* Menus - Rank has its privilegesGo Back
* Class Roster - Adding/Dropping students
* Booklist- Room to grow
* Testing - Did he really read it?
* Individual Reports - Personal reading record
* Printed Reports - Hard copy record
* Security - Privacy and reliability
* Reading Levels - Research is needed
* Contact UsMenus
There are two menus: One for students and one for the teacher. When you enter the program for the first time you will need to register. You will be asked for a user name, password, and a name for at least one class. You will then be sent back to log in with the new password. If the login is accepted, the student menu will be presented. From this menu, students will be able to view the list of available tests, actually take the tests, or review their own test records. But you need to get to the teacher menu, so log in again by clicking on the bottom "Log In" button.
Class Roster
The first thing to do after registering and logging in is to enter a list of your students. This is easily done from the teachers' menu by clicking on "Add Student." To keep students from messing around with each other's records, you will need to give each student a password. The program will take just about any combination of letters for a password, but it will stop you if you enter a password you have already used. If you make a mistake during the process of entering students, it is easy to skip to the "Drop Student" routine and erase the erroneous entry. Then back to "Add Student" to re-enter the items correctly. You may examine the list of students to make sure that new additions or deletions have been properly entered by clicking on "Read Roster".
Booklist
We are starting with only about 320 titles for which we have written tests. You can look at the list of book titles by clicking on "Read Book List" in the student menu. Scroll up and down the list using the cursor keys. Book titles are in alphabetical order, using the convention that all upper case letters precede all lower case letters.
Hopefully this library will rapidly grow in size, but at the moment it is likely that your students will be reading books for which you will have to write a test, determine the genre, and estimate the length. Instructions for doing this are presented when you click on "Submit a Test" from the teachers' menu. Don't be shy; everybody else will benefit from your work.
Testing
A student who has finished reading a book can take the test for that book by clicking on the "Take Test" line from the student menu. He will be asked to enter his password. Once the name is entered, the student uses the cursor-up and cursor-down keys to select the book to be tested. There will be a variable number of questions on each test, each in a multiple choice format. Students should consider their answer carefully before clicking on the answer, because clicking on the answer automatically enters it. At the end of the quiz, the machine reports the number of answers that were correct. It also stores (but does not here report) the percentage correct. Passing score is 70%; student's cumulative score will be incremented with points based on the length of the book. The test name, date, and genre are also added to the permanent record.
Individual Reports
As mentioned above, the program maintains a record of each test taken. This record includes the name of the book, the date of the test, and the percentage of correct answers. It also computes the total points the student has earned during the current year (or whatever time period the program has been running). To read this record, click on "Show Student Record". You will be presented with a list of students. Click on the student of interest to view the record of his work. Then click on "Continue" to choose another student. When finished, click on "Return to Menu" to do something else.
Note: "Show Student Record" appears on both student and teacher menus. Entering this subroutine from the student menu requires use of the student password. This is to prevent one student from looking at another student's record. Enter the subroutine from the teacher menu and there is no request for the student password. This is so the teacher can examine student records without having to remember what password she has given each student.
Printed Reports
Individual report pages can be printed out using your browser's file functions. The menu line "Print Class Set" is not yet implemented, but is intended some day to do just what it says--print a report on a separate page for each student in your class.
Security
Security may or may not be a problem for you. Minimally, you will want to keep students from messing with the class roster or other students' records. That's why you have your own password which you use to access the teacher menu for critical functions, and why the kids have passwords to keep their unindicted co-conspirators at bay. As soon as some kid discovers what your password is, you may have to change it. I will soon add a routine to change the teacher's password, Dios mediante. Right now there is no way to do this, so take precautions. Mum's the password....
To keep the kids from messing with each other's files, you have assigned each of them a distinct password, as described above. Use any convenient means to inform them of their passwords, and warn them not to be sharing them with each other. There is at present no routine to change a student's password, short of dropping her from the roster and then re-entering her name. But this will cause a loss of her present work record.
Reading Levels
This site does not pretend to implement levelled reading. A short discussion of the reasons for this may be found in the intructions presented in the Submit Test subroutine. This may be entered from the teachers' menu.
Contact Us
Send an e-mail to juanslayton at charter dot net. Sorry I can't put this in a link, but I get enough spam already. -js