Archipelago Learning Releases Teacher Toolkit for Study Island

 

 

From "The Journal"    By Tim Sohn 04/19/12

 

http://thejournal.com/articles/archipelago-learning-releases-teacher-toolkit-for-study-island.aspx

 

Archipelago Learning has unveiled a teacher toolkit for Study Island, a software-as-a-service tool that provides instruction, practice, assessment, and reporting.

 

The teacher toolkit is a centralized, searchable library of resources for K-12 instructors who use Study Island. Resources include virtual science labs, lesson plans, educational videos from sources such as Khan Academy, teacher videos, learning activities, and animated lessons. They can be searched by subject, subject category, resource type, and grade.

 

"The Teacher Toolkit enables educators to search our extensive library of teacher resources and easily identify those that will be most helpful to them in the classroom," said Donna Regenbaum, executive vice president of marketing and product development for Archipelago Learning.

 

Study Island programs include pre- and post-tests, questions, answers, explanations, and lessons specific to state requirements. Questions are chosen randomly to avoid the possibility of cheating and students have the option of using a standard testing format or interactive games, which can be accessed via mobile device. Teachers and administrators can evaluate students' strengths and weaknesses with real-time reports.

 

Study Island also provides three mode options for instructors. Test mode provides the option of multiple choice or short answer format and game mode allows teachers to limit access. Printable worksheet mode lets teachers select which topics they want to include for substitute plans, homework, make-up work, reviews, tests, tutorials, and transparencies.

 

Features of Study Island include:

• Traditional assessments and interactive games based on individual state standards;
• Immediate feedback and automated instruction;
• Real-time progress reports;
• Rotating positions for multiple choice answers;
• Customizable and printable worksheets;
• The ability to log in from anywhere;
• Digital writing portfolios;
• College and career readiness tools; and
• Parent notification system.

In addition, Study Island includes a Common Core benchmarking program, which is designed to assess the math and reading skills of students in grades 3-5 at any point throughout the year. This tool provides four options for benchmarking tests and real-time diagnostic reports.