MasteryConnect Blog

The MasteryConnect Common Core app now has over 700,000 downloads!  We’ve listened to all the wonderful feedback that educators, parents, and students have provided and we’re excited to announce a major update.  To get the update, go to the App store and hit the updates tab.  If you haven’t downloaded the app yet, search for ‘MasteryConnect’ in your app store to find it.

Here are just a few of the new changes:

• A completely redesigned interface making it easier to navigate and view standards
• Search functionality – search for concepts and topics and find related standards
• Added History/Social Studies and Science and Technical standards
• More resources – check out the additional appendices and resources now right in the app

In addition to all the new features above, we’ve also updated all the standards with the new labeling conventions that were recently released by the Common Core State Standards Initiative.  To learn more about this change, check out this handy MasteryConnect CCSS Renaming Guide.

The update is only available on Apple devices for now, but we’ll soon be rolling these changes for Android and Windows users as well.  As always, Christie has created a quick video to introduce the new features of the app!  Check out the 1 minute video below:

We heard you loud and clear! Many of you in the MasteryConnect community have requested the ability to take the awesomeness of GradeCam bubble sheet scanning to the iPad. We’re excited to announce the MasteryScan App powered by GradeCam is now available in the iTunes app store.

With the free MasteryScan App, teachers with a Free MasteryConnect account can scan assessments up to 10 questions, and teachers with Premium MasteryConnect accounts can scan up to 100 questions.

Imagine! Your students can take an assessment, and you can walk around and give students immediate feedback right at their own desk! Like our other time-saving scoring tools, scores captured by MasteryScan will instantly and automatically sync with your MasteryConnect account.

Click here to visit the iTunes App Store to download MasteryScan for FREE.  To watch a quick demo, check out the video below:

We’d like to thank everyone who participated in the MasteryConnect Video Contest.  We were blown away as we watched the video entries that captured dedicated teachers using MasteryConnect and students engaging with formative data. With so many great video entries, it was tough to decide! Check out the winning videos below:

Grand Prize: Christopher Zirkle

contestvideofinalversion from Christopher Zirkle on Vimeo.

Second Place: Greg Cox

Third Place: Rosie Evans

We’re excited to announce that MasteryConnect’s BubbleSheet app is now available for Android! The BubbleSheet app allows students to take both formative and benchmark assessments on a mobile device or tablet.

In addition to allowing students to complete assessments on any Android device, the newly released version of BubbleSheet has many improved features:

• Autosaving of student answers
• Pausing an assessment allows students to finish an assessment at a later time
• Immediate feedback is now provided to students after submission to show scores and mastery level

We hope you enjoy using BubbleSheet on your Android devices!  Click here to view the BubbleSheet app in the Android Marketplace.

We’re excited to mark the official release of our curriculum maps feature!  Curriculum maps are part of our premium set of features and allow teachers to plan standards, assessments, and resources, and create trackers from a map with everything pre-built and ready for mastery tracking.  Standards from various standard sets can be mixed and matched and custom standards can also be added to the map.  In addition, teachers and administrators can share curriculum maps, making it easy for an entire team or grade level to plan and work from the same set of standards, sub-standards, resources, and assessments.

We’ll be hosting an hour-long webinar to introduce this great, new feature on Wednesday, December 19th, 2012 at 6pm MDT.  Click Here to Register for the webinar!

For a quick intro to this feature, check out the video below:

On October 10th, we published a blog post announcing 1,000,000 assessments scored in MasteryConnect.  Well, here we are a month and a week later and there are now over 2,000,000 assessments that have been scored through MasteryConnect.  While these numbers show the incredible growth of MasteryConnect, what gets us most excited is what these scores represent – assessment for learning.

We’re excited about the release of the new curriculum maps feature in MasteryConnect!  This feature addresses user feedback, makes organizing your school year easier, and allows the members of a team to build trackers off the same curriculum map!  The curriculum maps feature allows you to customize a base set of standards and add sub-standards, other grade-level standards, and custom standards.

Check out the video below to learn how to get started with curriculum maps:

As of today, MasteryConnect hit the 7,000 districts mark!  MasteryConnect now has teachers from 7,000 districts representing all 50 states and D.C.  There are approximately 14,000 districts in the United States, so today marks a major milestone in the growth of our Learning Community!

When Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan outlined his plan for education several years ago, he discussed the idea of a “next generation of assessments”.  At MasteryConnect, we believe teachers are the most powerful resource for this next generation of assessments.  We’re so excited to see such explosive growth around teachers sharing common formative assessments for both state and Common Core standards.  Thanks to all the educators out there who are taking part in the Mastery Movement!

Keep on Trackin’,
The MasteryConnect Team

We just passed the 1,000,000 assessment score milestone!  It’s so exciting to see the Mastery Movement happening everyday and the growth of the assessment and mastery-tracking tools within MasteryConnect.  As these scores are tied to the mastery of both state and Common Core standards, it’s awesome to think about the data being used everyday to inform instruction, give immediate feedback to students, and involve both parents and administrators in the learning process.

Many thanks to all the teachers and educators in our community that are driving the Mastery Movement and keeping the focus on student learning!

Keep on Trackin’,
The MasteryConnect Team

We’re excited about the upcoming launch of MasteryConnect’s Common Core on Windows 8.  Microsoft is launching their new app store on October 25, 2012.  Here’s a quick preview of the new MasteryConnect Common Core app for Windows 8.

October 22, 2012 update – Click Here to go to the download page in the Windows Store.