Thursday, December 10, 2009

Implementation Corner - H1N1 Preparedness

Tired of students being out sick and missing key concepts? Losing teaching time from severe weather days? As educators, we are responsible for teaching in even the most challenging circumstances. Whether your school is closed due to the flu, severe weather, or just for the holiday break, it is important to be prepared.

Here are some helpful hints about how to use Study Island in the event that your school needs to close:

  1. Create work packets using Study Island Printable Worksheets. Send these packets home with children ahead of time and let parents know that this work will help keep the student from falling behind if school were to close unexpectedly.
  2. Post assignments, notes, and announcements in Class Manager. Remember: Teachers can even do this from home!
  3. Communicate with parents and students through the Message Center.
  4. Instruct teachers on how to use the Study Island Community Forums for common planning from a distance. Register at forums.studyisland.com/forum.
  5. Contact your local libraries and coordinate efforts to help parents access Study Island from public computers.
For more information about preparing for the flu, visit www.ed.gov or www.flu.gov. Contact implementation@studyisland.com to schedule a complementary conference call. We'll help you create your H1N1 preparedness plan and provide Printable Worksheets to encourage home usage.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Archipelago Learning licenses ITN Source and Education Clip Library content to aid learning online

Study Island will, as part of the upcoming Version 3 (v3) enhancements, be providing Lesson Plans and videos for teaching various concepts. As part of this tremendous new feature our parent company, Archipelago Learning made this announcement:

New York, November 30, 2009

ITN Source, a division of UK news production company ITN and the world’s largest provider of archive video footage, has signed a deal with Archipelago Learning. ITN Source will provide content to Archipelago Learning’s Study Island product, a leading online standards-based assessment, instruction, practice, and test preparation program for the U.S. K-12 educational market.

Under the agreement ITN Source will provide hundreds of clips from its archive and the division’s Education Clip Library product, a unique online portal of rich educationally-contextualized video learning objects. Education Clip Library is specifically aimed at educational publishers and curriculum content providers who are looking to augment their educational products with inspiring video content to address multiple learning styles.

In recent years, video has begun to find its way into schools beyond cable and DVDs, and ITN Source and Archipelago Learning are expanding this trend. US Department of Labor studies show information retention is significantly greater when lessons are presented both visually and orally. Reports confirm that up to 65% can be retained from a presentation using visual and oral tools versus an expected 10% from a standalone oral discussion. In addition, many teachers are too pressed for time and cannot show an entire video during each class. However, online video products enable teachers to show two-minute clips that illustrate or reinforce what they are teaching.

“Today’s students are more media and tech savvy than ever and we recognize the opportunity to add education tools that are presented in a medium which appeals to students’ visual and oral attention,” said Cathy Caldwell, Vice President, Publishing. “We’ve signed on with ITN Source for access to hundreds of clips through the Education Clip Library, which covers a broad range of subjects for different educational stages. We’re excited to have this education-focused content in our hands, helping bring digital technology that students are familiar with to their school life and enable enhanced teaching methodologies.”

Nan Halperin, Business Development Manager for Education of ITN Source said: “Archipelago Learning is such an exciting and fast growing organization and we’re delighted to be working with them. The agreement is unique in that not only will they use educationally contextualized material from Education Clip Library but will also have access to our one million hours of rich archive footage spanning three centuries. Our goal is to help transform educator tools for the 21st century. By partnering with Archipelago Learning we’re making our concept of video learning a reality in the US.”

For further information please contact:
John Nolan, ITN Source, 00 44 207 430 4216
Email: John.Nolan@itnsource.com

About ITN Source
ITN Source, a division of the UK’s leading independent news production company ITN, is the gateway to over one million hours of iconic broadcast footage and creative moving imagery captured over three centuries. From news to drama, celebrity, comedy, music, wildlife, natural history and film, to an inspirational stock footage section.

ITN Source represents the world’s largest and most diverse catalogue of moving image libraries including, Reuters, ITN, ITV, UTV, ANI, Channel 9 News (Australia), Fox Movietone, and other specialist collections.

A digital leader in the archive industry, ITNSource.com offers customers the convenience of preview, licensing and download of broadcast quality content at the touch of a button. ITN Source also operates educationcliplibrary.com, featuring educationally focused clips aimed at publishers and broadcasters globally. It also runs Diagonal-View.com, a consumer facing offering packaging quirky clips for partners such as YouTube, MSN and MySpace attracting over 30m views monthly.
With headquarters in London, ITN Source has sales offices in New York, Paris, Sydney and Tokyo. For further information, visit www.itnsource.com

About Education Clip Library
Owned by ITN Source, Education Clip Library is a unique digital service of video teaching materials for global educational publishers and broadcasters who are looking to add inspiring video content to instructional programs.

Education Clip Library offers over 5,000 educational clips serving the primary and secondary school sectors, offering educational publishers and broadcasters access to a unique library of clips, taken mainly from high-quality television news and feature programs or original production clip material.
All subjects for ages 4 to 19 are covered, at each educational stage. Whether it’s modeling handwriting for very young children, understanding the reasons behind a tsunami, or watching Dr. Martin Luther King lead the march from Selma – the Education Clip Library has all the video content, and more, to bring lessons to life.

About Archipelago Learning
Study Island is owned and operated by Archipelago Learning, LLC, a leading subscription-based online education company that provides standards-based instruction, practice, assessments and productivity tools that improve the performance of educators and students via proprietary web-based platforms. Study Island, the core product line, helps students in Kindergarten through 12th grade master grade level academic standards in a fun and engaging manner. For more information, please visit www.studyisland.com and www.archipelagolearning.com. Archipelago Learning, LLC is headquartered in Dallas, TX.

Friday, December 4, 2009

FREE Webinar: Register Users in less than 30 minutes!

In less than 30 minutes, learn how to set up teacher and student accounts! This is the key to getting your school started with Study Island. Once you register users, students can START STUDYING! It's that simple!

Select from a convenient time below and set sail with Study Island!

For a complete list of other FREE Webinars offered by Study Island go to: www.studyisland.com/webinars/training

If the Webinar times are not convenient, check out the Tutorials found in the "HELP" section once you've logged to your Study Island page.

Tuesday, December 8th @ 11:00a EST
Thursday, December 10th @ 3:00p EST
Tuesday, December 15th @ 11:00a EST
Thursday, December 17th @ 3:00p EST

To register, contact our award-winning Customer Service Team: 800.419.3191 x2.

FREE v3 Enhancements Preview Webinar

Study Island's state-specific standards mastery programs are currently used by over 19,200 schools and 9 million students nationwide! Thanks to our customer feedback, Study Island is releasing a series of exciting new Version 3 (v3) Enhancements in January 2010. Join us in December to get a preview of these exciting new features landing on the island!

This 45-minute webinar will give you an exclusive preview of our new v3 Enhancements, a live demonstration of our most exciting new features and time for live Q and A.

New Ehancements include:

  • Custom Assessment Builder
  • LiveView
  • Lesson Plans
  • Professional Development Toolkit
  • Parent Notification
  • Teacher Forums
  • New Games
  • Interactive Test Toolkit
  • Enhanced Reporting
  • Writing Assignments
  • Training Modules
  • Enhanced Text-to-Speech
  • Enhanced Message Center, and more!

Webinars will be held on --

Thursday, December 10th @ 1:30p, 4:30p and, 7:30p EST.

Thursday, December 17th @ 12:30p, 3:30p and, 6:30p EST.

Contact our award-winning Customer Service to register [800.419.3191 x2]

v3 Feature Focus: Custom Assessment Builder

When I present demonstrations for teachers I try to always show how they can use the "Printable Worksheet" feature to create Common Assessment documents by saving the worksheet as a Microsoft Word document and then cut-n-paste the questions the teachers decide to include in the assessment.

Now, Study Island is going one better! Starting in January, 2010, our "Custom Assessment Builder" will be activated to make this goal so much easier (and better!) You will be allowed to access a separate data bank of questions (ones your students have not seen) to create a custom, diagnostic assessment. Good news -- this feature is very easy to use!

To access this new feature, go to "Class Manager", select "Class Page and Assignments", then "Add Assignment". Just click on "Create Diagnostic Assessment" and away you go!

What you'll see will look a lot like what you are currently used to seeing when crating a "Practice and Instruction Assignment". The difference comes when you scroll down to add questions. Just select the grade level and subject, and click "Get Topic List".

You will then get a list of all the available topics and question counts for each. To add questions from a topic, just click the little icon with the "Q" in it.

This will give you a new window in which you can view and add questions. When you are finished selecting questions for that topic, click "Save Selections".

Just click the icons next to other topics to add more questions from those, and activate and save your assignment. That's all there is to it! Enjoy!