Newsletter from LTS

Stride Academy Alabama e-News: February 2015 We are always astounded by the fresh new ideas our teachers and administrators come up with for Stride Academy contests and incentives. In honor of Valentine's Day, here are some of our all-time favorites, if you're looking to sweeten your students' experience with Stride Academy! 10 Contest Ideas We LOVE News Anchor for a Day - Award your top scorers with the privilege of reading the morning announcements, whether over the intercom or video announcements. Coin Master - See how many coins your students can earn on Stride Academy before cashing them in for gameplay. Honor the top coin earner by announcing the winner as the Coin Master. Snowball Fight! - Yes, you read that right! One Stride Academy school in Texas is staging a fake snow-ball fight for the top users in the school from January to February. Wall of Fame - Highlight your students' Stride Academy milestones by creating a Wall of Fame with each week's high scorers.  Student Aide for a Day - Allow your top earners the chance to assist a class as the teacher's aide for the day. Stride-A-Thon - Showcase your classes' growth over the course of the school year with weekly incentives and visual growth charts. Celebrate the class with the most usage at the end of the school year with a pizza party!   We've Got Spirit - Award top class winners with a spirit stick and celebrate their victory with a popcorn party. Stride Academy Royalty - Award the "King and Queen of Answers" to the students who have the highest number of correctly answered questions in Stride Academy.  1 Million Star Points Club - Each quarter, recognize students who have achieved 1 million Star points at an Honors Assembly.  Pizza with the Principal - Recognize the top boy and girl student with the most usage from each grade with a pizza party with the principal.  We want to hear from you! Share with us your Valentines' contest to be featured in the next Stride Academy e-news issue by emailing Cate Powell, at cpowell@ltsed.com.  Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Nowling pictured with MLK,Jr. contest winners, Madisen W. and Sara H. Pictured above are students who exceeded 50,000 Star points during the MLK, Jr. Contest. Teachers Go Above and Beyond Sixth grade teachers, Mrs. Nowling and Mrs. Smith atNew Brockton Elementary School in New Brockton, AL, have pushed themselves to go above and beyond their daily responsibilities to encourage student participation in Stride Academy contests. Their hardwork has paid off as students earned over 12 million Star Points during the MLK, Jr. Holiday Contest! The winners of this contest, Sara H. with over 6 million Star points and Madisen W. with over 1 million Star points, were awarded the opportunity to be a Kindergarten aide for a half-day. Along with these winners, 24 students earned over 50,000 Star pointsduring the contest! Congratulations to you all on this great achievement!  Contests Spark Students' Enthusiasm for Stride Academy North Highland Elementary School in Hueytown, AL hosted a Stride Academy contest over the holidays to encourage learning outside of school. Students were eager to participate in order to claim the prize. With over 3 million Star points, 5th grader Emma M. was awarded 1st place in the holiday contest with Camden M.capturing 2nd place with over 1 million Star points. Overall grade winners includedKennedy W. in 4th grade, Tala W. in 3rd grade, Chenel B. in 2nd grade, Cooper M.in 1st grade and Caleb G. in Kindergarten.  Striding to the Finish Line Students at Forest Oaks Elementary School in Chelsea, AL started the year off with a bang! Educators are seeing an increase in student usage by tracking the number of questions answered in each class from January to April.  Loving Lab Time Students at Alexandria Elementary School in Alexandria, AL enjoy logging on to Stride Academy during lab time!  Reminder: PMA Form 4 Available Feb. 15th  Our 4th and FINAL Progress Monitoring Assessment will be available Feb. 15th - Apr. 4th. Make plans to add this online assessment to your Spring test prep efforts!  Questions? Contact: Cate Powell ♥ Customer Experience Specialist   866.552.9192, ext. 1025 ♥ Email: cpowell@ltsed.com

Visit to Alexandria

Thanks to Alexandria High School and Alexandria Elementary School for enjoyable visits this past Friday.

Over time, with multiple visits to multiple schools, together with emails and phone calls, common themes and common questions start to emerge. We had the opportunity to talk about some of those during this visit.

Use Chrome
Stride Academy works best with Chrome (on Windows, and Safari on Macs). That message is one that every school seems to have implemented. It's something to continue to stress to parents and students as they use Stride Academy at home.

Chrome is just a great browser all the way around. The apps and extensions add additional functionality. For example, I have talked about the Windows "Snipping Tool" with several faculties. Computer which are still running Windows XP do not have that tool. A great little extension called Awesome Screenshot Capture and Annotate performs the same type of function.

 

Update Your iPad

If you are having problems on the iPad, the problem is likely the operating system needs to be updated. To find out more, read this post. It tells you how to find out what the current version is, what version you need, and how to replace the desktop shortcut from a previous OS with the new one, This article tells how to perform the update.

Encourage Home Use

Pictured here is an 8th grade class working on Stride Academy in the computer lab. When asked how many have Internet access at home, every hand went up. Most students also had an iPad and/or smartphone of their own.

8th Graders Working in Stride Academy

Extending learning past the school day is an easy way to increase usage. Some schools are limited in the number of computers and tablets they have, impacting the use of Stride Academy. Encouraging home usage is an easy answer. One of these students said that her little brother's elementary school teacher assigns Stride Academy as homework. Now that's a teacher who is serious about extending the learning.

Make Stride Academy Part of the Day

Pictured here are students in one of the computer labs. Every student goes to the computer lab every day. When they go to the computer lab, Stride Academy is what the students do. In the secondary grades, having a regular schedule to go to the lab or check out a cart of iPads promote regular use.

Alexandria Elementary Students Use Stride Academy Daily

Don't Mess With Texas

I have received messages lately regarding an error message related to Texas. While at Alexandria Elementary, one student ran into that problem, and I asked him to show me what he did, so I could trouble-shoot the problem. It turned out that he figured out what he was doing wrong as I watched.

Stride Academy allows a couple of ways for a student to log in: one way with a KCC and one with a KCS. Watch what is asked for in the blank. If the blank asks for a KCS and the student enters a KCC, the program returns the above error message.

Anything new takes time to learn. As we invest time learning how to leverage available technology, we move from working harder to working smarter.