The school message board is a tool that administrators, teachers, parents and students all love. No more forgetting what homework was assigned. No more repeating the same message twenty-seven times. Less confusion, less hassle, more time for important tasks. Making the Right Choice of School Message BoardGet tips on how to choose a school message board that works for you in our new article.
Every teacher knows the challenge of explaining unfamiliar terms and concepts in a way that students can understand. Of course you need to find the right words to convey your meaning. But some students also need a visual image in order to grasp abstract information. And in today's world, in which anyone can record a video clip and post it on YouTube for the world to see, moving images are increasingly the order of the day.
IQity's E-Learning Components
I face a similar challenge in explaining the features of the IQity learning management suite to teachers and school administrators. There are so many facets to the IQity platform to explain. There's the Learning Management System that provides the infrastructure of a virtual school: homeroom, classrooms, whiteboard, message center, and so on. There are the tools that help students prepare for the Ohio Graduation test: the study guides and practice tests.
There's the award-winning curriculum, aligned to state standards, which teachers can choose to use. And now there's Reactor, a virtually unlimited repository of lessons, videos, labs, study guides and other content that's been vetted by experienced educators and aligned with state standards.
Videos Highlight Features
You can see that it's lot to cover, especially when educators are pressed for time. At IQity, we decided to take a lesson from teachers ourselves. We've added several excellent videos to our site that show what IQity offers.
If your school is interested in a distance learning program or in adding a blended learning option for your students, check out these informative presentations at IQity.
Report cards for Ohio school districts, required by state law and the No Child Left Behind Act, come out today. Changes in the way the ratings are calculated will make it hard to make apples-to-apples comparisons to earlier ratings. In addition, the multiple components of the rating system may be somewhat confusing for parents who want a snapshot of how their child's school is performing.
What's on the Report Card
The element that gets the most attention is the rating. There are six, ranging from "excellent with distinction" to "academic emergency." While it will be easy for parents to compare this year's rating with last year's, the rating does not tell the whole story. Other indicators are:
Proficiency rates. This is the result of standardized tests given in the primary and secondary grades.
Performance Index Score. A way to measure average scores on the proficiency tests.
Graduation rates. The state goal is a 90% graduation rate, one that urban districts struggle to come near.
Attendance rates. The benchmark is 93% attendance. Some schools find attendance surprisingly hard to measure, especially in districts with transient populations.
Federal measure. An evaluation of how well the district met the goals of the No Child Left Behind Act for progress in math and reading.
Value-Added. This is a new measure of how much students learned in the past year. It responds to research like that featured in our August 19 post.
Improving Scores
Many school districts appreciate the addition of the Value-Added measure this year. It helps overcome the lower ratings they have received in the past because of lagging achievement in certain groups of students, such as immigrants for whom English is not their native language and special-education students. For some students who struggle in a traditional classroom, online education can be a viable alternative. Contact IQity to find out more.
If you haven't read the report on K-12 online learning by the North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL), you should take a look. It details the remarkable growth in online education in elementary grades across the nation and examines fundamental questions about online learning, including the biggest question of all: does it work?
Online Classes Meet Many Needs
The report notes that most online educational programs use highly qualified teachers, learning management software, and digital course content to meet a range of student needs. The most common reason school districts cite for introducing online learning is to provide a wider range of courses, particularly advanced courses for which teachers are in short supply.
Online Learning Successful
NACOL reports that "the research suggests that online education is as good as or better than face-to-face teaching and learning." Using results from the 2005-2006 school year, NACOL notes that the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), Ohio’s largest charter eSchool with over 7,000 students statewide, moved into the Continuous Improvement category ahead of most of the state’s urban school districts in achievement. For the 2006-2007 school year, many of Ohio's public school districts used ECOT’s online practice tests to prepare their students for the testing.
IQity contributes to success
The ECOT charter school was the first to use IQity's learning management suite as the foundation for its online school. The Ohio Graduation Test study guides and practice tests that are part of the IQity learning management suite are now widely used to help both online students and those in bricks-and-mortar schools prepare for the state's standardized test, which students must pass to graduate high school.
IQity's award-winning curriculum is aligned with state standards, increasing student's potential to pass the graduation test. Soon teachers will be able to choose from a limitless variety of lessons aligned with state standards in the REACTOR learning object database.
