You may recall from my last blog post that there have been some delays in getting the Iowa Curriculum Alignment Toolkit (I-CAT) updated. Tonight I am pleased to announce that the first of two major updates to the I-CAT have been put in place.
Briefly, most of the structural updates needed for the I-CAT to accommodate the different structure of the Iowa Core content due to the adoption of the Common Core State Standards in Literacy and Math have been put in place. However, you will not actually notice most of these updates until the content itself has been updated.
The main difference you will notice is on the screen just after you select a content area to reflect on, which starts with the phrase "Please select the information you wish to work with..." The drop down menus are in a slightly different order than they were before. Furthermore, what used to be an open field to indicate which school year a teacher wants to reflect on has been changed to a drop down menu.
Other changes do appear now when generating reports using the View my Data and Compare Data tools. However, training is just starting to roll out for these tools, so most users will be unaffected by these changes as well.
Please note that all trained I-CAT facilitators have been provided with the documentation they need to support end users in using the I-CAT given these changes. Once the content is updated, I will post a more extensive description of all changes, as well as provide facilitators with more detailed documentation. I hope to get the content updated in the next two weeks.
Please check back here for more information about I-CAT updates. Thanks to everyone for your patience and dedication to doing quality alignment work.
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