When a new client comes on board with IA, the experts on the IA Accounts Team take the time to really get to know the key decision makers within the district, along with the characteristics that make that district unique.  As the conversation develops, our Account Representatives get a feel for how best to implement IA for each new client.

In some districts, we may recommend a full release district wide.  These clients have usually benchmarked in the past, or have worked with an Instructional Improvement System previously, and are now switching to IA.  The teachers and principals in these districts are accustomed to the process of formative assessments and are eager to see results quickly.

Other districts may be better off introducing the concept of benchmarking first.  By working with a team within the district we can help them create benchmarks, assign the tests, test their students, and get their teachers logged on to look at their reports.  These districts begin by extolling the value of benchmark test results, then encourage their teachers to continue the accumulation of data for more in-depth analysis.

The implementation process can make or break your teacher buy-in.  If teachers don’t immediately see the value of any new resource, they will not be intrigued enough to use it.  Instead of guessing, let the IA Accounts team help you figure out an Individual Implementation Plan for your district.  The more that your teachers are using IA, the more data we can help them evaluate, and the more targeted the remediation will be.

Have you noticed the new home screen once you’re logged into IA?  More importantly, have you noticed the News & Updates listings?

The News & Updates on the User Home Page will allow you to keep up to date with important messages we need to relay to our clients.  From things like tips and tools, to important user messages and explanations, the News & Updates page will always have the most pertinent information related to your IA account.

For additional tips and tools sent straight to your email box, please sign up for the IA newsletter!  Click here to subscribe.

Have a great weekend!

Most of us are aware that President Ronald Reagan was called “The Great Communicator”.  Whether we believed in his politics or not, it was almost universally accepted that President Reagan was excellent at communicating with the country and expressing his ideas in a way that everyone could understand.  Now this isn’t to say that he didn’t have his faults, but to be memorialized with such a powerful image, as one who was able to speak to the masses, is quite an honor.

In this day and age of mobile technology and social media, the idea of communication has morphed from what was once the act of making one understand what you’re trying to convey, to typing a series of characters that indicate a smile or a frown, from which we’re supposed to infer happiness or sadness (and the varying degrees thereof). We must now translate backwards in order to interpret what the person on the other end of that text message or email is trying to say.  What is now a smiley face on a digital screen used to be a happy vocal tone heard over the telephone, which used to be a smile visible on a person’s face when they were talking to you in close proximity.

We are now no longer forced to use our words to express emotion, but instead have relegated our communication to catch phrases or symbols.  How many times have you heard the word “amazing” today used to indicate a person’s happiness with a situation, place, or thing?  Were all of those things equal in their degree of amazingness?  My morning workout was amazing.  My child had an amazing soccer game last night.  The new season of Desperate Housewives looks like it’s going to be amazing.  The word “amazing” has become a catchall.  As our vocabulary is abbreviated and our communication becomes truncated, information gets lost in translation: we no longer know how to communicate effectively.

At Interactive Achievement we have struggled with the new lines of communication that have had to be forged as we’ve expanded and grown.  We started in the back room of a programmer’s house, then moved to a basement, and then moved to a one room office in a strip mall; but the one thing we were always able to rely on in all of those environments was face to face communication.  If a district was testing, we literally shouted it out so that everyone was on watch.  If a school was having internet problems, we announced it to the room in case the phone calls started coming in. Everyone in the company was instantly aware of the severity of the problem or the joyousness of the triumph based on facial expression, vocal inflection, and the words that were spoken.  Now that we’ve moved to a nice, newly renovated building with multiple floors and rooms and offices, we have been trying to create that old environment that allowed us to yell across the room to a fellow employee to let them know what was going on. We’ve attempted to open the lines of communication with cell phones, message boards, internal blogs and tools like Skype and email.  But as we’ve encouraged our growing number of employees to use all of the tools we’re providing to them, the one thing we keep coming back to is the old fashioned meeting and phone call.

While everyone else around you is attempting to cut short their communication, take a look at what is most effective in your environment.  Here at IA, we’ve found brainstorming sessions far more productive than Skype and internet message boards.  We are also trying to carry this line of thinking into the field as we communicate with our clients on a daily basis.  Sure, blogs, newsletters, and emails are a nice way to stay caught up, but sometimes a face to face meeting is worth far more than an email.

We are attempting to visit with all of our districts in the next few months as we embark on the new school year.  Please call your District Representative today if you’d like to chat, even if you don’t have a specific topic in mind.  We’d love to meet with you, to sit down and truly communicate with you about your needs and goals and what IA can do to help you achieve them.

This is the time of year when you begin to feel one of two things:  either summer has flown by, or it has absolutely crawled.  Kids and teachers are preparing to go back to school, the last afternoons are spent at the pool or playing outside under the sprinklers, and the sales circulars proclaim 39¢ notebooks and 10¢ pencils (limit of 3).

Here at IA, summer has been entirely too short.  As we prepare for our clients to return to the classroom, we are deep in the throes of uploading student and teacher schedules, releasing updates and improvements, and training new and returning users.  As we meet face to face with our newest clients, it is incredible to see the response from first time users.  We have always strived to make our test creation software easy to use, and our reports easy to find and read.  Training new users often helps us pinpoint the times when our software shines far above the rest, but it is also a prime opportunity for us to rediscover the places where we still need to improve.

Everything in life is a learning opportunity.  As our company has grown, we’ve learned from our clients.  We’re learning how to care for clients and how to manage workload and server load.  As students wrap up their summer reading lists, we want you to know that we’ve been doing our summer homework, too.  The 2010-2011 school year will be filled with exciting new features, new faces, and new procedures to better serve our client base.  As we grow, it is our ultimate goal that our clients receive the same level of service and dedication that you’ve come to expect from IA.

Here at IA we have a profound belief that what we do will ultimately change education for the better.  We believe in putting our clients and the educational community first.  After all, it’s not about us, it’s about you, and those things that you do on a daily basis that impact every student’s life.

As the sweltering heat of summer fades to cooler nights and back to school jitters, we ask that you let us know what we can do to help you prepare for the new school year.  We want to partner with you to and your school to provide the best resources for you and your community in the upcoming school year.  Contact Michelle Dykstra with any ideas, thoughts, suggestions, or needs you might have (michelle@interactiveachievement.com).