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Learnboost Classroom Management Software
1. What standard(s)/outcome(s) are being met?
1 A. Identification, selection, installation and maintenance of technology infrastructure, and hardware and software applications for school administration and instruction.
2 A. Managing instructional technology services.
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2 D. Selecting, developing and administering assessments that utilize technological applications and involve multiple indicators of student progress and using technology to maintain records on student achievement.
2. Identify 1-3 elements of the artifact and explain why/how they demonstrate mastery.
Learnboost is an application that has many uses to teachers. It functions as a grade book, offers reporting and analytics tools, software for managing and creating lesson plans, tracking attendance, maintaining schedules, tagging of Common Core Standards, making seating charts, and issuing progress reports. I use this application daily in my classroom, and I am very impressed by how much it offers educators as a free service. When my school district first started issuing laptops, it didn't take long before my device had a catastrophic failure. I learned what the frustration felt like to lose plans, grades, records of students progress. Learnboost allows me to store everything I choose to record about my students on their cloud. I can remotely access it from home or school and it is stored securely. When I have a parent conference, or it is time for midterm progress reports, with a few keystrokes I can print off valuable student records of attendance and achievement in seconds.
3. How does, will, or could the content of this artifact benefit your instructional audience or professional community?
By taking advantage of Learnboost or a similar application, teachers benefit their students and families by having immediate access to student progress and records of their achievement. There is no manual calculation of students' grades required as it done automatically by Learnboost as information is entered into each respective portion of the digital grade book. Parents can be given live access to the students' grade accounts for viewing. Learnboost also helps the teacher grow as a professional by giving the teacher the option to share any lesson plans he or she creates within the application's marketplace. The teacher can also tag any network he or she belongs to within the plan to help expand discovery of professional networks within zip codes.
4. Reflection: What did you learn from the experience when you created the artifact or took the course?
In reflection upon Learnboost, I learned that I am very thankful that these types of applications exist. The first few years that I taught, programs like this were not yet mainstream. When I think back to the amount of time I lost calculating grades by hand and processing progress reports by hand, it makes me cringe. Learnboost and related applications put incredible records management capabilities in our hands for monitoring students progress. I would never want to go back to the "old fashioned" way!
Screenshots of Learnboost in action:
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