Mastery Connect: Standards Based Grading made manageable

What it is: Mastery Connect is both an online standards tracking tool (parts of it are free) and a free iPhone/iPod/iPad app.  Because the app is truly free, I’ll start with it.  The Mastery Connect app is a handy way to keep the Common Core standards accessible while you teach.  The app sorts the common core standards by grade level, subject and strand.  This is REALLY nice for quickly locating and referencing standards.  Mastery Connect the website is the real gem.  The site is brilliantly designed, easy to navigate, aesthetically pleasing and best of all, it works the way you think it should.  With the Mastery Connect Master Tracker, teachers can assess core standards, monitor student performance and report student progress to parents and administrators.  Master Tracker makes formative assessment that is standards based manageable to keep track of.  Rearrange standards in the Master Tracker based on the order that you teach them in.  View only the standards you are currently assessing, and view the entire standard as a pop-up.  Within Mastery Connect, teachers can create and share common assessments.  Similar in feel to other social networks, Mastery Connect lets you connect with other educators to share assessments, interact and offer each other support.  It is easy to expand your PLN into the space, just find teachers with similar interests and goals and start sharing!

And now for my VERY favorite part- bubble sheet scoring. Mastery Connect uses GradeCam technology to make assessment about as quick as it could be.  Just hold up bubble sheets to your webcam or a document cam and it is instantly scored and entered into the Master Tracker associated with the student it belongs to and the standard it is addressing.  Seriously cool.  I am not a big fan of multiple choice testing (mostly because I think it is a lazy way to find out what a student knows and doesn’t give a true picture of what a student knows or can do) but I think I have figured out how bubble sheets can be used by teachers during formative assessment.  Students get immediate feedback from Mastery Connect and can see where in the standards they need some extra work.  Teachers can view class wide item analysis of assessment and can track progress by standard.

Students can also use iDevices (iPad/iPodTouch) with the bubble sheet app.  This is connected to Master Tracker so as soon as students input answers, it shows up live.  Are you feeling your assessment work-load lighten yet?

Students can also take assessments using any web browser.  It really is a tool that works for schools with minimal tech, to schools that have ubiquitous tech.

Mastery Connect exports to ANY gradebook or student information system.  A one touch export feature makes it about as quick as it could be!

Mastery Connect makes it quick and easy to keep parents informed of student progress.  Student reports can be quickly created and emailed or printed out for parents.  You can also enable parent notifications that will notify parents of student progress as it is entered.

How to integrate Mastery Connect into the classroom: Mastery Connect is actually the tracking tool we will be using at the school I am starting, Anastasis Academy.  We are doing away with traditional A, B, C, D, F grades all together.  I have yet to be convinced that traditional grading is productive and helpful for students (or teachers for that matter).

At Anastasis Academy, we are using the Common Core Standards as a framework for setting learning goals.  I see these standards as the critical-mass-of-knowledge that students need to be successful in learning.  Hear me say, I DO NOT believe that these standards are comprehensive of everything a child should, or wants to know.  They are simply the framework that we will use to build the rest of learning around.  They will help us to ensure that we have a rough road map of where we are headed in learning.  Students, teachers and parents will sit down for a conference each block and use those Common Core Standards to help map out learning goals.  You will notice that we don’t leave this up to teachers alone.  We want our students to have ownership and a say in what their learning looks like.  We don’t want the teacher to be the holder of all the keys, slowly revealing learning to students as they see fit.  Instead, we want students who can look at the learning ahead of them, and offer input about how they would like to go about that learning with parents and teachers acting as guide.  The Mastery Connect app will be SO helpful in this process.  Everyone will be able to access those standards easily at any time they need to recall them.  Brilliant.

We will use Mastery Connect a little differently than I’m sure most schools will.  Instead of bombarding students with multiple choice “bubble” quizzes and assignments, our bubble sheets will be for teacher use.  For example, we may create a bubble sheet based on a standard with the specific skills or content that we are looking for.  As we formatively assess students, the teacher can fill in that bubble sheet either on paper or on the iPad for instant input into Master Tracker.

Tips: I have been extremely impressed with all of the Mastery Connect tools.  Not all of it is free but the portion that is not free is very affordable ($4/student/year).  I like that Mastery Connect offers parent, teacher and student all of the information and tools they need to understand where they are and how they are learning.  The people at Mastery Connect have been dynamite, they are helpful, flexible and friendly!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Mastery Connect  in your classroom!

Grade Trac: Piles of paper to grade got anyone down?

How many of you are stuck in a school *wishing* that you had more technology…especially one to one technology?  How many of you look longingly at the schools that are able to use Google forms or Turn It In to make assessment easier and more useful?

Grade Trac is a program that makes grading faster, easier, and provides teachers with more useful information to guide planning and learning in the classroom.

Grade Trac automates paper grading while offering increased accuracy and provides teachers with useful information that can be used to plan learning.  Grade Trac has shown to reduce grading time by 30% to 70%!  Pretty amazing…anyone need a weekend back?

Grade Trac automates the grading process of paper assignments, quizzes, and tests. Multiple choice questions get graded automatically, written or short answer style questions can be graded using the Grade Trac Rapid grading feature online.  Students grades and benchmark scores are automatically computed and displayed in Grade Trac.  These grades and benchmark scores can be printed for easy gradebook entry.  Teachers can quickly view a summary for an entire class…this makes it easy to determine what reteaching or next steps are necessary for learning.  After an assignment/quiz/test has been scored, teachers can generate a PDF hand back for students showing their answer, the correct answer, and comments.

Grade Trac also provides a place for teachers to create custom answer sheets with a mix of multiple choice, short answer, and essay questions.  The answer sheets can be enhanced with question text and pictures.  Everything you build in Grade Trac can be reused by you, and shared with other teachers in your school.

Grade Trac is brilliant in the way that it works.  First, teachers create an assignment, quiz, or assessment using the Grade Trac performance benchmark selection and question editor.  The assignment/quiz/assessment gets printed.  Students fill out the paper assignment/quiz/assessment.  These assignments/quizzes/assessments get scanned and all of their information is instantly uploaded to the Grade Trac website.  Any multiple choice questions get graded automatically.  The Rapid grading feature is my personal favorite- this is for grading written answers.  Let me give you an example of how this works, let’s say that we have 5 written questions.  Answer #1 shows up below the answer key for the first student.  The teacher can add comments and annotations as they grade.  Then they can view the next student’s answer for #1, and the next students, and so on until ALL of #1 is graded.  Fantastic!  This makes grading SO much easier.  Anyone else ever been grading and lost track of the number you were on and then suddenly wonder why a student is getting EVERY answer wrong?  (At least I hope I’m not the only one who has done that!).  When you are finished with the grading, you get a great summary of each question.  This is an at-a-glance resource for finding out what needs to be re-taught and where students need more challenge.  The grade summary helps guide your lesson planning.  The student hand back can be in pdf form or printed with all of the comments and annotations.

Essentially Grade Trac takes all of that paper grading and automates it, letting you grade it online.  No more taking stacks and stacks of paper home to grade.  Grade Trac puts everything online so all you need is an internet connection.  Pretty cool huh?  So, no more pouting that your school is in the dark ages, take this step and help them make inroads into the 21st century all ready!

Grade Trac was created by a parent of one of my students, he asked if I knew of 5 teachers that might like to try Grade Trac for FREE?  He would love to hear stories from the trenches of how Grade Trac works for you, what you might change, add, or delete from the program.  Not only will you get to use Grade Trac for free, you will get one on one support, guidance, training,  and fantastic customer support.

If you would like to be one of the five to test out Grade Trac at your school, leave a comment with your name, grade you teach, where you teach, and a way to contact you.  Five of you lucky ducks are going to say goodbye to piles of paper and use Grade Trac for FREE!

School Tool

What it is: School Tool is a collection of free administrative software for schools.  This is a student information system that includes demographics, gradebook, attendance, calendaring and reporting for primary and secondary schools.  It also provides a framework for building customized applications and configurations to meet the needs of your school.

How to integrate School Tool into the classroom:  School Tool is an excellent alternative to expensive information systems.  This open source solution is a great way to save some educational technology dollars to spend on additional hardware or infrastructure.  If your school is looking at implementing a new comprehensive information system, definitely take a look at School Tool.  

 

Tips:  School Tool has documentation to help with installation and setup, an administrators handbook, a developers handbook, and a glossary of usage.  These documents should have you up and running in no time!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using School Tool in your classroom.

RCampus

 

What it is:  RCampus is a collaborative environment that is a one-stop shop for everything school related.  RCampus utilizes Open Education Management system that makes it easy to build personal and group websites, manage courses, eportfolios, academic communities, build rubrics, connect students with tutors, and a book exchange.  All of these tools are FREE for students and faculty.  This would be a great place to organize your classroom life and keep your students organized.  Everything is integrated making management very simple.  Students stay well informed and communication opportunities grow with RCampus.

How to integrate RCampus into the classroom:  This is an outstanding place to keep your classroom organized and easily managed.  Eportfolios are a great way for students to showcase learning, RCampus makes it easy to communicate, assess, and assist througout the year as students build their portfolios.  Set up courses where you can manage everything from one central location.  Grade, communicate, and keep yourself organized with the RCampus integrated learning and course management.  Rubrics are fast and easy to create and can be printed out or used with the RCampus click to grade system that lets you grade students from the gradebook with just a few clicks.  Students  can use RCampus to find an online tutor and teachers can sign up to be tutors on RCampus.  Trade books with no fees using the RCampus book exchange.  This is a great place to swap books with other teachers and students.  RCampus has excellent tools for communicating with parents, students, grading, and organizing your classroom, check it out!

 

Tips: RCampus is free and open access, easy and quick, highly secure, collaborative, life long, cross campus, comprehensive, and user centric.  It is the total package for classrooms and schools!

 

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using RCampus in your classroom.

Engrade

What it is: Engrade is a free online gradebook that allows teachers to manage their classes online as well as post grades, assignments, attendance, and upcoming homework online for students and parents to see. Engrade makes it easy for parents, teachers, and students to communicate and stay in contact. The free Engrade suite offers a gradebook that automatically calculates grades and provides tools for custom grading scales and weighting assignments, an attendance book that automatically emails parents with absences, a homework calendar for students and parents, and online student reports where students can view their grades, homework and attendance in real time.

How to integrate Engrade into the classroom: Engrade makes it simple to quickly post homework assignments, edit students grades, and take attendance all in one easy to use online interface. Best of all, since Engrade is online based, teachers can update grades and homework assignments from anywhere. Engrade is a wonderful way to keep parents and students informed of grades, homework assignments, and absences in one place. Communication between school and home has never been easier! Engrade is a secure, password protected site so there are no concerns about privacy or security of grades.

Tips: Be sure to check out the Teacher page on Engrade and all of the features that are offered. This truly is an amazing product!

Grade Connect

 

What it is: Grade Connect is an online course management system that streamlines and enhances communication between teachers, students, and parents. It is free to use. It includes a secure online gradebook, announcement and assignment posting, and convenient email system.

How to Integrate Grade Connect into the classroom: Use Grade Connect to make teacher/parent communication more efficient and effective. Post assignments online so that students can easily check on the weeks activities and homework.

Tips: Watch the demo of Grade Connect before signing up to see if it fits your needs.