The program’s participants
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Their last week was in Washington D.C. with briefings at the Environmental Protection Agency and Senate Committee for Environment and Public Works.
The program’s participants bring a broad range of backgrounds, including study of basic medicine and the effects of climate change on human health; marine biology, water-purification and renewable energy research; and information technology.
Goals of the program include:
* Transformative learning experience through introductions to a broad spectrum of American life.
* Opportunities for U.S. practitioners to learn about environmental challenges in the Asia Pacific region.
* Building networks and collaborative projects that link participants with U.S environmental professionals to develop practical solutions to shared challenges.
The five-week institute is hosted by the East-West Center with funding from the Study of the U.S. Branch in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The Institute is held in collaboration with more than fifty organizations, including the University of Hawaii at Manoa Environmental Center, Yale University’s Global Environmental Governance Project, The Nature Conservancy, and The Kohala Center.
The East-West Center promotes better relations and understanding among the people and nations of the United States, Asia, and the Pacific through cooperative study, research, and dialogue. Established by the U.S. Congress in 1960, the Center serves as a resource for information and analysis on critical issues of common concern, bringing people together to exchange views, build expertise, and develop policy options.
The Kohala Center is an independent, not-for-profit center for research and education about and for environment. By respectfully engaging Hawaii Island as the world’s most vibrant classroom and laboratory for humanity, The Kohala Center builds teaching and research programs for energy and food self-reliance and ecosystem health to enhance island environments, serve island communities, and advance the work of the academy. The Kohala Center operates in partnership with local, national, and international research and educational institutions.
The Study of the U.S. Institutes are designed and funded by the Study of the U.S. Branch in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). Study of the U.S. Institute participants are among over 40,000 individuals participating in U.S. Department of State exchange programs each year. For more than sixty years, ECA has funded and supported programs that seek to promote mutual understanding and respect between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. Other ECA programs include the Fulbright Program and the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program.
Archipelago Learning is a leading subscription-based online education company. We provide standards-based instruction, practice, assessment and productivity tools that improve the performance of educators and students via proprietary Web-based platforms. Study Island, our core product line, helps students in kindergarten through 12th grade, or K-12, master state-specific grade level academic standards in a fun and engaging manner. During the 2009-2010 school year, Study Island products were utilized by approximately 10.0 million students in nearly 22,000 schools in 50 states. These students answered over 3.2 billion practice questions.
In June of 2010, Archipelago Learning acquired EducationCity, which provides an online K-6 educational program that includes instructional content and assessments in language arts, mathematics and science. EducationCity is used by 8,200 schools in the U.K. and 4,800 in the U.S. EducationCity and Study Island work in tandem to introduce, extend, enrich, remediate, and reinforce the learning process through proven, research-based content that ensures every learner can be successful in mastering the most rigorous standards of learning. In addition, Archipelago Learning introduced new online post-secondary programs last year through its Northstar Learning product line.
The Study Island SAT and the Study Island ACT programs were examined for this review; they are very similar programs with test-specific differences. Both programs are webbased subscription services that can be used by students or teachers at any time from any location - lab, classroom, library, or home. This review will focus on the Study Island SAT program.
Study Island has partnered with Tutor Associates, a one-on-one tutoring company, to offer the SAT (and the ACT) review program. The mathematics portion of Study Island SAT helps students master both computation problems and word problems similar to those used on the test; the verbal portion includes practice for the critical reading and writing sections of the SAT.
Animated interactive instructional videos help students learn key testtaking strategies and help them avoid common pitfalls. The program also provides hundreds of printable flashcards designed to help students practice common SAT vocabulary. Practice exams allow students to get a score estimate. Full-length practice tests can be generated on request.
Subscribing users can log on to an opening page that provides specific user statistics and desired reports. To the left of the screen, a menu offers choices including School Stats, Class Manager, Benchmarking (an add-on at an extra cost), Create New Topic (to generate new practice exercises), New Message, My Attributes, and My High Scores. Below the menu is a list of subscription services available to the user's school. At the top, users can click on on-screen buttons to link to Emailed Report Manager, Printable User List, and Adjust Student Difficulty.
An SAT button takes the user to a page offering three selections: Math, Verbal, and Practice Tests. The Math option leads to a page with nine math lesson areas and more than 50 specific lessons. The Verbal option leads to a page with nine verbal lesson areas that link to a total of 34 specific lessons, a guide to writing SAT essays, and practice prompts. Check boxes offer a direct link to the selected lesson areas. As students work through a subject, their results are recorded on this page as well.
Once users select a lesson, they are taken to a page that lets them select session options including Test Mode, Classroom Response Systems, Printable Worksheet, or Games. In addition, users can select a number of questions for the session, from a range of 1-20.
Each time the Test Mode or Worksheet options are selected, a different result can be generated. The Games selection links to 28 Java games.
The Classroom Response Systems option provides a page that enables the selection of specific clickers for use in study sessions. The Study Island SAT and ACT programs work with elnstruction's Classroom Performance System, Promethean's Learner Response Systems, Qwizdom's Student Response System, Renaissance's 2Know! Classroom Response System, SMART Response interactive response systems, and the TurningPoint student response system.
A number of Study Island reports can be used to guide future drill work or to drive classroom instruction. Lists of students can be generated with grading options for each subject, topic, or program. A breakdown of class or student usage for a selected lesson area or program can be generated. The reports can break down information on student performance and can compare individuals or classes by school and state.
Our district subscribes to Study Island for its grades 2-8 students. The software started out primarily as a NJ Ask test prep tool. It has evolved into much more. Although there are many features that i could highlight I would like to talk about the Custom Assessment tool in this posting.
The custom assessment option allows teachers to create online assessments for one student in a class, a group of students in a class or an entire class. The faculty member can browse through questions by topic. He or she can select a topic question and tell the system how many of that type of question he or she would like included in the test.
The software will andomize the numbers in a math question or change the text in a language arts question. This allows the teacher to have multiple questions that assess the same skill.
By having the ability to create custom assessments, faculty members are able to quickly develop formative assessments that will help guide instruction. The fact that these assessments can be taken online, with a student response system or on paper provide a number of options.
The newest release of Study Island now allows faculty members to share the custom assessments that they create with the other teachers in their school. They have added a custom assessment library.
When implemented correctly, study island is a valuable instructional tool. The software offers numerous reports, customizable options and an intuitive interface. I must say I am very happy with our subscription.
Study Island treats their customers the way that they like to be treated, and do everything they can to offer a too good to be true experience from the moment you buy Study Island to the day you renew.” Quote from a Minnesota principal
Study Island is a leading provider of web-based state assessment preparation programs and standards based learning programs.
Study Island is used by over six million students in over 15,000 schools.
Study Island Highlights
State specific questions
Web-based
Up-to-date 2007 math standards
Response to Intervention (RtI)
FREE customer support
Parental Involvement
Easy implementation
Biggest “bang” for the education buck
Adaptable
Simple, tailored reports
Responses from our 2007-2008 teacher survey:
97.4% say Study Island helped increase their test scores.
94.0% say their students enjoy using Study Island.
96.1% plan on renewing Study Island next school year.
How does Study Island work?
Our Minnesota programs are completely web-based. Students simply log on to access the program. The program is organized into topics covering all of the Minnesota Academic Standards that are tested on the state-mandated Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments - Series II (MCA-II) in grades 2 through 8. Also Algebra II EOC and High School product coming very soon!