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Meeting Details: 3:00-4:30pm at the District Registration Center
Schools Represented: Dunn, Garcia, Henry, Kucera, Trapp, Werner
Cyberbullying: Principals will be introduced to the Keenan Safe Schools online training system this month. The effort to implement the cyberbullying course will commence after that, likely in February. Gradebook Programs: The committee has conducted an evaluation of the following programs: eSchool, Easy Grade Pro, and GradeQuick. The gradebook component of eSchool will be updated in the spring to include a standards component so the committee will review it again after this release. Some general comments were shared: - We own eSchool so it would not require funds to use this gradebook program. It would require funds for security features to allow teacher and student/parent home access. It also requires students to be loaded into courses via a master schedule, something we only do at the secondary level right now. It is a traditional gradebook - it does not currently have a standards component.
- Of the three programs, Easy Grade Pro did standards-based grading most effectively. It allows teachers to do traditional or standards-based grading. The standards-based student report states the standards with current grade on each and lists the assessments for each standard and the student's grade on each of these assessments. So it is very clear which standards are strong/weak and how each standard was assessed.
- GradeQuick had a nice interface but did not do an adequate job of reporting by standard. An assessment could be associated to one or more standards, but the standards report does not indicate what assessments were used to arrive at the score on that standard.
- Committee members expressed the desire to have DataDirector data auto-imported into the adopted gradebook program. However, the DataDirector representative said it is not possible and is not aware of any school district importing data from DataDirector into a gradebook program.
Technology Scope and Sequence: To meet state and federal requirements for ensuring students acquire technology and information literacy skills, the District Technology Plan indicates that Rialto will develop a scope and sequence of lessons at each grade level. These lessons will be embedded in the core content pacing guides and provide progressive skill development K-12. To initiate the development of this scope and sequence, the committee will ask teachers to submit lessons/activities they are currently using within the content areas. The committee developed an online survey that will be sent to teachers to seek their recommendations.
Meeting Details: 3:00-4:30pm at the Professional Development Center Schools Represented: Bemis, Carter, Eisenhower, Garcia, Henry, Kucera, Milor, Myers, Trapp, Werner Cyberbullying: Based on the committee's prior recommendations, all teachers and administrators will be asked to complete a 24 minute online course addressing the topic of cyberbullying. This course will be delivered through the Keenan SafeSchools online training system. The link to this system is on the district page under "Quick Links" and on every school's page under the "More..." link for staff. We hope to initiate rollout in January. Some schools expressed an interest in getting login information out to teachers before Winter Break.
eChalk Implementation: - Principals and eChalk site managers will receive a site level midyear implementation report from our eChalk representative. This report will include # of active accounts, # of teachers with class pages, # of visits to the school website, and more.
- Districtwide, 86% of teacher accounts are active, 62% of administrators, and 45% of students. Actual activation is slightly higher since "old" accounts have not been cleaned out of the system and all 4th and 5th grade students were added, even though not all are participating in Project eSTELLAR,which is introducing student accounts at elementary.
- eChalk Training for teachers was announced via email, providing 2 opportunities each month in January, February, and March for teachers to learn how to create and use a class webpage. Dates and registration are available via the Professional Development System.
- Parents participating in the Parent Institute through the new Parent Center are receiving hands-on training in how to access and use schools' eChalk sites.
Gradebook Program Evaluation - GradeQuick: The committee participated in an online demonstration of the GradeQuick web-based software application. - User interface is very friendly - mimics desktop software with traditional grid view of gradebook. Able to move quickly from one students' grade to another. System saves every 4 minutes or when switching screens.
- Traditional Grading View:
- Shows average, hi/low for each assignment.
- Sort assignment columns by date, name, category
- Can sort students by score on a particular assignment to quickly identify low performing students
- Scores are entered as points; can choose to weight an assignment within its category
- Varying grading scales; can assign unique scales to particular students (i.e. a different scale for RSP students)
- Standards-based Grading - Skills View:
- Standards are entered as "skills" in the system and associated to assignments in the traditional grading view.
- Can associate multiple skills with one assignment, but can only give one score for the assignment. To give a separate score for each skill within an assignment (i.e. a test that covers multiple standards), teacher would have to enter the assignment multiple times, once for each skill.
- Can set a rubric/scale for each skill
- Choose skill score calculation - average of all associated assignments, highest, latest, mode, or none
- Can manually override score for each skill
- Reports:
- Standards-based reporting: lists the skills and the calculated score for each. This report does not list the assignments associated to the skill and the scores on these (as we saw in Easy Grade Pro).
- Test report: lists the assignments and their scores. Does not show the related skill (standard) associated with each assignment.
- Additional Notes:
- Can add notes to an assignment, student, class and have them included on reports. Can keep private notes on students as well. Cannot create a note associated to an individual student's assignment score.
- Representative indicated that scores can be imported from DataDirector using the Testlink function (additional cost).
- Can administer online tests and have scores entered in gradebook using TestMaker module (additional cost).
Gradebook Evaluation - eSchoolPlus: The committee reviewed the gradebook of our existing student information system in February and determined that it did not support standards-based grading. However, the company plans to release an update that will address this. Noelle with work with Beth Ann in IT Dept to arrange a new demo session for the committee. Next Meeting: Thursday, January 7th 3pm at the District Registration Center
Meeting Details: 3:30-4:30pm at the District Registration Center Conference Room Schools Represented: Bemis, Carter, Curtis, Eisenhower, Kucera, Myers, Trapp New Year: New committee members were welcomed and encouraged to familiarize themselves with the meeting minutes from last year (available on this blog) and the new District Educational Technology Plan available on the committee's website. One of the primary goals of the committee this year will be to continue reviewing gradebook programs and develop a recommendation for districtwide adoption.
Gradebook Program Review - Easy Grade Pro: Brent Copeland, teacher at Kucera, demonstrated how he uses Easy Grade Pro for standards-based grading. The following provides a brief synopsis of the functionality. More details and a demo version can be downloaded from the company website. - Standards-based Grading: In addition to traditional point/percentage grading, EGP supports grading by standard. An assignment can be identified with one or more standards and the score for each of these standards can be entered. The resulting student report shows each standard, the assignments that addressed that standard, the score for each assignment, the overall score on the standard, and the overall score across all standards. Key standards can be weighted within the overall score for the class.
- Management: the student roster can be copied from one class to another; a student and his/her grades can be moved from one class to another (in the case of a student changing periods); teacher can hide/show dropped students; an assignment can be copied from one class to another
- Reports: a variety of reports are available with many options to customize each of them. The list includes a student progress report by standard, missing assignments, roster sheet, and more.
- Compatability: does have the ability to interface with student information system (eSchool) to auto-enroll students; can import from assessment software (DataDirector, student response systems); can export traditional grades (not standards-based grades) into eChalk.
- Additional Features: includes seating chart, attendance tracking, behavioral notes. Has an optional web-publishing subscription to provide parent access to
grades; also has a web-based version of the gradebook program (with yearly
subscription fee) that allows teachers to enter scores from any
computer.
Committee members suggested also reviewing GradeQuick and SnapGrades. Cyberbullying: All certificated staff will be expected to complete the online Cyberbullying course in the Keenan SafeSchools program. This course was selected by the committee last year to address the need to train staff in how to identify and address cyberbullying. The course takes 25 minutes to complete and can be done through any Internet-connected computer. Committee members recommended principals set aside time during a staff meeting to allow their staff to complete the course; a completion date of 1/1/2010 was agreed upon. An announcement via email will provide directions on how to access the training. eChalk Expectations: All teachers, counselors, and administrators need to activate their eChalk account so they are listed in the Faculty & Staff directory on the school homepage. As part of the activation process, they need to verify the email settings are configured to forward mail to Outlook. Teachers are also strongly encouraged to establish a class page with a copy of their parent letter/syllabus; this class page can then be used to support technology integration and parental involvement. Schools are also expected to post their school events on the school calendar which will be used to automatically generate a districtwide calendar of school events. Each site has an eChalk site manager to assist staff in achieving these goals.
Next Meeting: October 1st, 3:30-4:30, District Registration Center Conference Room
Meeting Details: 3:00-4:15pm at the District Registration Center Conference Room Schools Represented: Bemis, Boyd, Carter, Curtis, Eisenhower, Rialto Middle, Trapp; Also present: Safety & Security, CWA
Cyberbullying: - The two online courses available for training teachers on this issue were reviewed. The committee recommends that all teachers and site administrators be required to complete the Keenan Safe Schools course. This course takes approximately 25 minutes to complete and can be completed online anytime, anywhere. Completion can be monitored by administrative reports in the system.
- Noelle Kreider presented a variety of free curriculum materials teachers can use to instruct students in the topic of cyberbullying. NetSmartz is linked on all schools' homepages and provides games and songs for elementary and video vignettes for secondary. CyberSmart provides lesson plans with related worksheets and online resources. Teachers who complete the online iSAFE training can also access this organization's curriculum materials.
- Jerry Sturmer and Floyd Braggs recommended the student AUP include clear language explaining the cyberbullying law to students.
District Technology Plan: The revised plan for 2009-2012 was approved by the state and will be presented for board adoption this month. This plan is required as a condition of various technology funding from the state and federal level. The plan is available on the Educational Technology Committee website. - Technology Scope & Sequence: The most significant task identified in the plan is to integrate a technology scope and sequence into the core content area timelines with key lessons at each grade level. These will help us meet and show evidence of achieving the NCLB goal for students to achieve technology literacy by the end of 8th grade. This will be the primary focus of this committee next year.
- Electronic Gradebook Program: The plan also requires the committee to continue evaluation of gradebook programs next year. eSchool's gradebook feature was evaluated in February; Easy Grade Pro will be evaluated early next school year.
New Helpdesk System: The IT Dept has implemented a new helpdesk system. This system will require users to indicate their computer name when submitting a problem - Noelle showed how to locate this information and recommended teachers label their computers with this information for easy access. Teachers will receive an email when an incident is reported for them and again when it is resolved. They will have 3 days to respond to this notice if they feel the problem was not resolved. Kidspiration 3.0: K-12 Voucher (aka Microsoft settlement) funds were used to upgrade to this new version, which includes math tools. IT Dept is pushing the installation out across the network to all teacher and student computers at elementary schools. Secondary school teachers can request installation as needed (ie: for Special Education). Noelle has provided multiple training sessions and will continue to do so next year. Training videos are also available online. Other:- Student file security was discussed. Secondary students are encouraged to store their electronic files in eChalk to prevent tampering. Each secondary student has 50mb of storage in their eChalk account. Concerns about large media files were discussed and suggestions were offered for compression. Questions or problems regarding the use of eChalk should be directed to Noelle Kreider.
- Noelle reported that IT Dept is currently evaluating a product by NComputing that allows one computer to serve multiple users. This could help address the age of our computers - 56% of student computers are over 4 years old.
This was the last committee meeting of the year.
Meeting Details: 2-4:30pm at the Technology Learning Center, District Education Center Schools Represented: Bemis, Boyd, Casey, Carter, Curtis, Eisenhower, Fitzgerald, Henry, Jehue, Kucera, Trapp eSchool Gradebook Review: One of the goals in the District Educational Technology plan is to evaluate and implement a common gradebook program (either districtwide or across all schools at the same level). To begin this process, the committee conducted a review of the gradebook functionality available in the existing eSchool system. This functionality is currently de-activated, but could be activated if it meets the needs of our district. Committee members and several IT Department employees participated in a phone conference with a Pentamation company representative to preview how the gradebook component of eSchool functions. - Configuration and System Management: An overview was provided on how the gradebook component of eSchool would function "on the back-end." The following items need to be configured at the district or building (school) level on the system prior to implementation.
- Categories: These must be set up at the building level. They can be copied from one building to another. Typically, these include items such as homework, tests, etc. Teachers cannot create categories - they can only select from the list set up at the building level.
- Grading Scales: All grading scales and their "level tables" are set up at the building level. This includes scales such as A-F, 1-4, Pass/Fail, and unique scales used for special needs students.
- Terms: The grading periods must be established at the administrative level as well as the policy for calculating combination of grades for a marking period. For example, if the semester grade will be a 50-50 weight of the quarter 1 and 2 grades, this must be configured. Teachers can be given access to adjust the weighting.
- Alpha Marks: These are set up at the administrative level to allow teachers to enter codes such as EXC for excused in their gradebook. How these codes are treated must also be configured at this level. Examples were excused is not counted toward grade, but missing is counted as a zero.
- Teacher Access Options: From the administrative side of the system, teachers can be allowed/denied access to various options including calculation (round or truncate scores) and grade scale selections, ability to override students' calculated grades.
- Teacher Perspective: A demonstration of the gradebook from the teacher's perspective was provided by the company representative.
- Define Categories: To begin use of the gradebook, the teacher selects the categories of assignments to include in the gradebook. (The categories are defined at the building level, so the teacher cannot add categories.) The teacher can choose to use points-based grading or category weighting. For each category selected, the teacher determines the weight, number of lowest scores to drop, and how missing scores are handled (count as zero or exclude from calculation).
- Grading Scale: For each class, the teacher can choose a grading scale from the scales set up on the administrative side of the system. The teacher can also assign a different grading scale to individual students, such as a modified grading scale for special needs students.
- Entering Assignments: The teacher enters the date assigned (optional), date due, category, extra credit (optional), maximum points, weight within the category. When the Parent Access Center is used, the teacher can also choose to publish the assignment and/or scores and attach related files.
- Entering Scores: The traditional grid display does retain the header at the top and student information on the left as the teacher scrolls down/right. A Default Grade button provides auto-fill functionality and teachers can enter established codes such as EXC for excused.
- Notes: Teachers can use the notes icon to keep general notes about a student (ie: behavior, conferences, etc.). Each note is dated and can be published to the Parent Access Center. Teachers can also add notes to individual assignment scores for a student. It was not clear if these notes will appear on any of the reports or in the parent view.
- Reports: The Student Detail report provides an individual student report of all assignments and their scores by category. The Missing Assignments report also provides individual reports. The Score Threshold report shows which students scored above/below a teacher-defined level on a selected assignment or in their overall class grade - useful for identifying students in need of intervention. All reports are retained in a report list by date for easy retrieval and verification of reporting frequency.
- Term Grades: Teachers can choose to load term grades automatically from the gradebook and can also override individual grades. Grades that combine multiple terms (ie: semester may be a 50-50 combination of quarter 1 and 2 grades) are calculated based on school level settings. It appeared that teachers could not set the gradebook to continue grading across multiple terms - current grade calculations are based on current term only. The committee expressed several concerns about this - many teachers set their gradebook to continue throughout the semester, and the current grade would not be an accurate reflection of the semester grade. (Reports may show a student is doing well in Q2, but when the quarters are combined for the final semester grade, it may actually be lower if the student struggled in Q1.)
- Standards: This gradebook does not currently support the use of standards. The committee discussed the possibility of setting up categories by standard or major concepts instead of by assignment type, but this could be a very cumbersome list since each subject area at each grade level may have a unique list. The company representative indicated some upcoming enhancements may provide standards-related functions - he will investigate and report back on this.
- Elementary teachers expressed concerns about grading by standard because the list of standards they must address across all content areas is very lengthy. Concern was also expressed regarding the elementary report card not reflecting standards-based grading.
Other Gradebook Programs: Brent Copeland at Kucera discussed how he uses the standards-based grading tools of Easy Grade Pro and offered to provide a demonstration at a future meeting.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:30pm. The next meeting date will be sent out to committee representatives. Reminders: Committee members should be evaluating the two cyberbullying online courses and submitting their feedback via the discussion board on the committee's eChalk group page.
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