ILF+Project+News

=ILF Project News=

April 12, 2008 Just a short update. There is a great webinar from Scientific Learning coming up Monday, the 14th. Check it out: If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact us at 800-633-9502 or webinars@scilearn.com. There webinars are great! All schools in the project are now producing data. So, every class is underway, and the teaches involved should be seeing their own data for students. In Grand Manan, some great progress. Of Robbie's 17 grade nine students, 13 have moved up a level, and one other is very close. The two students in level 5 are progressing very well (62 and 68 per cent complete level 5), each gaining over 3 per cent per day. They are finding the program challenging--perhaps the first time they have been challenged in a while. In Grand Manan, students are still very positive about the program. Would like to have some news from Campobello and St. Stephen.
 * How Can Language Abilities Impact School Performance? with Dr. Martha Burns**

April 2, 2008 Grand Manan has cause for celebration. In both Mrs. P-G's class, and Mr. Griffin's class, two students have moved up a level. In each case, one student completed a level, and the other had a "switch" flag. The switch flag stated that the student had completed most items in the level, and the beginning of the next would cover any item they were missing. Great news. There are several other students in each class close behind.

We have had several occassions in which students have gone into their computers to begin working with the program, and the icon simply says "Empty." The technician has had to reload the Multi Product Installer disk.

Any News from St. Stephen or Campobello?

March 17th, 2008: The project has been in full swing in Grand Manan for two full weeks, and now in its third. So far, students are very interested and on-task. In the grade 9 class, students are progressing very quickly, making me think I may have placed them too low; however, the students are feeling very good about their progress. Today, some thought the material was becoming more challenging, so I am not moving anyone to another level just yet. We did have a problem with a student's files becoming corrupted in one of the grade 7 classes in Grand Manan. We called the technicial support for SciLearning, and were told this can happen if students do not close out the program completely each time. As our students have their own laptops, it is possible the student may not have closed out properly. The good news was that the technician was able to completely resore all of the students records--isn't technology grand. I hope Campobello and St. Stephen Middle are having success at their schools too. Robbie

February 28th: Those using the program have noticed that the time protocol is 50 minutes, and we had decided to use 40 minutes. To change the protocol, (or for those who have not enrolled students yet, please do this step) When you enrolled students, and set the Reading level, at the top of that same page, select Preferences, then Protocol, choose the reading level of the student, and choose the time: 40 min protocol; it can be set at either 30, 40, 50 or 90 for most of the treading levels. If you have any questions, let me know, Robbie

February 26th: Splitters arrived, and have been forwarded to Campobello and St. Stephen Middle. The tender for the head sets has been closed. I understand the headsets have been sent to District Office. As soon as they arrive, I shall have them sent to Josh in St. Stephen middle, and distributed to the Grand Manan Classes when they arrive. Gates MacGinitie Testing is done in Grand Manan and Campobello. Some Reading Indicator Testing has been done on Grand Manan. It appears that the Reading Indicator testing is about two years ahead of Gates. I understand that this is normal between Canadian and American class leveling. As an example, If Reading Indicator places a student in Grade 9, a Canadian Gates test would place the same studetn in Grade 7. There is an issue with enrolling students. It is a permision protocol issue that the school technicians must fix. Please open a help desk order to have them fix. It literally only takes a minute to do so. The actual enrollment takes about 5 minutes per student, so this can chew up a class quite quickly. A question I have is: Does the student have to be logged on to the computer to enroll him?

February 12: I have ordered splitters for the Headsets. It will take two weeks for them to come, but we should have them at all schools by 29th, and hopefully before.

Andrew checked with the Scientific Learning technicians about not being able to see student progress when we were doing the test last week. There are no problems with this--the test is not recorded, but student work will be visible for the records. I have posted four new pages: this one, ILF Project News, one called Questions, one called Interventions, and one called Start-up. The ILF Project News page will be information that I want to get out to everyone. Questions will be a page where we can place our questions in the discussion board, and hopefully someone in the group will have an answer. The Interventions page is a page for us to record our interventions we do with students who are stuck on a skill. The Start-up page is just a reminder of all of the things we need to do before February 29th.

The latest a project should begin in each class would be when we come back after March Break, March 10th. Earlier is fine, if you and your students are ready. I have talked with the researcher about length of the project. Sixty days includes days student misses, and such events as storm days and holidays--I had not understood that. Those days will be reflected in the stats. So, we are in fact looking at 12 weeks from the start. Robbie