Task Tracker Accounts for Concept Checkers

What's the Big Idea?

The Physics Interactives is one of the most trafficked sections of our website. It is our effort to present Physics concepts in a more immersive manner than a Tutorial page. Students are presented a simulated environment that they can interact with and explore. A variable can be changed and the results observed. Our Concept Checkers are designed to coordinate with a simulation from the Physics Interactives section. More specifically, they were designed to complement both the Interactive and the accompanying activity sheet that we provide. The activity guides students through a particular inquiry question or set of inquiry questions. The Concept Checker provides a follow-up check of student comprehension. 

Both the Physics Interactives and the Concept Checkers are free. Any teacher can use the Simulation-Concept Checker combo as part of an awesome lesson plan. And any student who is commited to learning can explore the interactive and check their conceptual understanding with a Concept Checker. Such FREE use of these tools is not compromised by the lack of a Task Tracker account. The full version is publicly available. 
 
 

What is Task Tracker?

Beginning in the Spring of 2020, we introduced our Task Tracker system for tracking student progress on the activities found in the Concept Builder section of our website. We have since expanded it to provide tracking for several other sections of our website. The Concept Checkers for Physics Interactives is one of these sections. The Task Tracker database system allows teachers to set up classes, easily add students to those classes, create assignments that appear on students' assignment boards, set due dates, set scoring rules, and view student progress and scores on the assigned tasks. As the name implies, Task Tracker tracks the progress of students on specified tasks on a website.
 

 

Benefits of a Task Tracker Teacher Account

Students, teachers, and classrooms can use the Physics Interactives and Concept Checkers for FREE. So why would anyone ever want to pay for a free tool? That's a fair question and one that we hope that you ponder. Taking the step of purchasing a teacher account should only occur after you've conducted a cost-benefit analysis.

So here is what a teacher can do with a paid Teacher Account and access to our Task Tracker system.

1. Create classes in our database and invite and add students to those classes.
2. Turn a select number of Physics Interactives and accompanying Concept Checkers into assignments with due dates, point values, late penalty points, scoring rules for rewarding partial credit, etc.
3. A teacher account provides teachers with access to the Teacher Preview mode. They can easily view all questions within a Concept Checker and their organization into Question Groups.
4. Identify Question Groups to be eliminated from the assigned Concept Checker. Students will never be presented those Question Groups. You can remove as many Question Groups as you wish.
5. Create scoring rules that awards students partial credit for completing only part of a Concept Checker.
6. Each Concept Checker has a default miss penalty (usually 10%). When a student misses a question, their Health Bar decreases by a certain percentage; this percentage is referred to as the miss penalty.  When the Health Bar decreases to 0%, the student must start the Concept Checker over. Teachers with a Teacher Account can change the miss penalty, thereby exercising control over the rigor associated with any assigned mission.
7. When you have a teacher account, your students' progress (and health) will be saved. If they exit out of a Concept Checker and later return to it, their previous progress will be retrieved. 
8. Teachers can view students' time-stamped completion records, including student scores on each Concept Checker that has been assigned. They can also view which Question Groups were missed. This information can be used to post-process troublesome Question Groups using the Teacher Preview mode.
9. A select number of our Physics Interactives are skill-building activities. We have built Task Tracker code directly into these so that a Concept Checker is not needed. As students progress through the levels of the skill-building Interactive, their progress will be stored in our Task Tracker database. Teachers with Task Tracker accounts can turn these into assignments as well.

 

How Much Does a Teacher Account Cost?

Now that you know the benefits, what about the costs? How much does a teacher account cost? How can it be paid for? Do you offer group discounts?  Do you accept Purchase Orders?

These are all great questions. We are going to direct you to our Pricing For Schools page for answers to your cost and payment questions.


 

Student Privacy and Identifying Information

As you have likely noticed, privacy is a huge issue these days. And it should be! Teachers who have teacher accounts will need to invite students to join their classes. This means that students wil have accounts as well.  In order for teachers to identify those students on their class rosters, we will need to acquire some identifying information about those students.  For our system to work best for students and teachers, we suggest an email address, a first name, and either a last name or a last initial. An email addess is guaranteed to be a unique identifier and is used as a log-in username. The first and the last name (or last initial) are used in the roster to help teachers identify the student whose scores they are vewing. 

The information that we receive from students is kept private. We do not share, sell, or distribute the information to anyone. What you give us, stays with us until 30 days after the end of the subscription period. At that time, the information is permanently deleted from our system.

If you have additional questions regarding student privacy or need to have privacy agreements signed, please reach out to us through our Contact form. We are always glad to help.