These blogs are a medium to learn and share ideas for writing instruction using MY Access! You will find lesson plans on controversial subjects, interviews with authors, and ideas for teaching writing as a process. We encourage you to read the blogs, then share your own ideas, debate, and ask questions.  We have outstanding content that we are excited to share and are always looking for new blog material.  So please let us know if you have any interesting topics by posting them to our Forum.  Navigate between both the blogs and the forums to learn more about using MY Access! to its fullest instructional potential. We hope you will find the material in the Community timely, enlightening and useful. And we look forward to talking to you!

Take a look at some of the new and improved features in the program.  And let us know what you think.

Improved Prompt Search.  Looking for a College Readiness Prompt? Or a prompt aligned to a specific textbook unit? Choose from over 1,000 cross-curricular writing topics.  Assigning prompts from our Enhanced Prompt Library (with SAT®-style and music prompts) is easier through subject and keyword searching.

District and Teacher Use Reports: Tracking and monitoring usage and performance has never been easier!  Two new reports enable schools and districts to view student, teacher and administrator performance and usage.

My Tutor® ELL Spanish. Native Spanish speakers can now view My Tutor® instructional feedback in Spanish! Teachers and administrators will be able to turn this feature on or off at the assignment level.

iSEEK™ (http://education.iseek.com/) provides safe, authoritative teaching and learning resources including lesson plans, activities, reference materials and literacy research data. The new MySEEK library allows you to create a searchable library of online resources, organize them in any way you like, and find them quickly later.

Improved Resource and Training Center. This provides improved content and navigation and easy access to “how to” videos. New and improved instructional resources include prompt and genre specific instructional units and research tools. Need help using a feature? Click on any of the ? icons located throughout the program for
step-by-step “how to” feature videos.

Practice Assignments: Is the writing for practice? If you do not want the data from practice assignments included in the teacher or school report, you can assign a prompt as a “practice prompt.”

User Search Enhancement: No longer is necessary to drill down through the hierarchy.  Check the students’ status as “active” or “deactivated.”

Batch/ Bulk Group Management:  It is now easier for a teacher or administrator to archive all of their existing teacher/group/classes in preparation for the new school year! with MY Access!® ® ! Our Bulk/Batch Management tool enables the teacher or administrator to archive one or more groups simultaneously.

Web-based Customer Care System. Have a “how to” question? Need technical assistance? Our Customer Service staff will promptly respond to your inquiries.  All service requests are ticketed, tracked and monitored.  Please send all MY Access!®  concerns, issues or enhancement requests to support@myaccess.com or through the web-based request form located on each MY Access!® screen.

Reach Community Author Series: Our blogs feature interviews with authors, writers, and published educators. Read and listen to interviews with the authors such as Chris Crutcher, and incorporate them into your classroom with specially integrated MY Access! ® lesson plans, such as the one related to “Banning Books.” http://reach.vantagelearning.com/2008/09/05/banning-books-lesson-plan-middle-school-6-8-persuasive-writing/

Improved Professional Development. New offerings will enhance your use of this powerful writing tool by focusing on the “Essentials” of using the program instructionally. The department also offers MY Access! Classroom, Test Success, and a parent component.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 8:05 am and is filed under Because Writing Matters, MY Access! eNews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.