How to: Pull a CAASPP Accommodations Query from SEIS

For my department and perhaps others who need to prepare and verify student accommodations for state CAASPP testing I have recorded here a procedure to setup a query from the Special Education Information System (SEIS) that will give all the information needed.  Once you have set up this query, you can save it for next year.

Here goes:

• Step 1: Search -- After logging in to SEIS, find the "search for students" link on the left side-bar of your home screen (see below right). Click that link and you come to a new screen asking for "Search Filter" and "Columns to Show".  
• Search Filter allows you to select only the names you want, which could be useful if you wanted only the 12th graders graduating or only the 11th graders potentially moving to a Transition program, etc.

This could be useful.

• Step 2: Filter -- For today's CAASPP data, I put the first filter to "Case Manager" is like "Andrew Hyland" by clicking the drop down menu and scrolling down to case manager (Marked "1" and "2" in the picture below left).  
• Nearly every box on the IEP is listed in the drop down box in alphabetical order, so the first time you create a query there will be a lot of scrolling (don't use your touch-pad chromebook unless you have to!). 
• Step 3: More Filter -- Another filter I used for this was to click the "Not" box and select "grade level" and use Shift+click to select all the grade levels 9 and below (Marked "3" in the picture below).
• This was because CAASPP is done by credits, so we need to include 10th, 11th, and 12th graders from the SEIS list just incase their credits put them eligible for SBAC or the 10th grade Science test. (It's doubtful to me that 9th graders would be credit-eligible for the 10th grade Science, but it could happen.)

• Step 4: Columns -- Anyway, now the filter is set.  Next, select what information you want to pull from SEIS.  Each drop box in the "Columns to Show" section (marked "4" above) will be a column in the report you create.  I scrolled through and picked the information I needed for CAASPP, shown below right. To add columns, simply click the green plus sign (marked "5" above).

• Quite a bit of scrolling through options, but we only have to do it once.  The order of your choices from top to bottom ends up being the order of your data columns from left to right.  So, be careful to put things in the order you want.
• Step 5: Save and Print -- Click "Search" at the bottom of the page and you get to the results page which previews the students and data columns you've selected.  From here you can name the query and save it as marked in the picture below. Then select print.
• You are almost done, but I'll mention that there are some powerful options on this page. You can print only a sub-set if you don't need every name in the data (check the boxes next to the names you want to print and save some paper!) 

• Step 6: Group and Sort -- After saving the query for next time and clicking print, the next screen asks you how you want to group and sort the data on the printed page.  For this situation, I told it to group by grade level and did not sort.  
• If the admin. pull a large amount of data, they could group by case manager and then sort by grade level.  Or, you could sort by participation in CAASPP and it would place the kids who have accommodations on top of the list for you (otherwise it's just an alphabetical list).

• Step 7: Print -- Just like you do for SEIS, click print and wait for the pdf to load.  Print as usual.  Repeat for next year.

Enjoy, I hope this helps and came in time for this year's testing.

#FallCUE Day2 Report

Well, the wifi seemed to be fixed for good and the lunch line was practically zero on Day 2, so I can give CUE and ACHS some props for at least fixing some problems quickly. Peter and I had selected our sessions late last night--we were ready to rock and our shared GDoc filled up fast with notes through the day. Next time I think I'll pick a time to have an empty session to run by all the vendors and see what's up quickly. This time we needed to maximize the info-grab. But a person can only process so much and implement so much each school year. 

Also for next time: sitting through keynotes and going to the meet ups before and after the con. 

In any case, here's what we saw and as always, notes are available upon request:

Session 6: CCSS Techie Tools
Padlet - digital posters for assessment. Don't need 1:1. I think I can use this one next semester for presentations and formative assessment. If you include an oral presentation piece it's even better. This could also be a strong tool in combination with QR codes at back to school night.
Audioboom - pod casting as class newsletter. Students write a script and record a podcast of what they've learned this week/unit. I think this was a public tool so train for your privacy needs. (No names on air, etc. )
Infuse Learning -- assessment tool much like socrative. Quite a bit of prep up front so I don't see this one on my radar until next year.

Session 7: Formative Assessment with mobile devices

Plickers and Edulastic-something as the two most reachable for me this year in public school with non 1:1

He covered a lot and they are linked in the resources. Plickers is a tool where only the teacher needs a device to use--each student (or each table group) has a paper card (which you could laminate for repeated use).  The cards are used for simple multiple choice selections, so there's a little bit of prep involved, and essentially what is happening is that your regular exit ticket or warm-up is now able to collect and display live data on who and how many in class are understanding the concept.  The teacher has a digital record immediately of each formative assessment, so that's appealing to me.  I could really use this in Special Education for IEP goal progress--the only down side is having to work around the multiple choice-style limitations.  So I wouldn't use this for every single problem each day.

Session 8: Special Education
This session was aimed at General Education teachers and getting them to use tech as a way to integrate Special Education students into the mainstream with tech as a facilitator.

An 8th grade teacher presented on student Blogging in lieu of written journaling--he said the majority of his students with special needs selected the online version and suspected it was due to not liking hand writing. Audio story problems were covered by an elementary teacher and I can see how I could use that in high school. Right now that would be a lot of extra prep for my class situation for a small number of applications. They presented a video produced by a student with autism to explain his condition. 

A nice thing about this session was that it was not focused on 1:1 and was presented by practical individuals in a situation that was closer to mine. So often I've been the only special educator in the room and even the only public school teacher in the room, or the only teacher at a school that's not going 1:1 iPads this year.

(Session 9 -- I skipped and dealt with some housekeeping issues)
Session 10: Science mobile
Since I'm co-teaching a Biology class this year, and I met Melissa Hero back at CUE Rockstar Tahoe, I had to go to this session and see what was up.  The link to her resources is where all the action is at.  By this point in the conference my entire brain was shot.  Melissa covered several websites to use for data sets in life science classes since most of the well known resources are for earth science (I didn't know this, but now I do!).  She covered several tools for elementary and for high school.  I can definitely see how to integrate the iNaturalist website/app into my class later this year. I'm definitely going to look at for next semester. 

iNaturalist.  Melissa Hero link.

Case Management Documentation and GAS Part 4

I'm writing this down so I can remember why I did things the way I did when I have to go back and either fix it or make a new one somewhere else:

"The less change the better" is a simple motto for some folks. I wanted to keep the new method (my form) of getting Gen Ed feedback as similar as possible to the old method, so I kept the same wording and the same order of questions.  I simply lifted them on to a google form which will plop the answers down in a sheet that autocrat turns into a nice PDF that looks identical to the version we use now.  The output keeping the same look is only important to me so that the admin and district people who are used to seeing our forms can feel comfortable.  More important is that the "front end"--where the Gen Ed teachers look at it--looks as similar as possible.

Here's where my problem arises: I have to add some pre-filled, superfluous "questions" to the form so that autocrat will spit out the the PDFs exactly how I want them while keeping the formatting customized to each student.  Information such as student initials and case manager emails are easy for a spreadsheet to look up and calculate, however, this behind the scenes look up has to happen before the form submits to autocrat (without reworking my entire concept and workflow here).  So I will make it part of my case-manager-side script, but that means that I have about 4 extra questions hanging off the end of my Gen Ed form.

Perhaps I can find a way to make them invisible in the future, or end up reworking the entire work flow.  For now, better to make a working product before getting ahead of myself.

That's all for now.
Links:
Link to part 1
Link to previous part
Link to next part

Case Management Documentation and Google Apps Scripts (Add-ons)

Well I've begun the project for this year and I expect to be done around January 2015, although tht may be wishful thinking. If I keep the current pace for progressing through each problem, I'll be done by thanksgiving, so January seems more realistic.

I have previously built each of the pieces I'm going to need for this project, now I have to connect them all and make them talk with each other. I've been able to find some great examples of code, but for all of them I've needed to tweak to make it fit my data. 

My concept is for a special education case manager to input only four pieces of info for an IEP and have my program do the rest of the job looking up things and inviting teachers. This means making at least two databases talk to each other and probably three. For right now I'm pulling the data once a semester and using that to work with. So if something changes for a student then I have to update manually on my sheet. 

The old method is for case managers to look up a students schedule and then manually input each of six teachers names and classes twice--once for the meeting invite and once for the feedback form.  This method was varying degrees of technology away from a typing pool secretary with 5-sheet NCR paper and a highlighter. Currently we've moved up to around 1998 using a word document with fillable boxes. 

So far I've figured out how to make the computer read the form input from the case manager and pull up the next form and pre-fill the answers. Next is to make it email the URL of the prefilled form to the six correct teachers. 

This will certainly be part one of my posts on this topic.  Next Post Here
Link to part 3 -- and Link to part 3.5