During the fall SIS conference some information was shared to us about upcoming changes and curriculum implementation. Here are some of my notes. Timelines for upgrades to version 5.8 are at the bottom.
- November 24 is deadline for Enhancement Requests to be considered for current budget year. ERs can go through Jennie Copeland and must be approved by the Service Management Council representative, Jarrod Bell. ERs are small functional improvements to the systems that are costed, budgeted, approved etc on a yearly basis by the Service Enhancement Committee (SEC). The SEC is a sub committee of the Service Management Council (SMC).
- New GDEs in MyEd for class size and composition need to be investigated.
- Student Learning Committee focus is Standards Based Grading. New videos available at http://www.mytrainingbc.ca/learningsupport/ . Curricular Competencies are available in the system for K-9 and require some minor setup at school level before they can be used. If you are interested contact Jarrod Bell. Of note Nanaimo has gone to SBG K-9. For more on SBG see http://mctownsley.net/top-10-standards-based-grading-articles/ . We could request Judy Smith from MoE to join us for free for some more sessions on Assessment and SBG.
- End of November we should see new Grade 10 courses in Provincial catalogue for planning for the 2018/2019 school year. Will need to check closed courses list for grade 10 courses that we cannot use in the future.
- BAA course review mentioned. This has been identified to Grad Program schools and a review will start after an upcoming TBD DLTM.
- Current Grade 10s and 11s will need to write the Numeracy Assessment. Grad Path info available at https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/graduation-info
- Extension of implementation of grad program was based on feedback from a variety of partner groups.
Coming up in Version 5.8
- Some of these will come with the December upgrade and others may appear in March
- Next School Homeroom field will be coming in 5.8 and should be available for us to use in spring to not only set the next school (which we currently do), but what will be the next homeroom. This will be editable by the Next School. This will be helpful for all schools.
- Course Nicknames will be usable in Planner *currently the course codes show even when a nickname is created for a course (MEN–10-003 rather than En10 B Block nickname that the teacher assigned)
- Combined Classes enrollment totals will appear in Workspace and Schedule>Master in School View and Build. Important change to support schedule builders and counsellors.
- Designation Tallies will show in Workspace. Helpful for counsellors and administrators considering class size / composition.
- Categories side-tab returns for gradebook based on teacher feedback.
- SDTest database will be upgraded Dec 1 @ 5pm pacific until Dec 4 @ 7am pacific
- We will need to do some verification in SDT to look for potential problems and identify anything we find to provincial team. There is a thorough process currently underway provincially on the upgrade but we will have a look through at our usual processes in SDTest after Dec 4.
- Production database will be upgraded Dec 15 @ 5pm pacific until Dec 18 @ 7am pacific (8am our time).