The DataCation developers have been busy building features, based on user requests, to improve your experience with Skedula and our other portals. The features below will be rolled out from now through the fall. Student Submissions – We are currently beta testing our student work submission in approximately 15 schools. The student submissions can leverage the power of Google docs, but are flexible enough to allow uploads that do not use Google. When configuring the feature, schools will have the option to: 1. Allow teachers to use any Gmail account or restrict the teacher account to a certain domain, including the school’s Google apps domain 2. Allow students to use this feature through PupilPath without an email address or restrict student access to a certain domain, including the school’s Google apps domain Teachers will see this change to the create assignment attach file area: 1. Attach as Supplemental Material – this is the same as our current upload feature 2. Attach as Required Material – this will allow students to upload work documents through PupilPath. Teachers can attach an existing Google doc, a new Google doc or a Word, Excel or Powerpoint file. Teachers can also choose to allow students to upload miscellaneous files for their assignment.
When a student logs into PupilPath, they will have the option to open the Action document and complete the assignment. Parents and teachers will have a view only option for the assignment through PupilPath. If miscellaneous uploads are allowed, the student can upload their files through PupilPath.
Editable/upload for students only View only for parents and teachers
Submission assignments will have a document icon displayed in your gradebook or the Grade Assignments page that indicate the status of the student submission: Grey – missing/not submitted Yellow – submitted and pending review Green – submitted and reviewed
If the required document is a Google doc, teachers will have the full power and functionality of the Google platform to read and edit the student’s work, including comments. Teachers can choose to grade and lock the document from further editing or leave the document open so the student can revise their work.
Adding comments to student work:
Once graded, teachers can choose to publish the work to the Student Portfolio page. This will allow users to view student work throughout their enrollment at the school without having to keep file cabinets full of papers.
Following are two assignment scenarios and how our Student Submission Uploads will support the assignment. 1. The teacher assigns a book report on Catcher in the Rye a. Create an assignment called "Catcher in the Rye: Book Report" and attach 2 documents as Required Materials and one as Supplemental Material. b. Document 1 is named "Answer These Questions" and is a Google Document that has short answer questions listed with a blank spaces for the answers. c. Document 2 is named "Catcher in the Rye Book Report Book Report.doc" and is a Microsoft Word Document that describes what you expect the students to complete. d. Document 3 is named “Catcher in the Rye Book Report Rubric.doc” and is a Word Document that explains the grading rubric. e. When students go to complete the assignment, they have links to "Answer These Questions" and "Book Report.doc" and “Report Rubric.doc”. f. When the student clicks the Google document "Answer These Questions", a clone of the google document is created for that child, and the student is redirected to the new Google doc. g. When the student clicks the word document "Book Report.doc" they can download the doc and read the instructions. The student can then create the essay, in any editor of choice, and submit the new file into the placeholder for "Book Report.doc" h. When the student clicks “Book Report Rubric”, they can download the document that explains how the assignment is graded. i. When the teacher goes to grade the assignment, there will be a maximum of two documents, and they will be named "Answer These Questions" and "Book Report.doc" 2. Math project on the probability of color distribution of m&m’s vs. Skittles. This is free formed project so students can upload any files they want. Create an assignment called “Candy Color Distribution” and check “Allow misc uploads". a. When students go to complete the assignment, they can upload files of any type. Perhaps images of their experiment and scanned written calculations, a word document on their findings and an excel file with their data and charts. b. When the teacher goes to grade the assignment, each student will have his own set of varying documents. In either of these use cases, electronic upload is not only option. Students can always submit the assignment by hand, and it can still be graded as you would any other assignment. We know that once this is rolled out, our users will find amazingly creative ways to use this feature. Anecdotal Badges – Many of our schools have asked us for a way to quantify and track student anecdotals. We have designed and are testing a fully customizable way for schools to follow anecdotals. This feature allows schools to define weights (positive or negative) to each anecdotal type defined in Skedula.
Once the weights are defined, badges can be defined based on the total points earned by the student. The badges are fully customizable -‐ schools can set the point value, color and name of the badge. We hope this flexibility allows our schools to define the badges to match their school culture and grade levels.
The anecdotal search and filter area will be modified to include the weights and badges. In additional to the options available in the current filter (anecdotal type, student), users can filter based on number of points or badge type. The screen below is set to filter students who during the month of March, 2014 earned a badge of Needs Improvement. We hope that this increased functionality allows you to target students who are in need of an intervention or identify students who have exhibited stellar behavior.
The filter results will include the student’s badge, total points, and positive/negative point breakdown.
If a student has an anecdotal with negative points, we will offer a resolve function so this incident does not have to stay on the child’s record. Resolving an incident does not delete the anecdotal, it simply removes the negative point value from the student’s total points.
The badge and point values will be displayed next to the student picture in the Skedula student portfolio.
This information will be added as options in our form letter generator. The letter below is a sample of the type of letter that can be generated easily for each student. These reports have all of the features of our report generator including print and/or email options and automatic translation into home languages.
New Cutting Report – Our Cutting Report is getting new options – users will be able to define their own report based on their individual needs. The report options include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Start and End Dates Daily Attendance Value (Absent, Present, Late, Excused) Number of Course Absences Number of Course Presents Number of Course Lates Number of Course Excused Absences View individual teachers View individual courses View individual students View a data for a user defined group
Multiple filters can be defined, so you will be able to view a list of students who were marked present for daily attendance, but had at least 1 course absence to look for cutting. You can also look for
potential attendance reversals by viewing students marked absent for daily attendance, but present in more than 5 courses. Teachers will have the option to simply check a box to view a list of student who have cut their class.
The report displays the students (for each date you requested), their daily attendance value and the count of their course absences, presents, lates and excused absences. In typical DataCation style, clicking on the numbers in the student list will display the exact dates and courses for that attendance value.
As a complement to the Anecdotal Badge system, we will include a way to bulk add anecdotals based on this cutting report. Users can post a cutting anecdotal to all students listed on the cutting report in a few clicks.
Student Document Upload – Do you scan your blue cards or any other student documents? Do parents and students send you documents electronically? Are you tired of keeping piles of trip forms in cabinets? This feature, once opened, will allow you to upload documents into the student’s portfolio page. Only users with proper permission levels will be able to upload documents. Users with access to the student will be able to view the document.
New PupilPath Home Screen – Our development team met with a group of students to discuss the home screen on PupilPath. Based on the feedback, we have made the following changes: 1. To-‐Do List – To help students stay organized and focused on what is due next, we added a list where students can view their ungraded assignments and check off those that have been completed. Completed assignments can be removed from the list. 2. The class grade area has been updated to provide a stronger visual of student achievement
3. The Event Feed at the bottom of the screen has been divided into several tabs so information is easier to find. This homescreen will be rolled out to several testing schools shortly.
Native Skedula iPad App – Our current Skedula app is a web app made for all tablets. We rolled out our native iPad/iPhone PupilPath app this year and are currently working on our native iPad/iPhone Skedula app which is expected to rollout it the fall. This native app will provide our iPad and iPhone users with the native functionality they have on other native apps. Phase I will include attendance, grade input and several student portfolio views. These are some of the first screenshots available and do not even include Skedula styling. The screenshot at left is one of the edit attendance views which allows teachers to view and edit a student’s attendance by month. The next screenshot (at right) is one of the grading screens. Users will be able to use the grading icons (shown as button here) defined in Skedula to quickly add grades, use the top slider to enter any numeric grade and use the bottom slider to enter a curve from -‐100 to +100. Comments can also be entered. New DDC View/Edit Answer Screen – The DDC View/Edit Screen for exam responses is getting a full makeover. Users will no longer have to choose from a dropdown menu or scroll through pages for long exams. Data entry will function in a similar fashion to the Skedula gradebook. Users can type in the answer or point value and tab to the next cell. The current cell will have a blue frame to make it clear which student and question data is being entered for (see below). Valid answers will turn green when saved, invalid answers will turn red, indicating that they were not saved.
You may have noticed on the screenshot above that there is a box labeled Sheets for Alvernaz Munier, Gregory floating above the answer grid. We are very excited to provide our users with what they have been asking for – a way to view the student answer sheet directly on this screen. Clicking on this floating box will open the scanned answer document. This will make it easier for teachers to correct answers that may not have scanned properly. This page is in round 2 of testing and will be rolled out after round 3 is completed.
As always, we appreciate your feedback and are excited to use it to improve your Skedula experience. Rollouts of each of these features will be announced on our blog, which is available on your Skedula homescreen.