Tools & Resources
Notes from Call with Dave Butler - 7:25:17
Dave Butler will send us user names and passwords so we can start using these tools to get experience with them. The initial webinar date for us is August 1st at 9:00 Central / 10:00 Eastern. Dave will send us the information.
uPAR will be available for schools to access once our purchase has been completed for each district. It is a web based tool so no installation will be needed. Accounts will need to be set up for teachers and students so they may need some help in getting this information in. One thing that can occur first is identifying which students they want to have use the uPAR. They can choose to just use it with students who are not proficient in grade level reading standards.
Training on using the uPAR should be done after the accounts are set up.
The district and school/s will be in control of all of the data. How they share data with us will be up to them and it will only be in the context of continuing to provide professional development and technical assistance in these activities.
Don Johnston is offering Snap&Read free to the districts for these two years. We need to make clear to the districts that this is a two year offer and they will need to purchase it afterwards or use another text-to-speech tool. They can use a different text-to-speech tool these two years if they wish. We can show them the features of Snap&Read but it is up to them as to what tool they will use.
Snap&Read will require local installation and there are staff with Don Johnston who can help the districts with the specifics of their platform (Windows, Macintosh, Chrome, etc.).
Carmelina will send us information to share on students who are deaf/hard of hearing benefiting from text-to-speech and audio. We will let them know of any students in our target schools who are deaf/hard of hearing and help to make sure they are included in this activity.
We will need to work with our districts/schools to:
- Identify an initial web administrator who will be in charge of the uPAR dashboard.
- Identify the students and teachers who will need accounts for the uPAR.
- Get accounts set up in uPAR.
- Do training and technical assistance on how to administer the uPAR.
- Work with the district/school on an implementation plan for the uPAR and helping students and teachers to use their preferred text-to-speech tool. This implementation plan should include dates/milestones to meet and should include dates for reviewing the data with the teachers. At this point it would be good to include all teachers if they were not included in the original introduction.
