions for short answer assignments. To view a
student's answers (first attempt and retry, if any):
- Display an Assignment
Class Cumulative Report.
- Scroll down to the
Individual Question Results portion of the report (at
the bottom).
- Click any status indicator
(the graphic that indicates correct, incorrect, or correct
on retry). The student's response to the question displays
in a pop-up window.
Note: Student responses for
older assignments may not be available.
For
Administrators
New Administrator Account Option
A new option for School Island Administrator accounts has
been added, which allows the Administrator to view all
Administrative Reports. It does not, however, allow the
Administrator to perform any maintenance functions. The
Supervisory Rights Only check box is available on the
Edit Account page and is only visible when
Administrator is the selected User Type. Check this check
box when you wish to restrict the Administrator to viewing
reports. This option allows your school to separate reporting
functions (generally used by Principals and Superintendents)
from maintenance functions (generally performed by Technical
Administrators).
Note: Supervisory Administrators still have full access to
the Student Home page and the Teacher Home page.
Password Strength Meter
School Island accounts are
valuable resources. The Profile pages for
Administrators and Teachers as well as the Administrator's
Add/Edit Account pages include a Password Meter for
measuring the security (or strength) of a password used for
protecting a user account. Be sure to choose a password whose
strength is at least 'Medium'.
What makes a strong password?
- At least 12 characters
- A combination of letters
and numbers
- At least one special
character, such as !@#$%^&*()+-=)
In addition:
- Do not use
names of people you know or favorite sports teams, hobbies,
etc.
- Do not use
parts of phone numbers or e-mail addresses
- Consider using a
pass-phrase (up to 50 characters) including spaces
Other Updates
Minor changes have also been made to the Add Account
page and the Edit Account page. Previously,
the two check boxes related to the Teacher user type was
grayed out when Teacher was not selected. These two check
boxes are now hidden when Teacher is not selected.
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Five Top Trends in Education
According to
"What’s Hot and What’s Not as Your Child Heads
Back to School" By Judy Molland, the following
are the top 5 education trends:
1
Academic Redshirting
–
To provide what some believe to be an academic edge in today’s
competitive classrooms, many parents are postponing their
children’s entry into kindergarten until they are older in the
grade than their peers. The practice is known as "academic redshirting".
Contrary to beliefs, a 2002 study by the National Institute for Early
Education found that, on average, older children do not
academically outperform their younger peers.
2
Student-Led Conferences
– In many districts across the country,
teachers are
switching to longer, student-led conferences
rather than
inviting parents to that oft-hurried, sit-down meeting at the
teacher’s desk.
Sara
Lawrence-Lightfoot, an education professor at Harvard University
and author of The Essential Conversation: What Parents
and Teachers Can Learn From Each Other notes that
there may be issues parents and teachers want to discuss without
the student present. This would necessitate a separate meeting.
As a compromise, student-led conferences have generally been taking
place in the spring, with many teachers still favoring a
traditional parent-teacher conference in the fall.
3
K-8 Schools Replacing
Middle Schools
– Around the country, several urban school districts have
started to abandon the traditional model of middle schools in
favor of a combined elementary and middle school covering grades
K-8. For example, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, New Orleans, and Philadelphia are among
school districts who have merged their middle
schools into K-8 schools over the last decade. Many educators
believe combining the middle and elementary grades in one school
makes the transition easier to middle school easier. The primary
reason is that students already know
the rules and expectations. In addition, students are already
familiar with their
teachers and friends as well as where their classes are located.
Lastly, K-8
schools also tend to have more parent involvement and fewer
discipline problems than middle schools.
4
Laptops for All?
– By the fall of 2003, nearly 100 percent of U.S. public schools
had Internet access, compared to just 35 percent in 1995. The
ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet
access in public schools also improved, from 12:1 in 1998 to
about 4:1 in 2003. As for the laptop revolution...although
few states have specific programs to place laptops or hand-held
technologies within schools, the percentage of students with
access to such technologies is inching up. Currently, only
Maine, Michigan, and New Mexico have state-sponsored laptop
programs for public school students. Statistics show, however,
that there is a gradual increase in the number of
individual schools nationwide who provide students with laptops.
5
Lengthening the School
Day
– Several charter schools in the Los Angeles area have
lengthened both their school days and years to help at-risk
students. The city’s Camino Nuevo Charter Academy features
after-school enrichment programs running until 6:00 p.m. most
days, and an extended school year of 195 days. Other public
schools in the area are now on a year-round schedule to pack in
more academics. On the flip side, rural-area school districts in at least 12
states are experimenting with a shorter school week to save money on
things like transportation and heating.
Source:
For the complete article, go to
ParentHood.com -
What’s Hot and What’s Not as Your Child Heads
Back to School By Judy Molland
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Statistics
& Surveys
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Food for thought...
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According to a U.S. Department of Education report in 2000, the
most recent figures available, about 9 percent of first- and
second-graders started kindergarten a year late. Experts say the
trend has continued. When this happens, the age gap within one
class is often 16 months or more, and that poses a challenge for
teachers, who are also concerned that the older children may
become bored and act out.
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An Iowa State University (ISU) study surveyed 1,500 schools
across the nation in 2001 and found that 24 percent of
fifth-graders were leading conferences, says Donald Hackmann, a
professor of educational administration at ISU. In a more recent
study of 98 “highly successful middle schools,” Hackmann found
nearly 40 percent had turned to students to explain their own
learning.
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While
there
are many supporters of K-8 schools, some parents point out the
downsides: since the schools have much smaller groups of sixth-
through eighth-graders, they usually don’t offer the wide range
of electives typically found at a middle school. Some observers
also worry that the transition to high school is much more
jarring for students who have been “sheltered” at the same
elementary school for nine years. In addition, while some
parents might worry that adolescents in a K-8 school would have
a bad influence on the younger children, the National Middle
School Association (NMSA) cites other concerns. NMSA is not
against K-8 schools, but does not see them as a quick fix to
middle-school problems of curriculum and instruction that have
been blamed for many students’ lack of achievement
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In the 2003-2004 school year, 13.3 percent of instructional
computers were laptops, compared with 12.4 percent in the
previous year. That same year, 8 percent of public schools lent
laptop computers to students for periods ranging from a week to
the entire school year, while 6 percent planned to make laptops
available for students to borrow in the upcoming school year.
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In Miami, FL new Superintendent of Schools Rudy Crew has created
a School Improvement Zone for a group of 39 schools where
academic performance is suffering. Kids at these schools now
spend an extra hour in class four days a week, and have 10 extra
school days per year.
Source:
ParentHood.com -
What’s Hot and What’s Not as Your Child Heads
Back to School By Judy Molland |
Conferences
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Coming Up!
The
following conferences are coming up:
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Quick
Links
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Education Links
For
more information about education-related issues, check out the following sites:
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From Our Mailbag |
Question: I currently use
School Island and am trying to encourage other teachers in
my district to use it too. I have published some of my
assignments, but I am not sure how other teachers can access
these public assignments. Can you give me directions, please?
Answer: You've asked a good
question about one of our newer School Island advanced
features! We're glad to hear you are making use of published
assignments. Once an assignment is published, its questions
become available for import into a School Island
assignment created by any other teacher within the school
district.
Let's say, for example, you have published an assignment in
Integrated Algebra and your colleague, Jane, who has a teacher
account at another campus within your school district, wants to
use questions from one of those assignments. Have your colleague
do the following:
- Click
the Assignments link found on the Teacher Home
page.
- Select
the appropriate course from the drop-down menu available
from the Short Answer tab of the Assignments
page. For example: Integrated Algebra.
- Scroll
down below the list of assignments; enter a new assignment
name in the available field; then click
Create New Short Answer
Assignment.
- Go to
the Edit Assignment page and click the
Import Questions link under Assignment
Options
(right column).
- Click
the Public Assignments tab (the blue tab) found on
the Import Questions to Assignment page.
- Make
sure the Integrated Algebra course (the course in
which you created the public assignment) is selected in the
drop-down menu.
- Click
the Import link for the desired assignment from the
list of assignments.
- Browse
and select the desired questions, then click Import
Checked Questions. The selected questions from the
public assignment are now added to Jane's new assignment.
Your colleague may continue to add or import additional
questions to complete his/her assignment, if desired.
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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!
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