This is a timely inquiry from Steve and gives me the chance to inform you of
some changes/additions/improvements to the Standards Into Action site. We're
working to develop a range of tools on the site, knowing that some tools
will be more useful to different people for different purposes.

Actually there are a number of tools available, not one. For example, the
"Instructional Planner" is a tool that allows teachers to build
standards-based lessons and units with assessments built in. It's a fairly
complex tool and has proven to be most helpful when it's pre-populated with
lessons and/or units, since it has a usable search function. To this end, we
have received funding (last Friday!) from the WorldCom Foundation to
integrate lessons from Marco Polo (http://marcopolo.worldcom.com/) into the
Instructional Planner. These lessons will first need to be aligned with
Vermont's standards and have assessments built. In addition we have support
to add the juried Vermont units to the site as well. But within the
Instructional Planner tool is another subset of assessment tools. The
Department of Education is in the midst of populating the Assessment area
with a range of professional development tools for assessment as well as
with an assortment of classroom-level assessment items.

But then there is the Home Page Designer which allows users to create a
usable web page in just a few minutes. I showed this tool to some folks at a
conference a couple of weeks ago and they were very excited.

Another easy to use tool is the calendar creator..... simple and fast.

In addition, we're in the midst of upgrading the site (to a new version of
Learning Village software) and adding a couple of additional tools that
facilitate school-based or statewide online (threaded) discussions.

Another new function is the ability to create "configurable roles" which
gives us the opportunity to tailor the available functions to different user
types.

The upgrade to the site is actually happening as we speak (and is the reason
the site had been unavailable for a couple of days last week). Later this
week we're going to get a look at the new functions and plan to roll out the
upgraded Standards Into Action a bit futher down the road.

Bill Romond

-----Original Message-----
From: School Information Technology Discussion
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Steve Cavrak
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2001 11:22 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Standards, Assessment, and Tools


This discussion about managing student assessment
data and linking it to state standards and statewide
assessment made me wonder who is using the "Standards
into Action" tools developed by the State and IBM ...

        http://www.standards.ed.state.vt.us/

        "Using this tool, teachers can create
        standards-based units of study more quickly,
        share high-quality resources with each
        other and assess student progress."


[] Have you / your school evaluated this tool ?

[] Have you / your shool adopted this tool ?

[] What has been your experience ?