FTT - This is the end. Finish that Gradebook

With our first year of Schoology in the books, I am sure I can speak for all of the instruction tech/district tech teams, on how much we appreciate the good faith efforts our staff has put forth in learning Schoology. We all know how difficult it can be learning a brand new system, and we truly appreciate how patient and hard working the staff has been. With grades due next week, let's dive into what needs to be done to get grades right:

Quick Reminders/Dates:

• IC/Schoology Blackout Dates - Monday, June 3rd (8:00 am) - Thursday, June 6th (4:00 pm)
• Final Schoology Grade due before Sync - Thursday, June 6th (11:00 pm)
• Final Grades in IC due - Friday, June 7th (10:30 am)
• If your grades were up to date and finalized on Schoology during the last Schoology-to-IC Grade Sync, the only additional action in IC would be to enter Incompletes.
• Make sure you publish all of your gradebook entries!

What's new:

While Schoology hosts our up-to-date, individual student grades, we still rely on Infinite Campus for the final grade reports. Initially, standards-based graders, curvers, and teachers looking to round certain grades, needed to wait for a "window" to open up, when the sync would stop so that they could go directly into Infinite Campus to input their grades. Our district tech team has found a way to open that window permanently. You can now go directly to Infinite Campus RIGHT NOW, and input your grades without fear of the Schoology/IC grade sync overriding those grades. 

How to set up/enter Final Exams?

Setting up a final exam can be tricky - here are some questions you should ask yourselves before you try:

• Does your final exam "live" inside or outside of your semester grade?
• for example, mine "lives" outside of my semester grade with a breakdown below

• If so, you'll have to go to your Gradebook to create it. (Don't worry if it doesn't show up immediately. Just hit refresh)

• Then go to Grade Setup to assign percent values. (Remember to hit save)

• Do you have multiple parts to your final? Are they weighted as a percent, or by total points? Take a look at this Google Slides presentation for a deeper look into setting up finals.

Rounding choices: THSD 113 Rounded .5 vs Round Period/Final Grades

There are two methods to round grades automatically in Schoology. 

• THSD 113 Rounded .5 - this method is what is most familiar to our staff. A student receiving an 89.5% will earn an "A" for the course, but the value will stay an 89.5%
• Round Period/Final Grades - this is Schoology's native method. Every final value is rounded to the nearest percent. A student receiving an 89.5% will get a 90%, and a student receiving an 89.4% will get an 89%.
• DON'T CHOOSE NUMERIC!!

Grade Changes and Comments:

• If your student is on the edge of 2 grades and you'd like to manually change their grade, first you'll need to enable "Course Override Column" in the "Grade Setup" page. 
• Notice below for Rich Grady - who was at an 89.45% B+. Because I wanted to bump him up to an A-, I wrote in 89.5% in the Overall (Override) column, which gave him the grade bump. 
• If you want to give a student a grade bump, but do not want to change the % value, you can do that in IC through "Post Grades" (So Rich would keep the 89.45%, but still receive an A-)

• To add optional comments, you merely need to hover over the "Overall" grade column until the blue chatbox appears. Click on it and type in your comment. 
• Normally you'd need to click, "Display to Student" for students/parents to see your comments, but not for Semester Grade comments. 

Happy grading. Any questions? Feel free to contact our team! Dkim@dist113.org - Lberghoff@dist113.org

FTT - How to wrap up the year so you can start off great in the fall. Schoology/Google

How To Wrap Up The Year  So You Will Be Ready To Start Up Again In The Fall. 

Top 5 Suggestions Schoology and Google

Your Future Self Will Thank You!

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

I have been in education quite a long time. I love the end of the school year because when you have the whole summer in front of you, anything's possible. Many of us travel or participate in professional development, connect with friends, family, and colleagues in a very different way than during the school year. I no longer set the expectation that I will get tons of school work done over the summer. It often doesn't happen and if it does then once I meet my new students, I end up tossing many of those plans in the trash. One thing that I have learned however, is that there are a few things I can do for myself before the school year ends that makes the start of a new school year much easier.

For example, I always clean out the clutter from my desk. It's the last thing I want to do during the first week of June but if I do it then, I'm always happy when I return in August to find a clutter-free work space. 

There are even a few things you can do digitally  to help make life easier in the fall. 

Here are my top 5 suggestions.

1. Are you teaching the same course next year? Save your course to resources in Schoology!

You need to first create a "collection" in resources. Click on Resources. Then, click on the filing cabinet and create a new collection. Next, go to your course's materials page and click Options. Select "save to resources" and choose the new collection you created. 

When you return in the fall, you will just click Add Materials  and then choose "import from resources". 

Here is what it looks like when you create a collection in resources:

And here's what it looks like when you save your course to resources:

2. Not teaching the same course and want to hand over your materials to the teacher who is teaching the course next year?

Make sure to add that teacher as a connection. Click on the search icon (magnifying glass) and type in the teacher's name. Once they appear, click "add connection". After following the instructions from #1 above, you can now go to resources, click the collection where your course materials are located, click "share" and "connections" and select their name. 

3. Avoid any grade issues that you would have to fix later. Make sure all assignments are PUBLISHED!

Go to your course gradebook and use the bulk edit tool to make sure all of your assignments are published. This allows you to view all of your assignments at once. Check and make sure there is a check next to the publish button.Don't forget to save!

4. Check your grade setup because you can copy it and use it again next year!

Did you know that you can copy a grade setup from an archived course? It's true! If you have your categories weighted just right and your grade scale set just how you like it, you can copy the grade setup into your new courses next year! Now is the time to double and triple check your grade setup. If you get it right at this point, it will save you from needing to fix it when grades get synced over to Infinite Campus but it will also ensure that you can copy those settings for next year and it will be stress free!

5. Set your course schedule in your Google calendar as soon as you have it.

How difficult is it to schedule time to collaborate with colleagues? Did you know that if everyone's Google calendar is populated with their course schedule and meetings then it is actually very easy to find times to meet? Do this now! You won't want to do it in August and you will be SO glad you did. Even though our schedules are funky and not very regular, it is well worth the time and effort to make sure your calendar is correct. 

Not sure how to do it? Here is a short video:

FTT - Common Schoology Gradebook Mistakes to Avoid

Common Schoology Gradebook Mistakes to Avoid

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

This is my 4th year at District 113, and with that, my once goofy little freshman rascals are now big bad seniors on the cusp of graduating. It's still weird seeing them in the hallway thinking, "wow, I cannot believe little Jimmy is going to college next year..." 

And with senior grade due dates upcoming, it's never too early to get our gradebooks in order. Here are some common Schoology Gradebook mistakes/misconceptions to look out for:

Category Calculations: Total Points vs. Percent

The Math department teachers were the ones (no surprise) who first discovered this mistake - when creating your categories, make sure you know the difference between Total Points and Percent. Many teachers, thinking this meant weighted vs. unweighted, chose "Percent" as their grading option. Here is the slight mathematical difference between the two grading styles. 

Let's say little Jimmy has two assessments, one worth 10 points, and one worth 100 points.

Percent:

• 9/10 = 90%
• 85/100 = 85%
• =(90%+85%)/2 = 87.5%

Total Points:

• 9/10 = 90%
• 85/100 = 85%
• =94/110 = 85.5%

The difference is subtle, but can be the difference can affect a lot of students. Be careful changing this setting deep into the semester, as it will change all of your student scores. 

Grading Scale:

This is a relatively simple fix, but important to remember: DO NOT USE NUMERIC as your gradebook scale. It will result in an error when grades are synced with Infinite Campus. You MUST use one of the provided scales. 

THSD 113 Rounded .5 vs. Round Period/Final Grades

There are two ways we can round your students' final grades - and by final we mean, the cumulative grade we see on the report card:

THSD 113 Rounded .5

This option should be a familiar one as it was the only method of rounding on Infinite Campus. Any grade above the .5 threshold will round up to the nearest letter grade. One caveat is that while the grade will round to the next letter grade, the numerical grade will stay the same

• 89.6% is worth an A-, but the grade will still show an 89.6%

Round Period/Final Grades

This is Schoology's default rounding system. So essentially it will round any value to the nearest percent. So basically every grade in your class will have a rounded value.

• 89.6% will turn into a 90%
• 89.4% will turn into an 89%

Infinite Campus - Schoology Sync?

Just to explain how grades go from one system to the other, what happens is every night at around midnight, Schoology will begin dumping their raw data to Infinite Campus. It takes about 3-4 hours for everyone's grades to sync to Infinite Campus. So what do I have to do in Infinite Campus when grades are due?

• Enter incompletes, drops, and other grading tasks.
• While you can manually change the final grades in both systems, in Infinite Campus you can change the letter value without changing the numeric value. 
• You can also enter final grade comments on both IC and in Schoology. 

Do you have any other thoughts on our Schoology Gradebook? Comment below!

FTT - Gimkit

Have Some Fun While Learning With Gimkit!

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

I LOVE learning about new technology tools! I love figuring them out. I love thinking of different ways that kids can learn while using the tools. I love hearing the stories behind how they were created. I often get asked how I learn about new tools. I can't say that there is a one-way path to new online educational tools. Sometimes I learn from the blogs or podcasts I follow. Sometimes there is a buzz on Twitter. Sometimes another teacher brings it to my attention. This particular new one came from a call that I put out to my Google Innovator Academy cohort. I did a session during our professional development time on Wednesday called 30 Tools In 60 Minutes. It was really fun to put together and present. I had my list of 30 tools ready to go but decided to contact my cohort and see if they knew of any that I should add to the list. One of my buddies, Chris Young (@CYoungEdTech) mentioned Gimkit and that it was created by a high school student. I decided to check it out and I was hooked. I decided to try it out right away and it got rave reviews from all of my demo-ers.

So, if you love Kahoot, and who doesn't, really, I highly encourage you to check out Gimkit.  Created by high school student Josh Feinsilber of Seattle, Gikit removes some of the barriers that exist with Kahoot. For example, the question and answers are displayed on each student's screen, eliminating the need to be able to look, read, and transfer from the screen. Josh writes a blog about his journey with creating Gimkit and his future plans for the site. If you want to see what happens when high school students write for an authentic audience, check out his blog here. 

To Get Started, Go To Gimkit.com

Here are the details you need to know:

• Gimkit calls the games Kits. You can assign kits for homework, run them live in the classroom, or even have students collaborate and add questions to a kit. 
• Gimkit "seasons" allows you to track student achievements over time. You can track for an individual game, student vs. student, or even class vs. class.
• Students earn money as they answer questions correctly. If you allow it, their cash can be used to purchase power ups, or themes. You can also choose to allow only power ups that won't harm other players. 
• You can import questions that you already have in Quizlet or in a csv file.
• Once you create your game, your students go to Gimkit.com/play and enter the game code to play.
• You can choose from 3 modes: students can play for a specific amount of time (ex. whoever has the most cash after 10 minutes wins), for a specific amount of cash (ex. first person to reach $10,000 wins), or all in (ex. the collective group needs to reach a certain amount of cash for the game to end). 
• There is also a Team Mode, where students work together in groups.
• The whole process is extremely simple and the site walks you through the steps to set it up. I was able to create a quick quiz for my class and have them actually playing it in just a few minutes.
• After playing your game, you can access a really nice report that shows general stats, a breakdown by question and an individual report for each student. 

Gimkit is a winner when it comes to tools that encourage maximum engagement from all students.

Have you tried Gimkit? Let us know how it went. Want some help getting started? Let us know.