Think Central Benchmark Test

Teachers,

The assessment piece is still not available on Think Central and quite a few questions remain as to how that whole process will work. Therefore, let's not do this first benchmark test. With all that is new, that will take thing off of us. By the time the second benchmark approaches, we should have a much better handle on how the entire process will work.

System Requirements for Think Central

In reading through the specs for Think Central, there are several "plug-ins" that are needed in order properly run the website. To find out if you need something you don't have, click here. That's going to take you to Think Central. Click the link on the lower left side of the screen that says "Web Checker."

You will see a chart that tells what is needed to run Think Central and whether you have what you need for that computer. If you have several computers in your room, you would need to do this on all of them.

If you need a plug-in, not only will the chart tell you that, but you will be able to click a link and get the needed plug-ins for free.

Think Central PowerPoint Updated

I have updated the PowerPoint on Think Central that we viewed during Tuesday morning's professional development. The link is still the same. Since you now all have real user names and passwords, there is no need to go to the "zz" evaluation site. Therefore, I took out the references to that.

Tuesday's presentation allowed for not only using PowerPoint to teach the content, but it also served as a chance to pass on techniques that you can use when using PowerPoint. The ability to make the screen go blank during the presentation to help focus audience attention back on you, and the use of the "speaker notes" section to house your heavy-duty text and allow the slides to stay uncluttered are two examples.

In the not-too-distant past, if I wanted you to be able to view that PowerPoint presentation, I would have e-mailed it to you. That meant if you were new to the district and nobody alerted me to your e-mail address, you missed out. If I made a change to the presentation, I would have had to e-mail a new copy and ask you to destroy the old one. On your end, moving that attachment from your e-mail to logical spot in your digital filing system would have been a task you would have performed.

Best practice is now to post documents such as this in one location and simply send the link taking viewers to the document, just as I have done in this post. If a change needs to be made, it is made in one place, and when you visit the document again, you see the updated copy. The ability to do this exists not only at the central office, but at the school level as well. Our circumstances have changed! As we talked about Tuesday morning, when confronted with a set of circumstances, we as a people, develop procedures to handle those circumstances. So often, our circumstances change, but... (well, you remember the rest).

Progress on Think Central (Elementary)

John and I have loaded all teachers and students into Think Central. If you have not already viewed the PowerPoint from Tuesday morning's presentation, doing that will make everything else more understandable.

Before logging in, run the "Web Checker" and be sure to download any needed software.

You may now go into Think Central with your own password.

• Choose your state, district, and school.
• Click the check mark for "Remember My Organization."
• Your user name will be your first initial last name.
• Your password is 1234, but you will probably be prompted to change that the first time you log on.

After you log in, be sure to go to "Accounts" and look at your information. Change anything that is incorrect.

The next task will be to select the products you wish to be able to use. You will click on the little icon on the left-hand side of the screen that looks like a wrench.

• Click on "My Products.
• Choose "Reading" as the subject and click your grade(s)
• Click "Refresh."
• Put check marks by all of the products you would like to be able to view online.
• Click "Save."

There is one area where classroom teachers can help me at this point. A week ago, had you logged in, you would have seen almost no products even available to check. Going in today, you will see tons of stuff. I personally checked two grades at one school and found that while the student materials seemed to all be there, some of the teacher materials were still not there. In addition, none of the assessments (weekly, theme, benchmark) are there.

It would be great if a person from each grade level at each school could volunteer to look at see what's missing (because it may well be different for each school and may vary from grade to grade) and then e-mail me a list of what you are missing. We are finding that the technology department at the company is pretty backed up and that the squeaking wheel...well you know the rest. We have been doing our share of squeaking this week (with the help of some people within the company who happen to like us) and getting results. I need to keep pressing until our stuff is 100% before their attention turns to some other school system.

The plan for Monday is to show Reading Coaches how to take all of the students who have been loading into the program and assign them to your classes. We will also go through how to add new students so that during the year, your names stay up to date.

The latest word is that assessments may not be up until the end of the month. So, plan to do the first weekly assessment pencil/paper (which I hate). As soon as assessments are available, I will put together another PowerPoint that will walk you through everything you need to know.

PowerPoint for Think Central Training (Elementary Teachers)

The PowerPoint for Tuesday morning's training on "Think Central" is ready and available for download from any computer within the school system by clicking here.

What you will want to do is scroll through the slides rather than view the show. At the bottom of the screen, you will see what are called the "speaker notes." Those notes will explain to you what you are seeing on the slide. There will be very little need to take notes during the presentation, because it is all here on this presentation for you.