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Ask your Checkology questions here!  

Jordan Maze, NLP
Posts: 19
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(@jmaze)
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Joined: 3 years ago

Hi everybody, Jordan from NLP here! I help run our Checkology virtual classroom, which is a free, browser-based e-learning platform with engaging, classroom-ready news literacy resources made for your middle school and high school students.

If you're experiencing Checkology technical issues or would like to check out guides on course setup, evaluation and more, please head to our Help Center. You can contact us there and get a super quick reply 😀 

Otherwise, this forum is a great place to connect about assignment recommendations, tips for integrating particular lessons into your subject area and to learn best practices from other educators. 

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mjwarren29
Posts: 1
(@mjwarren29)
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Joined: 3 years ago

Hi Jordan,

I would love to see a revamped pre and post assessment individualized to each student so I can ascertain growth in the curriculum.  I know it’s a terrible way to measure growth but I use it as one of my objectives in my evaluation 

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Jordan Maze, NLP
(@jmaze)
Joined: 3 years ago

Member
Posts: 19

@mjwarren29 thanks for letting me know! Could you tell me a little more? Do you mean that you'd like to be able to customize specific questions for each individual student? 

Currently, students all take the same pre-assessment, but they only take the post-assessment questions associated with the assignments that they complete. So when you click the "Matched data" tab in the "Pre/post assessment" dashboard, you'll only see matched data for assignments that students have actually completed. You can also use the dropdown on the top right to filter by student, so you can see individual students' learning gains on specific concepts that relate to their assignments. 

I'm not sure whether any of that was new information, but let me know if that relates to the type of individualized pre and post assessment you referred to. 

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kpatenaude
Posts: 1
(@kpatenaude)
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Joined: 3 years ago

Hi Jordan, thank you for offering your time to this forum. I love using Checkology with my Digital Citizenship class. The students have become comfortable with it and are now able to use the content on their own. I do have a suggestion. I know there is a feature to lock the videos so students can't view them on their own. Is there also a way to install a "stop" slide for when we want to do a combination of direct and independent instruction? This would allow my younger students to complete the activities but stop them from going on (they like to skip past the unwatched video). Thank you! 

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Jordan Maze, NLP
(@jmaze)
Joined: 3 years ago

Member
Posts: 19

@kpatenaude hello, thanks for writing about this! We don't currently have a STOP slide for this purpose, but we'll certainly take this into account for our future conversations on lesson formatting and functionality. Do you use any other tools that offer a STOP slide or similar that we could use as a model? 

Thanks,

Jordan

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dmalan902
(@dmalan902)
Joined: 2 years ago

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sumyat28
Posts: 4
(@sumyat28)
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Joined: 3 years ago

Hello!

Is there a time estimate info available to know how much approx. time it would take for students to do the InfoZones lesson, for example, that has 30 slides with short videos in it? In my lesson plan, I'm assigning it as asynchronous work and don't know how much time I should reserve for it. Thank you.

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Jordan Maze, NLP
(@jmaze)
Joined: 3 years ago

Member
Posts: 19

@sumyat28 Hi Sumyat, sure thing! You can find lesson time estimates in our comprehensive lesson guides. Here's the one for InfoZones.  You'll find it on the top left-hand side. Please keep in mind that the time estimates have varied a bit this school year as students are working remotely on their own time. For InfoZones taught in an asynchronous environment, I'd recommend about 70 minutes. Let me know if you need more details!

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sumyat28
(@sumyat28)
Joined: 3 years ago

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Posts: 4

@jmaze Very helpful. Thanks, Jordan! Where do I find all the comprehensive lesson guides?

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Jordan Maze, NLP
Posts: 19
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Topic starter
(@jmaze)
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Joined: 3 years ago

Hi Sumyat, sorry for the extremely late response. Here is a direct link to the full list of all lessons: https://www.notion.so/newslitproject/Comprehensive-lesson-guides-6ad22b3fe8cb46f1ba7c32bb44a26e8f  

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Pat Allen
Posts: 1
(@pat-allen)
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Joined: 2 years ago

Hi all - I have a new student who is visually impaired.  Have any of you used Checkology with visually impaired students and if so, how did it go?

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Kim Bowman
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(@kbowman)
Joined: 3 years ago

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Posts: 12

@pat-allen Kim here with NLP's educator outreach and success team. Thanks for asking about this! We are always looking for more ways to make Checkology as accessible as possible to as many students as possible, so please let us know if you have any suggestions after your student's experience on Checkology! I know that some of our users have utilized screen reader software with Checkology and we have some exciting updates for this coming next year. In particular, we are adding alternative (Alt) Text this summer so that screen readers can read aloud images on Checkology lessons. We are also running checks on color contrast to make sure images and text are as clear as possible for students. One thing currently on platform is the ability to make videos full screen. If larger images/text is helpful for your student, you may also want to use the zoom option on the student's browser to enlarge Checkology lessons to an optimal level for the student. We also have Comprehensive lesson guides that have full content transcripts that can be adapted to help meet the needs of all students. Please let me know if you have any follow-up questions for me. Happy to help!

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cfosland
Posts: 1
(@cfosland)
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Joined: 2 years ago

I'm not able to download the student report on the Checkology platform. A few weeks ago I could get a spreadsheet containing all the information I need. Now I just get an error message "This site can't be reached.'

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Kim Bowman
Admin
(@kbowman)
Joined: 3 years ago

Member
Posts: 12

@cfosland Thanks for reaching out about this. If possible, can you send me a request via the Help Center with some details to help me get to the bottom of things? Here's a few pieces of info that would be helpful for my investigation:

  • Are you clicking on the "Download" next to "Report" on your class tile? Or, is it a different report you are trying to access?
  • What device/browser are you using?

One thing to try in the meantime is clearing your browser cache before trying to download the report again and see if that does the trick! Thanks for any additional information or screenshots you can provide. 

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sumyat28
Posts: 4
(@sumyat28)
New Member
Joined: 3 years ago

Hi Jordan,

Are there answer keys available for check center missions and challenge exercises? I couldn't find them in the Resources tab on Checkology. Thank you!

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2 Replies
Kim Bowman
Admin
(@kbowman)
Joined: 3 years ago

Member
Posts: 12

@sumyat28 Hi Sumyat! We currently only have answer keys available for core Checkology lessons, but we are now planning to add answer keys for the exercises, challenges and missions to the platform during the upcoming school year. We appreciate you reaching out and putting this on our radar. If there is a specific exercise, challenge or mission you'd like an answer key for more immediately, please don't hesitate to reach out to me by submitting a request on the Checkology Help Center with the names of those specific assignments and I'll make sure to prioritize them and get them to you ASAP.

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sumyat28
(@sumyat28)
Joined: 3 years ago

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Posts: 4

@kbowman Thank you, Kim. I'll send you the name of the check center mission that I'd like to double check the answer key before evaluating students' work. Thanks!

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