In looking at Classroom Management Systems this week in CEP 813, I decided to take a look at the system which my district uses which is Illuminate Education. We began using this system 3 years ago and I can honestly say I learn more from this system every year. It has so much to offer in terms of Data and Analysis of a classroom and it keeps getting better. As of a week ago Illuminate announced it was merging with four other classroom management systems in hopes of adding even more functionality to its platform. With looking at this system now and what it offers, these are the functions of illuminate as a CMS:
Assessment:
Illuminate has a great assessment section. There are so many options for creating and administering assessments. Some choices that it gives you to create assessment, is to write it out yourself through illuminate, choose from an item bank which gives a variety of questions to choose from, or download content to create an assessment. The questions range from multiple choice to essay questions. Then to administer you can administer it online through the student portal, with a bubble sheet, one on one assessment through skills assessment, and paper pencil assessment. Assessments administered through the student portal give real results to let students and parents know how they did. However, as far as feedback goes, teachers are given more information than students are. So it is left to the teachers to interpret this information to the students.
Reports:
Once the assessments have been administered pre built reports are made to show the teacher how the students are doing. It can focus on standards and the percent of students who missed certain standards, as well as show as a whole how many students mastered the assessment. There is even a student grouping report which can help to make small strategy groups. You can even create custom reports which you can set objectives for based on what you are trying to look at. One of the prebuilt class reports even shows reasoning for why a student may have gotten a question wrong, so it can help guide teaching.
Attendance:
From this CMS you can take attendance, and track attendance. This can help in conferences when discussing why a student may not be performing well. When a student is absent for so may days it affects their at risk number as well which can determine if a students attendance will effect their academic performance. The student attendance report can also be viewed in parent portal.
Gradebook:
Assessments can also be linked tot the grade book, which can be viewed through parent portal as well as on the report card. The grade book makes it easy to organize assignments, and link artifacts to the assignments. The grade book allows the teacher to enter standards to the assignment, and see which students are missing those standards.
Student/Parent Portal:
Students and parents can access their portal and view progress, as well as assessments that are needing to be taken. Teachers can message parents through the portal, and teachers can also see if other contact has been made with the parents from administrators and support staff.
Privacy Policy:
The privacy policy for illuminate can be viewed here. Some points from their policy I want to touch on though are; that illuminate assigns a special domain for the district you are a part of which adds security to the information being obtained. Illuminate also does not share any teacher or student information with any third party.
Functions that this platform is still lacking is student engagement. Many of the secondary teachers in my district use google classroom, because it holds that student engagement piece. Although students can log in and complete assessments as well as see how they are doing, they cannot engage with each other through the portal. There is no discussion forum or blog for students and teachers to engage which would be critical in making this a a good platform for blended leanring. Along with that being able to assign lessons and assignments is not something that can be done with this program. So because of that you really would not be able to do any sort of blended learning or flipped classroom. Hopefully this is something that can be added in the future because this platform for managing student information, and informing parents about student progress has some great components.
Learning with Lindsay 