Embarc District Configuration Options

These are the customizable district options available to you in Embarc. After this process, your security, curriculum templates, and reports will be ready for use. If at any time you need to adjust these features, a user level of system administrator may log in to adjust them.

Log into the administrative website, select Administrative Functions - District Options and adjust the options as desired based on the definitions provided below.

Security Configuration

View\Copy curriculum from other districts and allow them to do the same – allows other districts to see your district’s curriculum also allows your district to see their curriculum.

 Allow Attachments at the Course Level – allows educators to attach an additional document to the curriculum. For each attachment the user will have the ability to specify who has access based on the options selected at the Topic Level (explained below).

 Allow Attachments at the Unit Level – allows educators to attach an additional document to the curriculum. For each attachment the user will have the ability to specify who has access based on the options selected at the Topic Level (explained below).

Allow Attachments at the Topic Level – allows educators to attach an additional document to the curriculum. For each attachment the user will have the ability to specify who has access based on the options selected at the Topic Level (explained below).

Allow additional External attachments – allows users uploading documents at the course, unit, or topic level as defined above, to specify that the documents will be visible to the general public.

Allow additional Educator attachments – allows users uploading documents at the course, unit, or topic level as defined above, to specify that the documents will be visible to any educator using Embarc.

Allow additional Internal attachments – allows users uploading documents at the course, unit, or topic level as defined above, to specify that the documents will be visible to educators from your district only.

Allow Dept/Grade Level attachments – allows users uploading documents at the course, unit, or topic level as defined above, to specify that the documents will be visible to educators from your district associated with the course’s department and grade level only. Please Note: Turning on this option requires you to specify departments and grade levels for users of type Educator on the User Maintenance portion of Embarc.

Allow Departmental Curriculum Coordinators to Change the Course Status – by default once a course status is published it can no longer be changed, and the only people that can change the status are users of type Curriculum Coordinator or System Administrator.  This option allows Departmental Curriculum Coordinators to change the course status and effectively change the course.

Allow Courses, Units, and Topics to be copied – provides the capability for Curriculum Authors to copy courses, units, and topics between courses.

Allow Departmental Curriculum Coordinators to perform cross district copies –allows user level Departmental Curriculum Coordinators to copy courses from other districts.  Otherwise, only users with Curriculum Director or System Administrator level have this ability.

Course Configuration Options

Track the Course Code – adds a small text field at the course level for recording your course code. This information is also included in the XML extract available in Embarc.

 Show the Course Code on the Public Site – allows the Course Code to be seen by the general public.

Use Course Level (CTE, Fine Arts). Set at the Department – adds a field on the Department Details screen where a district can check the CTE course level. The CTE course level then shows up on the General Course Information screen.

 Use Course Durations – adds a drop-down menu at the course level to record the course duration.

Track the Course Type (Elective/Required) – adds a required field at the course level to record whether the course is a required or elective course.

Track NCAA Course Approval - allows the district to mark whether the course is an approved course by the National Collegiate Athletic Association or if this is not applicable to this course.

Track the Primary Author of the Course – adds a text field at the course level where the district can record the primary author of the course. This field is not visible to the general public.

Track Course Approval Date - allows the district to enter a date for when the course was approved.   Also allows the district to supply a title for this field.

Course Overview Title – allows the district to specify the title they would like for the Course Overview field. The Lock option will disallow the editing of the course overview field.

Course Optional Fields – There are 9 optional fields available for a district to use at the course level. Each of these fields:  

• can contain 25,000 characters of information  

• has a corresponding “Display Order” dropdown menu so that the order the fields are displayed can be adjusted

• has a corresponding “Public” switch which allows you to control whether the fields are visible to the general public or not

• has a “Lock” switch - this will disallow the editing of the content in this field

  • If a field is not given a title, the field will not be available on the edit pages

  • If no content is in a field, it will not show on the public site or on reports

PLEASE NOTE: Once you have started putting content into Embarc be very careful changing the titles of these fields because you could create a situation where the content does not match the title.

District Defined Course Switches – allows the district to use checkboxes on the Course Details Edit page to represent items such as Dual Credit, Weighted, Summer School, CTE Course, etc. and will appear on the Course Summary report.

Course View Mode – this allows a district to choose the default view of what they see when they click on a course. There are two choices, the Scope & Sequence view and the Course Detail view.

Unit Configuration Options

Unit Overview Title – allows the district to specify the title they would like for the Unit Overview field. “Lock” option will disallow the editing of the unit overview field. Defaults to “Unit Description” for new districts.

Unit Optional Fields – There are 19 optional fields available for a district to use at the unit level.

Each of these fields:

• can contain 25,000 characters of information

• has a corresponding “Display Order” dropdown menu so that the order the fields are displayed can be adjusted

• has a corresponding “Public” switch which allows you to control whether the fields are visible to the general public or not

• has a “Lock” switch - this will disallow the editing of the content in this field

  • If a field is not given a title, the field will not be available on the edit pages.

  • If no content is in a field, it will not show on the public site or on reports.

PLEASE NOTE: Once you have started putting content into Embarc be very careful changing the titles of these fields because you could create a situation where the content does not match the title.

District Defined Unit Switches – allows the district to use checkboxes on the Unit Details Edit page to represent district decided items and will appear on the Course Summary report.

Topic Configuration Options

Topic Optional Fields – There are 10 optional fields available for a district to use at the topic level.

Each of these fields:

• can contain 25,000 characters of information

• has a corresponding “Display Order” dropdown menu so that the order the fields are displayed can be adjusted

• has a corresponding “Public” switch which allows you to control whether the fields are visible to the general public or not

  • If a field is not given a title, the field will not be available on the edit pages.

  • If no content is in a field, it will not show on the public site or on reports.

PLEASE NOTE: Once you have started putting content into Embarc be very careful changing the titles of these fields because you could create a situation where the content does not match the title.

District Defined Topic Switches – allows the district to use checkboxes on the Topic Edit page to represent district decided items and will appear on the Course Summary Report.

Show the Duration of Topics on the Public Site – allows parents and students to see the duration of topics.

Key Concept / Learning Target / Knowledge & Skills Configuration Options

Refer to the lowest level (key concept) as – allows you to configure the term “learning target” to a district-defined term.

Switches – Allows districts to use checkboxes at the learning target level to capture additional information. For example, knowledge vs. skill.

Learning Depth – Tracks the level of alignment between the learning target and a standard. Some examples include introduced, reinforced, mastered, or assessed. Some districts use these fields to identify Depth of Knowledge (DOK) levels.

Allow Learning Targets to be prioritized for certain topics – this option allows you to specify which learning targets are priority targets in a topic of study.

Allow Curriculum Authors and Departmental Curriculum Coordinators to generate targets from standards – the exact language from a standard is copied into a learning target.

Specify by department who can generate targets from standards – creates a checkbox on the Department Details page to “Allow Curriculum Authors and Department Curriculum Coordinators to generate targets from standards for this department”.

Hide the option to allow Curriculum Authors and Departmental Curriculum Coordinators to write targets and THEN choose standards - checking this option will hide the New Learning Target button on the Learning Target Edit page.

Track a short version of the lowest level (learning targets) – adds a field on the learning target page to store an abbreviated version of the concept.

Allow for the entry of assessment information at the lowest level – adds a field on the learning target level for the documentation of how the item will be assessed.

Assessment Selection List – in addition to allowing staff to enter assessment information, districts can provide a selection list of common formative assessments to save them from repetitively typing the same thing.

Reporting Configuration Options

Curriculum Map Fields – Embarc can create a Traditional Curriculum Map report with 5-7 columns.

• The last two columns of the report are pre-set as standards organized by topic, and topics with their associated learning targets.

• Use the Curriculum Map report dropdown menus to specify what values your district would like in the first 3 to 5 columns.

• Use the save/refresh button after making changes to this page or to repopulate the field selection choices below.

Please note, these are just defaults, individual teachers may choose to override this information when printing a map.

Help Configuration Options

There are five locations where a district can enter text to provide help for those using Embarc. If text is entered in this area, a question mark will be displayed on the page. Hovering over this question mark will show the help text to the user.  Help text can be found on the following pages:

• Course Edit

• Unit Edit

• Topic Edit

• Learning Target Edit

• Activity Edit

General Options

Use the Course/Schedule Projector – this option projects an individual course’s scope and sequence based on the district calendar and a daily schedule (block, elementary, periods, etc.) defined for the course.

Use the Interventions Database – Embarc allows for a searchable catalog of interventions used throughout the district. Please note: this system is not designed to track what interventions have been applied to specific students.

Enable Google Drive for attachments - This option allows a district to add Google Drive documents as an attachment to a course, unit, topic, or activity. The document is only housed on Google Drive and if deleted from there it will no longer be accessible from the curriculum.

Mark some Standards as “Power Standards”/District name for Power Standards – this feature allows a district to highlight certain standards. These standards are bolded on pages and can be filtered.

Track a short version of the standard - adds a field on the Standard page to store an abbreviated version of the concept.

Show Preselect Standards on the Public Site - allows the district to publish preselected standards on the public site.

Show Standards Aligned to Learning Targets on the Public Site Course Detail page – allows the district to show a list of actual standards being covered in the course on the public site.  This list is determined by summarizing the standards linked to the course’s learning targets.

Content to Show on Public Site - allows the district to choose which levels of the course they would like to be seen on the public site.

Default View for Learning Targets on Public Site – allows the district to choose from 3 options on how they’d like their learning targets to show up on the public website. 

Public Site Disclaimer – Embarc has a standard disclaimer on the bottom of each public page. If you would like to override our standard disclaimer enter your disclaimer here.  Default Language: The curriculum information displayed on these pages is an example of the sequence and timeframes for a class.  The actual sequence and timeframes may vary based on the actual students in a class and resource constraints.

Public Site – Rows per List Page / Admin Site – Rows per List Page – allows the district to specify how many records are returned per list page.

Public Site – General Public Starting Page – allows you to choose between 3 basic page layouts for the default view parents will see when viewing curriculum. (By Grade Level, By Department, Course Search)

Primary Time Zone – identifies what time zone the district conforms to and adjusts the time displayed throughout the system accordingly. Also, indicate whether the time should be adjusted for Daylight Saving Time (DST).

Show Classroom and Assessment Configuration

Use Lesson Plan component – this option activates Embarc integrated lesson planner and gives you access to all the other classroom configuration options.

Use Basic Assignments – this option allows educators to define their classes and publish assignments.

Use Classroom features (with enhanced assignments) - allows the district to use all the features of Classroom, which include announcements, events, discussions, and enhanced assignments.

Allow assignments to be linked to KCGs – allows the district to have learning targets linked to assignments.

Allow student or guardian to email teacher – allows students or guardians to directly email a teacher from within the student or parent portal.

Allow parent access to the parent portal – allows parents to connect with their child’s classroom information and see assignments, announcements, events and discussions.

Allow teachers to invite parents to the student portal – this option gives the teacher an invite button to send a parent request to their student’s portal.

Use Assessments - allows the district to use the assessments portion of Embarc.

Link to the Course Assessment – Allows you to choose an assessment from a drop-down menu from the Course View page and tie it to the course. This assessment will be visible to your district’s educators only as a PDF document.

Link to the Unit Assessment – Allows you to choose an assessment from a drop-down menu in and tie it to the course at the unit level. This assessment will be visible to your district’s educators only as a PDF document.

Lesson Plan Setup Options

Show All Lesson Plans by Unit –Adds a link at the unit level in the administrative site to view all the lesson plans associated with that unit, arranged by topic. Lesson plans can also be added from this location.

Predefine Lesson Plan Schedules – Allows you to define time periods so that your teachers can select a period instead of inputting actual times for lesson planning.

• A district can define multiple schedules

• Duration based schedules can be created at the elementary level

Allow Curriculum Development on Some Templates While Lesson Planning – This option allows the district to create units and topics as they are lesson planning

Lesson Plan Name – the lesson planner can be renamed if your district would prefer a name other than “Lesson Plan”.

District Plural Name for Lesson Plans - enter in the plural for your district's lesson plan name.

District Abbreviated Name for Lesson Plans - enter in the abbreviation for your district's lesson plan name.

Lesson Plan Template Setup Options

These options are accessed by clicking the “Add Template” button located in the Lesson Plan Options section of the District Options page.

Template Name – Districts can have multiple lesson plan templates – this option allows districts to name specific templates.

Lesson Plans are viewable by the public – checking this option will allow the district to have the option to have their lesson plans on their public Embarc site.

Lesson Plans are non-curriculum – checking this option will allow the district to use the lesson planner as a tool for scheduling, without attaching the lesson plan to a course.

District name for Lesson Plan Text Areas – a lesson plan can have up to 10 district defined fields on it. Each field can be

• required

• shown on the public website

• shown in the lesson plan book

The show course, unit, and/or topic fields can be displayed to educators as they edit their lesson plans. You can select which of these fields, if any, are displayed.

Require Lesson Plans to be Approved – This feature enables a process where the author submits lesson plans for review and the approvers either accept or provide comments on the lesson plan. A comment history is displayed at the bottom of the lesson plan for both the author and approver to see.

Approver – the primary individual assigned to review lesson plans associated with this template.

Backup Approver – the backup individual assigned to review lesson plans associated with this template.

Allow Sharing of Lesson Plans – Districts can allow lesson plans to be shared. This adds an option on the Lesson Plan Edit page where the author can choose to share their lesson plan.

Allow Attachments on Lesson Plans – allows the user to attach electronic files directly to their lesson plans.

Default Learning Targets from Activities - Allows a user to select an activity for their lesson plan and bring in all the learning targets that have been assigned to that activity.

If using a period-based schedule, display times instead of period names – checking this option will allow the district to show the times on the lesson plan instead of the names of the periods.

Date/Time Configuration

No Dates/Times – no dates or times noted on lesson plans

Require Dates/Times –Requires each lesson plan to be for a particular date and time.

Allow teachers to specify times – typically used at the elementary level where time schedules are not predefined.

Use Predefined time schedules – typically used at the middle and high school levels.

Time Schedule – if “Use Predefined time schedules” is selected above, select one of the time schedules defined for your district.

Tie to School Calendar – this option allows you to choose from one of the school calendars your district has set up to reflect the non-teaching days in your lesson plan.

Lesson Plan Help – template specific help that will be available to users of this template.

Rarely Used Options

Lock Course Setup Fields such as Department, Credits, Grades – This option will lock the key course fields at the course level once a course is published the first time. These fields will not be editable by Curriculum Authors.

Only show 'Published' courses to educators on the public site – This option will limit the courses shown on the public site to only include those with a status of “Published”.

Show Unit and Topic numbers (on pages only) – This option shows the unit or topic number in numerical order to the left of the unit or topic name.

Don't show the 'Being Revised' message for courses in a status of Being Revised on the Public site - allows a district to remove the 'Being Revised' message behind a course name that is on the public site when the course is in a status of Being Revised.

Filter Courses by School – allows a district to specify the schools in their district and exclude courses from certain schools. Typically applies to multi-high school districts or districts where facility differences impact what courses are available at what schools.

Track the number of weeks into a course that a Learning Target should be addressed – This option adds a field at the learning target level to track the number of weeks into the year that the item should be covered by.

Restrict Educators from Editing KCGs – This option disallows Curriculum Authors from editing Learning Targets.

Show Key Concept/Generalization Details (Extended Description, Assessment, and Switches) on the Public Site – This option gives districts the choice to show Learning Target details on the public site.

Show Key Concept/Generalization Summary List on the Public Site – adds a button to the Course Details page on the public site that provides a summary of all the Key Concepts/Learning Targets for a course.

Allow emails on the Public Site – Allows districts to choose to receive email regarding the Embarc public website related to their district, and to enter an email address for that correspondence.

Hide 'Copy' function when assigning Learning Targets – This option hides the “Copy Selected” functionality when assigning Key Concepts/Learning Targets to a Topic, which prevents the creation of multiple versions of the same Learning Target. The “Share Selected” functionality will still be available.

Preselect Standards at the Course/Unit Levels – This option allows Curriculum Authors to review and select standards at the beginning of the course and unit development process. Those standards then become the default list to choose from as Learning Targets are aligned later in the process.

Document Suggested Assessments at the Standard Level – provides a field at the Standard level where a district can document how they will assess that standard.

Grades taught at the district - allows the district to select which grade levels they are teaching at their district, this impacts the grades available when creating users, courses, and the public website.

Allow HTML mode for text editors: Allows districts to change the text mode

Activity Setup Options (Separate Tab under Administrative Functions)

These options are accessible by clicking the “Activity Options” button located under the Administrative Functions menu item.

District Name, Plural Name, and Abbreviation for Activities – Allows a district to use an alternate naming convention for “activities”.

Require Learning Target Alignment - Will require the Curriculum Author to align at least one learning target when creating an activity.

Show Expectations and Measures - The previously completed topic-level “expectations and measures” fields can be displayed to the educator as they create their activity.

Require Expectations and Measures - The “expectations and measures” fields can be displayed to the educator as blank fields while they create their activity – and required for them fill in.

Activity Field Definitions - There are 10 optional fields available for a district to use at the activity level. Each of these fields:

• can contain 25,000 characters of information

• has a corresponding “Display Order” dropdown menu so that the order the fields are displayed can be adjusted

  • If a field is not given a title, the field will not be available on the edit pages.

  • If no content is in a field, it will not show on the public site or on reports.

PLEASE NOTE: Once you have started putting content into Embarc be very careful changing the titles of these fields because you could create a situation where the content does not match the title.

Teaching Concepts/Styles – Turning on one of these features will display a list of the concepts at the bottom of the Activity Edit page. Educators will be prompted to align their activity to the appropriate concept. Activities are searchable by concept.

Default all Activities to 'Shared Internally' - activity security settings will default to 'Shared Internally.'

Forward Activity Comments via email to the author - when a comment is entered on an activity, the comment will be emailed to the author of the activity.

Show Activities on the public site –Turning this option off will remove all references to activities from the public website.

Categorize Activities – Allows activities to be classified as “Required”, “Model”, or “Educator Submitted”.

Allow Activities to be Viewed by Other Districts - allows other districts to see activities your district creates.

Mark all Shared Internally Activities as Shared Externally (Viewed by other districts) – changes the setting on all your district’s activities from Shared Internally to Shared Externally (visible to other districts).

HOW TO: Complete the Configuration Homework 

Homework Overview

There are four to five parts to the configuration meeting homework. First you need to create your district’s departments and bring in the standards you want to align to; second you need to add your schools; third setup your users; including assigning the correct authority status, department, and grades for each user; and finally you need to write your district’s help.  Optionally there is a fifth step which is to create the list of formative assessments you would like to provide your staff to choose from when they create learning targets.

The following documentation will walk you step by step through the process and help you successfully complete your configuration meeting homework. You can also reference the How To-­‐ Maintain User Preferences and How To-­‐ Add Standards training videos on the Embarc website.

If after reading the document you have any additional questions or need additional assistance please don’t hesitate to contact your customer success manager.

Creating your Departments

The first thing you have to do is to create a Department.

• On the left hand navigation bar click on ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS -­ DEPARTMENTS.

• Next, click on ADD NEW to add in a new department or click the name of an existing department to add standards to it.

• If creating a new department, fill in your Department name and the Prefix for the Department name and click save.

Selecting and Adding Your Standards 

Now that you have created or selected a Department in which to house your standards, you must choose which standards will be used in this department. This is done on the same page in which you just created your Department.  School Software Group’s recommendations are to only add standards to a department that your teachers must align to, the more standards you add to a department the more complex the task of alignment becomes for your staff.  Additionally we recommend only adding standards to their primary department, if other departments need to access them they can do so via cross-departmental alignment which is quite easy.  Like our earlier recommendation, the goal of this one is to reduce the number of standards staff is presented with by default, thus making the alignment task easier.

• In the STANDARD PROVIDER dropdown choose the provider you would like to use for this department. A listing of standard sets for the selected provider will be displayed next.

• Once you have chosen your Standard Provider, click the second dropdown to choose your STANDARD  SET.

•  Once you have chosen your Standard Provider and Standard Set, the ADD and PREVIEW buttons will be activated. Click PREVIEW if you wish to view the details of the standards you have chosen. Click ADD to add the standards to the department you have created.

• After clicking ADD, the AREA EDIT box will pop up, where you can give your standard area a name and abbreviation (no more than 5 characters). The name should refer to the kind of standards you are storing in this department -­‐ for example, Common Core Standards or ACT Standards.

  • Keep the "Align Learning Targets to these standards" box checked.  This will ensure that the Standards you are bringing in will be available to align to Learning Targets.

  • Click SAVE.

• Your new Standard Set has now been added to your department for use in aligning standards to your curriculum. You can repeat these steps to continue to add additional Standard Sets to this department.

Setting Up Schools

Before you can import your users into Embarc, you need to add your schools. The schools that you add in Embarc must be an exact match to the schools listed in your import file otherwise the import will be rejected.

For example, if in your import file the school name is Rainbow Elementary, in Embarc it must say Rainbow Elementary, not Rainbow Elementary School.

• Click ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS in the navigation bar on the left hand side of the screen.

• Then click SCHOOLS.

• Then click ADD SCHOOL.

• Enter the school name in the SCHOOL NAME textbox and the school’s common ID in the COMMON ID textbox.  To ease future imports of information, either the School Name or the Common ID should match how the schools are represented in your Student Management System.

• Then click SAVE.

Setting Up Users

In order to setup your users you are going to need to go through a two‐step process. First you need to import your users. After you have imported all your users, you will then need to go into each user individually and edit their authority status and possibly the departments and grade levels they have access to.

• Click ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS in the navigation bar on the left hand side of the screen.

• Then click USERS.

Importing Users

• On the main user page, click IMPORT.

•  To view a sample file in the correct format for importing, click on the CLICK HERE TO VIEW A SAMPLE IMPORT FILE… link.

  • NOTE: If you give this sample file to your technology department they should be able to make you a file of your users in the same format.

  • The file you import must be a “CSV” file and must match this layout.

• Click SELECT FILE… to browse your computer and select the file you would like to import.

• Click IMPORT USERS.

Editing Users

Once you have successfully imported your users you will need to go through and edit each person’s authority status. All of the users that you just imported have Educator as their authority status, if you want a user to be able to write curriculum you will need to change them to Curriculum Author or above.

•  On the main user page, search for the user you would like to edit.

  • You can search for a user using a keyword, role, school (if your district is using schools), or status. Often the best way to search is to enter the first two letters of the user’s last name into the KEYWORD textbox.

• Click on the name of the user you would like to edit.

• To edit the user’s Embarc Role use the EMBARC ROLE dropdown to select the correct authority status.

• For Curriculum Authors and Department Curriculum Coordinators you must specify the department and grade range they should have access to.

  • This is important because if a user needs access to a certain course, their authority cannot just be changed, the grade level range and the department may need to be changed as well.

• Once you are finished, click SAVE.

Adding the Course/Schedule Projector

The Course Schedule Projector takes an individual course and projects it onto a calendar based on the district calendar and a schedule defined for the course.

•  Click on ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS on the left-hand menu, then click on DISTRICT OPTIONS.

•  Now click on GENERAL CONFIGURATION under District Options.

• Under General Configuration, check the checkbox next to USE COURSE/SCHEDULE PROJECTOR.

• Then click SAVE.

• Two new options will show up under Administrative Functions, CALENDARS and PROJECTOR SCHEDULES.

Calendar

A calendar is designed to show the non-teaching days in your school year. In most cases one calendar is all you need, however if different schools in your district have different schedules you may want multiple calendars.

• Click on CALENDARS.

• Click ADD NEW.

• In the CALENDAR NAME textbox, enter the name of your calendar.

• In the SCHOOL YEAR dropdown, select which school year the calendar is for.

• If you wish for this calendar to be the default calendar, check the box next to "This is the default calendar for the district."  For Embarc districts, the dates on the default calendar will appear on the student calendars.

• Click SAVE.

• Specify any non-teaching days. Select the date or range of dates for your district’s non‐teaching day(s) in the DAY OFF & EVENTS textbox. Then select or enter the reason for the non‐teaching day under REASON.

• Then click ADD DAY. Continue this process until you have added all of the non‐teaching days for the school year.

Projector Schedule

The Projector Schedule is used to determine how many days a week, how many periods a day, and in some cases what days of the week a course should be projected for.  It is important to remember that this is simply a projection of the pacing for a course and may not be 100% accurate due to a variety of reasons.  Often for rotating block type schedules the focus of the projection needs to be for an accurate number of days per week for pacing purposes, but not necessarily the actual days of the week.

• Click on PROJECTOR SCHEDULES under ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS.

A schedule works with the calendar to specify what days a course occurs. The calendar defines what days school is in session, whereas the schedule defines what days a specific course occurs for a class.

• Click ADD NEW.

• Enter your schedule’s name in the SCHEDULE NAME textbox.

• Select the calendar that applies to the schedule from the CALENDAR dropdown.

• Enter the beginning and end dates for the schedule in the START DATE and END DATE Text boxes.

• Select what days the class occurs under CLASS IS HELD ON:

• Enter how many class periods per day the class occurs in the CLASS PERIODS PER DAY textbox. For example, an accelerated class might occur two periods a day.  Most classes will occur once per day.

• Enter how many buffer days you would like between units in the BUFFER DAYS BETWEEN UNITS textbox. Buffer days are days you can build into the schedule so that there are extra teaching days available between units or topics, in case teachers plan more than they can accomplish in the time allotted.  Most districts leave this at zero.

• When you have entered the appropriate information in the fields click SAVE.

Once you have entered your calendar and set up at least one projection schedule, you will be able to see calendar dates next to your units on the Scope and Sequence page:

Writing Help Documentation

• Click ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS in the navigation bar on the left hand side of the screen.

• Then click DISTRICT OPTIONS.

• Next click SHOW HELP CONFIGURATION.

•  The Help Configuration section is broken into fields for each level of the curriculum. In each field enter descriptions or help that will assist your staff in knowing and understanding what belongs in each of the fields you created during the configuration meeting.

  • NOTE: It is often helpful to add examples to your help

• When you are finished click SAVE located at the bottom of the screen.

Formative Assessments

If your district would like to capture assessment information at the Learning Target level, you can create a list of frequently used formative assessments for your authors to choose from.  In creating this list we recommend that it be a list of items you would like them to do versus anything that they possibly might do.

• To do this, under District Options click on SHOW KEY CONCEPT/LEARNING TARGET/KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL CONFIGUARION link.

• Then select the check box next to ALLOW FOR THE ENTRY OF ASSESSMENT INFORMATION AT THE LOWEST LEVEL (KEY CONCEPT)

•  You can create a list of commonly used assessments by manually entering assessments in the ASSESSMENT textbox and then clicking ADD ASSESSMENT.

• You can also create a list of commonly used assessments by selecting from a list of all the assessments ever used in Embarc by clicking ADD FROM LIST.  Please note that this is a list of all items districts have ever created.

• Then select the assessment you would like in your list and click SAVE.

Data Import Overview 

In order to utilize Embarc’s classroom and assessment features, several pieces of information must be loaded into the system. School, teacher, student, and classroom roster details are typically exported from a school district’s Student Information System (SIS) and provided to Embarc using a series of data files.  These data files are then imported into Embarc allowing teachers to easily select currently enrolled students when creating a class or giving an assessment using familiar course and section information (ie. Algebra, 1^st Period).  

The data files that are required by the system are uploaded in a comma separated value (.csv) file format and should not contain a header row. Data files may be imported into the system manually using the Embarc Administrative website’s “Import” feature or automated using the Embarc Import Utility program. The data files represent the following entities: School, Teacher, Student, Course/Section, Student/Class, and Course and Learning Target. Following is a detailed explanation of each file and their respective fields. 

School Data File 

The school data file represents a current listing of schools/buildings for a district.   

Teacher Data File 

The teacher data file represents current educators in the district, and may include teachers with assigned classes/students as well as curriculum and assessment support staff.  

Student Data File 

The student data file represents current students in the district, and may include optional demographic information for reporting purposes.  

Course/Section Data File 

The course/section data file represents current courses and sections being offered in the district, and indicates the primary teacher assigned to each section of the course.  

NOTE: The combination of the Course Code, Section Code, and School (if provided) must be unique within the district and is used to identify each section of a course when assigning students in the Student/Class data file. 

The student/class data file represents a current roster of students assigned to a section of a course.   

NOTE: The combination of the Course Code, Section Code, and School (if provided) must match an existing record from the Course/Section data file and is used to assign a student to a section of a course. 

Course & Learning Target File 

The course and learning target file allows you to import new courses and learning targets, just new learning targets, or update course descriptions. 

Introduction

In Embarc, curriculum is aligned to standards via your learning targets. Education Advanced provides a library of state and national standards that your district can utilize as a foundation for your curriculum. In this document you will learn how to setup your district’s departments with your desired standards. As you can see in the image below, in order to align curriculum to standards, you must first create a department to house the standards and then add in the specific Standards to that department.

Creating your Departments

The first thing you must do is to create a Department.

1. Next, click on ADD NEW to add in a new department or click the name of an existing department to add standards to it.

2. If creating a new department, fill in your Department name and the Prefix or abbreviation for the department and click save.

You have now created a Department in which to house your standards.

Selecting and Adding Your Standards

Now that you have created or selected a Department in which to house your standards, you must choose which standards will be used in this department. This is done on the same page in which you just created your Department.

1. In the STANDARD PROVIDER dropdown choose the provider you would like to use for this department. A listing of standard sets for the selected provider will be displayed next.

2. Once you have chosen your Standard Provider, click the second dropdown to choose your STANDARD SET.

3. Once you have chosen your Standard Provider and Standard Set, the ADD and PREVIEW buttons will be activated. Click PREVIEW if you wish to view the details of the standards you have chosen. Click ADD to add the standards to the department you have created.

4. After clicking ADD, the AREA EDIT box will pop up, where you can give your standard area a name and abbreviation (no more than 5 characters). The name should refer to the kind of standards you are storing in this department -­‐ for example, Common Core Standards or ACT Standards.

   1. Keep the "Align Learning Targets to these standards" box checked.  This will ensure that the Standards you are bringing in will be available to align to Learning Targets.

   2. Click SAVE.

Your new Standard Set has now been added to your department for use in aligning standards to your curriculum. You can repeat these steps to continue to add additional Standard Sets to this department.

How to Make a Standard a Power Standard

1. Go to ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – STANDARDS.

2. Use the SEARCH OPTIONS to filter which standard set you would like to make power standards.

3. Click on the standard name you would like to make a power standard.

4. Check the box THIS STANDARD IS A POWER STANDARD and click SAVE.

5. Now the standard will show up in bold on the STANDARDS page.

6. When you check the POWER STANDARDS ONLY filter, it will display all standards that have been marked as a power standard.

7. You can also see power standards when you create a new learning target.

8. Check the POWER STANDARDS ONLY box to display all the power standards. Then click REFRESH. Now you will see all your power standards. 

NOTE: Only system administrators are able to adjust the curriculum template.

Navigating to the Curriculum Templates

• Click on ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS in the navigation bar on the left hand side of the screen.

• Click on DISTRICT OPTIONS.

Template Consistent Fields

Templates determine the fields in your curriculum. There are four basic templates, one for each level of curriculum. In this section, we are going to look at fields that are present and work the same in all template levels.

•  On the DISTRICT OPTIONS page, you will see all the different configuration templates that you can adjust. Click on the template you would like to edit.

•  In each configuration template there are fields that you can create and maintain yourself. These district definable fields appear as textboxes and can hold up to 25,000 characters.

•  To add a district definable field, enter the field’s name in a blank OPTIONAL FIELD textbox.

•  Use the DISPLAY ORDER column to control the sequence that fields appear in reports and on your curriculum website.

NOTE:  Be careful when changing an existing field, not to change the titles in an effort to reorder the fields. The content is linked to a field and not the title, so if you rename a field the content and the title will not match. For example, if you have Key Questions as your first field, but you want to create a new field named Materials and Resources as your first field, do not rename the Key Question field Materials and Resources. Instead, type “Materials and Resources” into a blank field and set the display order to “1” and the display order of Key Questions to “2.”

• Select if you would like the field to be visible to the public.

•  The ability to lock fields is available, but seldom used. Locking a field means that after the course has been published Curriculum Authors, no matter what the course’s current status is, cannot edit the field.

  • Example: If the school board must approve certain parts of your curriculum, you can lock the field once it has been approved so you do not need to continually get approval.

Template Specific Fields

The predefined fields and the district definable fields are present and work the same at each curriculum level template. Now we are going to look at fields within each level that are unique to that specific level.

Course Level

• Click on SHOW COURSE CONFIGURATION.

•  At the course level, you can select if you would like to track the course code. To do this, check the checkbox TRACK THE COURSE CODE.

• If you would like to show the course code on the public website, check the checkbox SHOW THE COURSE CODE ON THE PUBLIC SITE.

• If you want to use course durations, check the checkbox next to USE COURSE DURATIONS.

• If you would like to track the course type (required or elective), check the checkbox next to TRACK COURSE TYPE.

• If you would like to track whether the course is NCAA approved (yes, no, or not applicable), check the checkbox next to TRACK NCAA COURSE APPROVAL.

• If you want to track the primary author of the course, check the checkbox next to TRACK THE PRIMARY AUTOR OF THE COURSE. The primary author of the course is not visible to the public, only internally within your district.

• You can also have district defined course switches, which gives you a check box at the course level with a customized identifying field.

Unit Level

• Click on SHOW UNIT CONFIGURATION

• At the unit level, you can have up to 19 fields. You can also have district defined unit switches, which gives you a check box at the unit level with a customized identifying field.

Topic Level

• Click on SHOW TOPIC CONFIGURATION.

• At the topic level, you can have up to 10 fields. You can also have district defined topic switches, which gives you a check box at the topic level with a customized identifying field.

• At the topic level, you can select if you would like the topic duration to be visible to the public or not. To make the duration visible to the public, check the checkbox by SHOW THE DURATION OF TOPICS ON THE PUBLIC SITE. To have the duration not be visible, un-check the checkbox.

Learning Target Level

Click on SHOW KEY CONCEPT/LEARNING TARGET/KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS CONFIGURATION.

• Enter the name of what you would like to call the lowest level (learning target) of the curriculum in the SINGULAR NAME, PLURAL NAME, ABBREVIATED NAME fields:

• There are up to ten fields, called switches, which you can use to categorize your learning targets. These switches work just like the district definable fields, where you enter the name in the textbox and arrange the order using the order dropdowns.

  • Examples of common switches are: Knowledge and Skills, levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, etc.

• You can also define at what level a standard is being addressed by a learning target. Many districts simply have an option for alignment, however some districts want to take this a step further and determine if the standards are being introduced, reinforced, or assessed. To create the learning depth fields, enter the name of the learning depth in the LEARNING DEPTH TITLE textbox, enter an abbreviation for the depth in the ABBREVIATION textbox, and arrange the order using the ORDER dropdowns.

•  The next two options involve standards and learning targets. Check the box if you’d like to allow curriculum authors and department curriculum coordinators to generate targets from standards. And check the box if you’d like to hide the option to allow curriculum authors and department curriculum coordinators to write targets and then choose standards.

• You can also track a short version of lowest level (key concept) and enter a maximum of 100 characters.

• If you would like to capture assessment information, create a field to capture formative assessments for the learning targets. To do this, select the check box next to ALLOW FOR THE ENTRY OF ASSESSMENT INFORMATION AT THE LOWEST LEVEL (KEY CONCEPT).

• You can create a list of commonly used assessments by manually entering assessments in the ASSESSMENT textbox and then clicking ADD ASSESSMENT.

•  You can also create a list of commonly used assessments by selecting from a list of all the assessments ever used in Embarc by clicking ADD FROM LIST.

•  Then select the assessments you would like in your list and click SAVE.

Lesson Plan Views

There are many different ways you can view your lesson plans once you’ve set them up, including viewing by week, plan book, calendar, or viewing all plans within a date range. You can also set a default view so that every time you access your lesson plans they show in the default view you have marked.

Setting Your Default View

1. Go to PREFERENCES – USER PREFERENCES.

2. Scroll to the heading LESSON PLAN OPTIONS. Under DEFAULT VIEW you can choose which lesson plan view you would like as your default option when looking at your lesson plans.

3. Click SAVE when you are finished.

Weekly View

1. Go to CLASSROOM – LESSON PLANS

2. When I set my default lesson plan view, I set it to the weekly view. When I click on the Lesson Plan page, I will see my lesson plans for the current week. If this was not my default, or if I switched to an alternate view, I could access this view via the View Week link that would be shown on the page.

3. If you have more than one class setup in Embarc, you can choose a specific class to see lesson plans for in the CLASS dropdown. You can also change the date to see lesson plans for past weeks or lesson plans for upcoming weeks.

4. If you want to view the details of a lesson plan, click on the name of the lesson plan.

5. If you want to print the details of your lesson plan, including activities, click on the printer icon. *Please note: the report opens in a new window, so please make sure you have your pop-up blocker disabled in your internet browser.

Calendar View

1. Click on VIEW CALENDAR

2. Here you will see all of your lesson plans for the current week. To change the view from the current week to the current month, click on MONTH.

3. Now you will see all of your lesson plans for the month. To see the details of a lesson plan, click on the name of the plan.

4. To change the date range, adjust the WEEK OF field.

Date Range View 

1. Click on VIEW ALL PLANS

2. Here you will see all of your lesson plans for the date range you have chosen. To adjust the date range, click on the START DATE and END DATE fields.

3. To see the details of a lesson plan, click on the lesson plan name.

4. To print the lesson plan, click on the printer icon in the PRINT column. 

Using the Plan Book Option

The Plan Book option for lesson planning is another view for your lesson plans that is unique from the calendar or week view. The Plan Book is similar to the traditional way that teachers create lesson plans with a pencil and paper plan book. It allows a teacher to see all of their classes at once and gives them the ability to drag and drop entries between time slots and days.

Setting up the Plan Book 

1. To set up the Plan Book, go to PREFERENCES – USER PREFERENCES.  (NOTE: This is not required; you can use the Plan Book View without doing this step.)

2. Under the PLAN BOOK OPTIONS section, there are numerous options to customize what information displays in the Plan Book view. All of the options have a DISPLAY ORDER to the right of their name. This allows you to choose which order you would like that option to display in your Plan Book. When you are finished customizing the options for your Plan Book, click SAVE.  (The Lesson Plan Name will always show on the plan book view.)

Viewing the Plan Book

1. To view the Plan Book, go to the CLASSROOM menu item and click on CLASSES and find your class name in the list and click on it.

2. Then click on PLANS (or whichever name your district has chosen for your Lesson Plan abbreviation)

OR

1. Go to the CLASSROOM menu item and click on LESSON PLANS

2. Once you are on the Lesson Plans page, click VIEW PLAN BOOK.

3. Here you will see your lesson plans in the traditional plan book view. Note the reoccurrence symbol when the lesson plan has been set to reoccur. (A reoccurring lesson plan is a lesson plan entry where you want the EXACT same lesson plan for multiple periods or days.) Also note how you can choose different colored labels for each of the different classes you teach.

4. If you would like to see your plans for a specific class, change the class in the CLASS dropdown.

5. Clicking on the class name in the header of the lesson plan entry will also filter the lesson plan entries displayed to all entries for that particular class. This is popular with middle or high school teachers as it will show all of the entries for a particular class.

6. Clicking on VIEW ALL CLASSES will return you to the normal Plan Book view

7. Clicking on the Period or Block name in the head of the lesson plan entry will filter the lesson plan entries displayed to all entries for that particular period or block. This is useful if you want to see what you are doing every day for Period 3, or for an elementary teacher, what you are doing for your reading or math block.

8. Clicking on VIEW ALL PERIODS will return you to the Plan Book view.

9. You can also select to see all lesson plans for one day.

10. Clicking on VIEW FULL WEEK will return you back to the Plan Book View.

11. Once you are viewing the plans for a specific class, you can drag and drop an entry to a different day and time slot. Please note: Because Embarc supports different lesson plan schedules, the entry can only be dragged if it uses the same schedule as the selected class. For example, if you teach a class that has a period based schedule (such as Middle School Computer Skills) and you also teach a class that has a duration based schedule (such as 4^th grade Keyboarding) you can view all of your lesson plans for those classes, but you cannot move 4^th grade Keyboarding into a Middle School Computer Skills slot. You will know that the lesson plan can’t be dragged because of the “ ” symbol that appears by the entry.

Plan Book Colors

You have probably noticed how on the Plan Book there are different colors associated with each class. The colors shown will default to the color associated with the class on the class setup page. This is perfect for a teacher that has multiple classes, typically a middle or high school teacher.

1. The Class Setup page can be found by going to the CLASSROOM menu item and clicking on CLASSES to see a list of your classes. Click on one of your CLASSES.

2. Click EDIT on the class page.

3. You will see a selection that says COLOR FOR CLASS ON PLAN BOOK. This is the option typically used by a middle school or high school teacher that has multiple classes.

4. Under the COURSE heading, you will see where you can select a Color for each course you have associated with your class. This will show up on the Plan Book if no color is selected for the class and is typically used by an elementary teacher that has multiple courses for their class. The colors selected at the course level are also used for projections.

Creating Assignments While Lesson Planning

To create an assignment while creating your lesson plan, your district must turn on Basic Assignments, or Advanced Assignments option.

Turning on Basic Assignments

1. Go to ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – DISTRICT OPTIONS.

2. Under GENERAL CONFIGURATION check USE BASIC ASSIGNMENTS.

3. Click SAVE.

 Creating an Assignment While in a Lesson Plan

1. Go to CLASSROOM – CLASSES and click on the name of the class that you want to create an assignment in.

2. Click on the name of the lesson plan you’d like to create an assignment in, or create a new lesson plan.

OR

1. Go to CLASSROOM – LESSON PLAN

2. Choose the lesson plan you’d like to create an assignment in, or create a new lesson plan.

3. Once you are on the LESSON PLAN DETAILS page, scroll down to the ASSIGNMENTS heading. Click on the CREATE ASSIGNMENT link.

4. Enter your Assignment Name, give your assignment a Description, and set the Display to Students date and Due Date. Click SAVE when you are finished.

Creating Activities While Lesson Planning

Activities define how a teacher is going to teach a particular piece of content (i.e. topics and learning targets) and should contain the primary, reusable, content for your lesson plan. Activities are often created at the topic level of a course, but you can also create an activity while writing your lesson plan.

1. When you are on the LESSON PLAN DETAILS page for your lesson plan, find the ACTIVITIES heading and click CREATE ACTIVITY.

2. Select the COURSE, UNIT and TOPIC for this activity. This screen will default to the course, unit, and topic for this lesson plan.  Click SAVE when you are finished.

3. Enter in your activity NAME, DESCRIPTION, and any LEARNING TARGETS you wish to attach to the activity. Click SAVE AND CONTINUE when you are finished.

4. The next screen will have information to fill in for your activity that is specific to your district. Such as Differentiations for Advanced Learners, Differentiations for Struggling Learners, etc. For more specific information on writing an activity, please see the Help document How to Create an Activity. When you are finished, click SAVE at the bottom of the screen.

5. You now have a new activity created for your lesson plan, this activity will be available to you in the future when you lesson plan again for this course.

Integrating Your District Calendar

If your district has set up a calendar for the school year, you can integrate it into your lesson plans to reflect the non-teaching days.

1. First, an Embarc Administrator for you district will need to edit your Lesson Plan Template and select a school calendar to associate to that template. Go to ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – DISTRICT OPTIONS.

2. Then click on SHOW LESSON PLAN CONFIGURATION.

3. Click on one of the Lesson Plan Templates you have setup.

4. At the bottom of the page, find the heading TIE TO SCHOOL CALENDAR and click on the dropdown to choose the school calendar you would like associated with this lesson plan template.

5. Click SAVE.

6. Now when you view your lesson plans that use this template, your district’s calendar will reflect non-teaching days or holidays that have been entered in the calendar.  Add a school calendar to each lesson plan template to have all lesson plans show calendar items.

Please note: every year the calendar will need to be changed to the current school year.

Viewing Lesson Plans on Your District’s Public Embarc Site

Your district’s public Embarc site is where your students, parents, and community can see the curriculum your district has made public. This is optional for your district, you may or may not choose to let the public view your district’s lesson plans. To allow them to view the lesson plans, you must first have your lesson plan template made viewable to the public.

1. As an Embarc Administrator, go to ADMNISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – DISTRICT OPTIONS.

2. Then click on SHOW LESSON PLAN CONFIGURATION.

3. Click on the lesson plan template you would like to make public.

4. At the top of the page, check the box that says LESSON PLANS VIEWABLE BY THE PUBLIC.

5. Click SAVE.

You can also choose which fields on your lesson plan template you’d like to show on your public site.

1. Go to ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – DISTRICT OPTIONS.

2. Click on SHOW LESSON PLAN CONFIGURATION

3. Click on the name of your template

4. Check the box next to PUBLIC if you would like to make that field viewable on the public site.

5. Click SAVE when you are finished.

Viewing your lesson plans on the public Embarc site.

1. Click on the PUBLIC SITE menu item.OR, click on PUBLIC SITE on the top right of the page. Your district should also have a link available on your district website for parents and students to access.

2. Once you are on the public site, click on CLASS INFORMATION.

3. Find the teacher’s name in the TEACHER dropdown.

4. Find the class in the CLASS dropdown.

5. You will now see Lesson Plan information for your class.

Options for Sharing Lesson Plans

There are a few options for sharing lesson plans with other teachers in your district. Our basic structure is that you share activities, which are the primary content of your lesson plan, but teachers create separate lesson plans so that you can each consider specific differentiation needs for your specific students during the lesson planning process. If you do not want to do this, here are four optional ways to share your lesson plans:

1. In the user setup there is an option to “view others lesson plans.” If this is turned on, you will get a dropdown in the classroom area where you can switch to a different teacher to view their lesson plans.  This option would allow one of you to be the creator/editor of the plan and the others would have read only access. 

Please note: This will give the user access to everyone’s lesson plans.

2. Another option is for one of you to create a class and set the others as co-teachers on the class, that would give everyone equal access to the lesson plans associated with that class.

3. Or you can allow other users to have a read-only access to your lesson plans by enabling a link to your lesson plans at the unit level of your course.

4. And lastly, at the district level, you can set the option to “show all lesson plans by unit.” Selecting this option does not give an individual user the option to share at the lesson plan level because all lesson plans will be shown at the unit level in a course.

Turning on the option for users to “view other lesson plans.”

1. Go to ADMNISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – USERS.

2. Find the name of the user you would like to be able to view other users’ lesson plans. Click on their name.

3. Under the heading ROLE AND ACCESS INFORMATION check the option THIS USER CAN VIEW OTHER TEACHER’S LESSON PLANS.

4. Click SAVE when you are finished. The user can now view everyone’s lesson plans.

5. Now have the teacher who just received permission to view other teacher’s lesson plans login.

6. Go to the CLASSROOM menu item and click on CLASSES.

7. Click on the TEACHER dropdown.

8. Here you can select a user to view their class and lesson plans.

9. Click on the name of one of their classes.

10. Click on PLANS in the upper right hand corner. You can now see the lesson plans for another teacher.

Making another teacher a co-teacher of your class.

1. Go to CLASSROOM and click on the class to which you would like to add a co-teacher.

2. Click EDIT to edit the class.

3. In the CO-TEACHERS heading, click ADD TEACHER.

4. Click on the name of the teacher you would like to add as a co-teacher to your class.

5. Click SAVE.

6. Now have the teacher log in that has just been made the co-teacher of the class.

7. Click on the CLASSROOM menu item and you will see the class that you’ve been added to as the co-teacher.

Allowing Read-Only access to your lesson plans

1. Go to ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – DISTRICT OPTIONS.

2. Click on SHOW LESSON PLAN CONFIGURATION.

3. Click on the name of your lesson plan template.

4. At the bottom of the page, check the box next to ALLOW SHARING OF LESSON PLANS.

5. Click SAVE.

6. When you are creating a lesson plan and you are on the Lesson Plan Details page, click the checkbox next to SHARE LESSON PLAN.

7. Now when another user goes to the Unit Details page that is a part of the shared lesson plan, they will see the link VIEW LESSON PLANS FOR THIS UNIT.

8. When they click on the link, it will take them to a list of lesson plans for that unit that are marked as shared. Click on the name of the lesson plan.

9. Now they will see the Lesson Plan Details.

Turning on “Show All Lesson Plans by Unit”

1. Go to ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – DISTRICT OPTIONS.

2. Click on SHOW LESSON PLAN CONFIGURATION

3. Select SHOW ALL LESSON PLANS BY UNIT

4. Click SAVE.

5. Now when a user views the unit details page for a unit that has a lesson plan associated with it, they will see the link to VIEW LESSON PLANS FOR THIS UNIT. 

How to Copy and Paste a Lesson Plan

1. To copy a lesson plan, you must first go to the lesson plan you wish to copy. Click on the CLASSROOM tab and then click on LESSON PLANS

2. Then click on the name of the lesson plan you would like to copy.

3. Scroll down to the bottom of the lesson plan details page and click on the COPY button.

4. Back on your lesson plan list page, click on the PASTE button. If you wish to copy another class, you must first go to that class. The class cannot be changed once the lesson plan is pasted.

5. You will then be taken to the Lesson Plan Details page for the new copied lesson plan. From here you can change the name of the lesson plan and edit the general information for the plan (such as the period or the time for the plan).

Configuring Google Login for Google Apps for Education

1. Login to your Google Administrative Console

2. Click Security – Advanced Settings – Manage API client access

3. Enter 113081308166227090364 for the Client Name

4. Enter https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.email, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.profile for API Scopes

5. Click Authorize

You can also list Embarc as a trusted app:

1. Log in to Admin Console

2. Click Security – API Permissions – Trusted Apps

3. Click + in lower right-hand corner

4. Select Web Application for app type

5. Enter 197465987836-d91vmmi1d24g4dn0t5tf8hm3v44a5qvs.apps.googleusercontent.com for the client ID

6. Click Add

Lesson Planning Philosophy

The core concept of Lesson Planning in Embarc is that a teacher’s lesson plan should be derived from the district-­defined curriculum. Embarc takes the components traditionally found in a Lesson Plan and splits them into two basic components, the Activity and the Lesson Plan.

Activities define how a teacher is going to teach a particular piece of content (i.e. topics and learning targets).  Activities are typically repeatable across years and classes and are often shared with a teacher’s peers and sometimes the general public.  Lesson Plans basically are a means of scheduling what content is being taught (i.e. topics and learning targets), how it is being taught (i.e. activities) and any exceptions, differentiations, or classroom management considerations.

The goals of this basic approach are twofold, one is to foster consistency in what is taught by deriving lesson plans off of the core district curriculum and two is to make lesson planning easier by introducing the activity which contains a large portion of the traditional lesson plan content and should be reusable across years and classes.

To effectively implement lesson planning in Embarc, we strongly recommend that a district consider it the third step in a three‐step process.

1. Develop, Review, and Publish the Core Curriculum – this step establishes the blueprint of what content teachers in the district are expected to teach and what the “normal” pacing for a course should be. This is critical to establishing consistent, repeatable goals for the district and creating an environment that can be systematically improved.  Basically this stage defines “what” should be covered and “how long” on average it should take.

2. Create Activities within the Core Curriculum – Activities represent the artistry of being an excellent teacher. Activities say “how” an individual teacher will address the content, or the “what” portion defined in step one, within the time restraints, or the “how long” portion defined in step one.

3. Start Lesson Planning – Assuming that steps one and two are complete, the physical act of lesson planning only involves specifying what components of the curriculum an educator is going to cover and selecting what activities they are going to use to teach the selected content. Basically lesson planning is the scheduling and student management portion of Embarc.

 NOTE: Only system administrators can do lesson plan configuration.

Lesson Plan Configuration

1. Click on ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS in the navigation bar on the left hand side of the screen

2. Click on DISTRICT OPTIONS

3. Click SHOW LESSON PLAN CONFIGURATION

4. Select USE LESSON PLAN COMPONENT.

5. If you would like a summary of the lesson plans to appear at the unit level of your curriculum, click SHOW LESSON PLANS BY UNITS.

6. If your school has bell schedules, click PREDEFINE LESSON PLAN SCHEDULES.

7. Enter the name for lesson plans in the LESSON PLAN NAME textbox.

8. Enter in the DISTRICT PLURAL NAME FOR LESSON PLANS.

9. Enter in the DISTRICT ABBREVIATED NAME FOR LESSON PLANS.

10. Click SAVE.

Creating Lesson Plan Schedules

Lesson Plan schedules typically represent bell schedules, but also could be used to represent time blocks at the elementary level.

1. Click on LESSON PLAN SCHEDULES if you are going to be using schedules.

2. This is where you will setup the bell schedules. Click ADD NEW.

3. Enter your schedule’s name in the SCHEDULE NAME textbox.

4. Select if you would like to use a TIME-­‐BASED SCHEDULE or a DURATION-­‐BASED SCHEDULE by selecting the appropriate checkbox.

   1. NOTE: A time-‐based schedule is a schedule with periods/hours that occur each day at a specific time. Think about the average high school schedule, where first period runs from 7:35 to 8:25 each day. A duration­‐based schedule is a schedule where specific blocks of time are set aside for specific instruction, but when these blocks occur each day may vary. Think about an elementary schedule where we spend 50 minutes on reading each day, but on Mondays, Wednesdays, that block is in the morning, on Tuesdays and Thursdays it is after lunch, and on Fridays it is the last 50 minutes of the day.

   2. NOTE: Below are images of what the Time‐based schedule and Duration‐based schedule look like from the teacher’s perspective in the lesson planner.

Creating a Time-­Based Schedule

1. Once you select TIME-BASED SCHEDULE, click SAVE.

2. Enter the period’s name in the PERIOD NAME textbox.

3. Enter the times in the START TIME and END TIME textboxes.

4. Click ADD PERIOD

5. Once you have added all your periods, click SAVE.

Creating a Duration-­based Schedule

1. Select the checkbox next to DURATION-­‐BASED SCHEDULE.

2. Once you select Duration‐based schedule, a schedule start time dropdown will appear. Use the SCHEDULE START TIME dropdown, select the time you would like you schedule to start at.

3. Then click SAVE.

4. Enter the period’s name in the PERIOD NAME textbox.

   1. Enter the number of minutes in the period in the MINUTES IN PERIOD textbox.

   2. Then click ADD PERIOD.

5. Once all your periods have been added, click SAVE

Lesson Plan Templates

Templates identify the fields in a lesson plan and how you want that lesson plan to work. Often templates vary by building or by subject. You can add as many lesson plan templates as would like and you can give your templates any name. At a minimum, you will need at least one Lesson Plan Template for each Lesson Plan Schedule you have created.

1. Click SHOW LESSON PLAN CONFIGURATION again under District Options

2. Click ADD TEMPLATE.

3. Enter the name of your template in the TEMPLATE NAME textbox.

4. Select if you would like lesson plans based on this template to be visible to the public or not.

5. In the DISTRICT NAME FOR LESSON PLAN TEXT AREAS enter the titles of the fields you want to appear in your lesson plans.

   1. For each field you can choose if you want it to be a required field, if you want it to be a field that is visible to the public, and if you want the field shown on the Plan Book.

   2. You can have up to ten district definable fields for each template.

6. Indicate any course, unit, or topic fields you would like to appear in your lesson plan by checking the boxes next to the fields you would like included.

7. Indicate if you would like to have electronic approval by checking the box next to REQUIRE LESSON PLANS TO BE APPROVED. If you choose to have electronic approval, select the approver and back‐up approver from the dropdowns below the checkbox.

   1. WARNING: This often becomes overwhelming to do and many districts choose to turn it off after having it on for a while.

8. Indicate if you would like lesson plans to be shareable by checking the check box next to ALLOW SHARING OF LESSON PLANS. Shared lesson plans are visible to all educators in your department via the unit page.

9. Indicate if you would like lesson plans to support attachments, by checking the check box next to ALLOW ATTACHMENTS ON LESSON PLANS.

10. Indicate if you would like to use the learning targets from your activities as the default learning targets for your lesson plan by clicking on DEFAULT LEARNING TARGETS FROM ACTIVITIES.

11. If you are using a period based schedule, indicate if you would like the times vs the period names shown on your lesson plan by clicking on IF USING PERIOD BASED SCHEDULE, DISPLAY TIMES INSTEAD OF PERIOD NAMES.

12. In the DATE/TIME CONFIGURATION box, indicate if date and times are required and if the teacher puts in the start/end times or if predefined time schedules are going to be used.  Typically USE PREDEFINED TIME SCHEDULES is used for middle and high schools where there is a period based schedule and ALLOW TEACHER TO SPECIFY TIMES or USE PREDEFINED TIME SCHEDULES with a duration-based schedule is used for elementary schools where the schedule is not period based.

    1. If you select USE PREDEFINED TIME SCHEDULES, you will need to select the schedule you would like to use in the TIME SCHEDULE dropdown.

13. If you are using the Course Schedule/Projector and you have a calendar set up, select the calendar you would like to tie your lesson plans to in the TIE TO SCHOOL CALENDAR dropdown. The calendar will allow the system to notify the teacher of non-teaching days.

14. If you would like to enter help text for the users at your district to read when working on their lesson plans, enter it in the LESSON PLAN HELP field. Click SAVE when you are finished.

General Configuration 

The Course Schedule Projector takes an individual course and projects it onto a calendar based on the district calendar and a schedule defined for the course. 

1. Click on ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS on the left-hand menu, then click on DISTRICT OPTIONS. 

2. Now click on GENERAL CONFIGURATION under District Options. 

3. Under General Configuration, check the checkbox next to USE COURSE/SCHEDULE PROJECTOR. 

4. Then click SAVE. 

Two new options will show up under Administrative Functions, CALENDARS and PROJECTOR SCHEDULES.  

Calendar 

A calendar is designed to show the nonteaching days in your school year. In most cases one calendar is all you need, however if different schools in your district have different schedules you may want multiple calendars. 

1. Click on CALENDARS. 

2. Click ADD NEW. 

3. In the CALENDAR NAME textbox, enter the name of your calendar. 

4. In the SCHOOL YEAR dropdown, select which school year the calendar is for. 

5. If you wish for this calendar to be the default calendar, check the box next to "This is the default calendar for the district."   

6. Click SAVE. 

7. Specify any non-teaching days. Select the date or range of dates for your district’s non‐teaching day(s) in the DAY OFF & EVENTS textbox. Then select or enter the reason for the non‐teaching day under REASON. 

8. Then click ADD DAY. Continue this process until you have added all of the non‐teaching days for the school year.  

Projector Schedule 

The Projector Schedule is used to determine how many days a week, how many periods a day, and in some cases what days of the week a course should be projected for.  It is important to remember that this is simply a projection of the pacing for a course and may not be 100% accurate due to a variety of reasons.  Often for rotating block type schedules the focus of the projection needs to be for an accurate number of days per week for pacing purposes, but not necessarily the actual days of the week. A schedule works with the calendar to specify what days a course occurs. The calendar defines what days school is in session, whereas the schedule defines what days a specific course occurs for a class. 

1. Click on PROJECTOR SCHEDULES under ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS.  

2. Click ADD NEW. 

3. Enter your schedule’s name in the SCHEDULE NAME textbox. 

4. Select the calendar that applies to the schedule from the CALENDAR dropdown. 

5. Enter the beginning and end dates for the schedule in the START DATE and END DATE Text boxes. 

6. Select what days the class occurs under CLASS IS HELD ON: 

7. Enter how many class periods per day the class occurs in the CLASS PERIODS PER DAY textbox. For example, an accelerated class might occur two periods a day.  Most classes will occur once per day. 

8. Enter how many buffer days you would like between units in the BUFFER DAYS BETWEEN UNITS textbox. Buffer days are days you can build into the schedule so that there are extra teaching days available between units or topics, in case teachers plan more than they can accomplish in the time allotted. Most districts leave this at zero. 

9. When you have entered the appropriate information in the fields click SAVE. 

Examples of Projections 

1. To view a projection you have set up, go to CURRICULUM – REPORTS. 

2. Click on COURSE/SCHEDULE PROJECTOR

There are two options for running this report. One is to make a projection for an existing class that a teacher has created, which may cover multiple courses. The other is to create a projection for any course and calendar combination. If you view a projection for an existing class, multiple courses may appear if they have been selected as part of that class. 

1. Select your Department, Course, and Schedule. You can also select a Unit if you would like to see a projection from the unit level. Then click OK. 

OR 

1. Select your Teacher and Class. Then click OK. 

2. The projection will begin on the day of your start date on your school’s calendar. You will see any breaks you’ve entered in your school’s calendar. You will see the units and their durations which is taken from the course you have chosen to project.  If you’d like to see today’s date, click on TODAY. You can also click on the right and left arrows to scroll through the months of the year. 

3. Below the calendar view you will see all the units listed for the course and their start and end date. The start and end dates are based on two things: the order the unit shows up on the Course Details page and the duration you’ve entered for the unit. For example, Use Place Value is the first unit listed in my course, so it shows up as the first unit I’ll be teaching on the first day of school, which I have set up on my school calendar as 9/1/2016. The duration of the unit is 14 days, and my schedule is set for the class to be 5 days a week, so that is why it’s showing on the projector from 9/1/2016 – 9/14/2016. 

4. If I click on the unit name, the calendar will jump to the month in which the unit takes place. 

Here is an example of a projection that has a schedule for the course to appear on odd days of the week. 

1. You’ll see the schedule I have set up is called Odd day schedule and it’s going to be held only on odd days of the week. I’ve also set the Start Date for the first day of the year, but the End Date is at the end of the first semester. This is going to be a semester long course. 

2. When I view my course with the Odd day schedule, you’ll see that it’s only projecting the units on the odd days of the week. 

3. Also in this course, I’ve included Ongoing Units. As you can see from the red message, ongoing units do not show up in the projection because they do not have a duration associated with them. We do not recommend having ongoing units if you are going to be using the course projection as it will not accurately reflect your course for the school year. 

Here is an example of a projection that has a schedule for the course to appear 2 days a week. 

1. You’ll see the schedule I have set up is called 2 day a week schedule and it’s going to be held only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ve also set the Start Date for the first day of the year, but the End Date is at the end of the first semester. This is going to be a semester long course. 

2. When I view my course with the 2 day a week schedule, you’ll see it’s only projecting the units on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the week. 

Here is an example of a class that has multiple courses tied to it and projects the schedule for all of the courses. 

1. Go to CLASSROOM – CLASSES – and click on the name of your class. 

2. Click EDIT. 

3. Here you can select the courses this class will cover, choose the projection schedule, and the color that will appear for each course on the projection. When you are finished, click MAKE PROJECTIONS and then click SAVE. 

4. Choose the teacher’s name and the class name and click OK. 

5. You will now see the class projected with the 4 courses I selected for the class. 

Advanced Topics 

Concurrent Units 

 If you have one or more units that you would like to run concurrently you can set that up to show in the course projector. 

1. From the Course Search page, click on the name of the course that you would like to have concurrent units. 

2. Click the EDIT MODE checkbox so you are in editing mode. 

3. Click on the name of the unit that you would like to run concurrent with another unit. 

4. Scroll down on the page until you get to the field PROJECT CONCURRENT WITH THIS UNIT. Click the dropdown and choose your unit. 

5. Then click SAVE. 

Now when you run the Course/Schedule Projector report, you will see the 2 units displaying concurrently. 

District-­Specific Standards 

If you have standards that your district is using that are not part of a set that is provided by Education Advanced, Inc., you can add them as District-­‐Specific Standards.

Creating a Department

1. If the Department in which your standard will be housed does not exist, go to ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS -­‐ DEPARTMENTS to create a new Department.

2. Click ADD NEW.

3. Enter in the Department Name and Prefix and click SAVE.

4. On the next screen, click CANCEL/BACK.

You have now created a department in which to house your District-Specific Standards.

Entering a District-­Specific Standard

1. Go to ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS -­‐ STANDARDS

2. Click ADD NEW to add in a set of district-­‐specific standards.

3. Click the DEPARTMENT dropdown to select the department in which the standards will be housed.

4. Click the AREA dropdown and choose ADD AREA or select an area that already exists.

   1. If you select ADD NEW AREA then you will need to enter the AREA NAME and AREA ABBREVIATION and click SAVE AREA.

5. Select a Strand.

   1. You can select an existing strand if there is one.

   2. If you create a new area the section to add a new strand will automatically open up.  It will also open up if you select ADD NEW STRAND.

      1. Enter in the STRAND NAME and STRAND ABBREVIATION and click SAVE STRAND

   3. Click the AREA dropdown and choose ADD NEW AREA or select an area that already exists.

      1. If you select Add New Area then you will need to enter the AREA NAME and AREA ABBREVIATION and click SAVE AREA.

6. Select a Strand.

   1. You can select an existing strand if there is one.

   2. If you create a new area the section to add a new strand will automatically open up.  It will also open up if you select ADD NEW STRAND.

   3. Enter in the STRAND NAME and STRAND ABBREVIATION and click SAVE STRAND.

   4. Click CONTINUE.

7. The Standard text box will automatically be filled in with the lettering and numbering system based off of your department, area, and strand abbreviations. This standard key can be changed.

8. Select the grade levels where this standard will be introduced and mastered. The system will automatically assume that the standard is reinforced for any grades between the introduced and mastered grades.

9. If your district is using Power Standards you can mark this standard as such.  The actual verbiage will depend on your district settings.

10. Enter the Standard Description.

11. If your district is using a short version of the standard, enter that.

12. If you district is using Suggested Assessments, enter that.

13. (OPTIONAL) You can also select other standards as being related to this standard.

    1. Select the Standard Provider whose standards you would like to align to.

    2. Select the Set whose standards you would like to align to.

    3. Select the Standard Department whose standards you would like to align to.

    4. Select the Strand whose standards you would like to align to.

    5. In the STANDARDS DISPLAY box select the checkbox next to the standards you would like to be related to your district specific standards.

    6. Then click SAVE.

14. Click SAVE when you are finished and your new district-­‐specific standard will now be available to you.

Maintaining User Accounts

Within Maintaining User Accounts you can create a user, import a list of users, maintain an existing user, or do mass maintenance. Below, each of these four things are explained in detail.

1. Click on ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS in the navigation bar on the left hand side of the screen.

2. Click on USERS

Creating a New User

1. Click ADD USER on the main user page.

General  Information *please note: the fields marked with an asterisk (*) are required fields that you must fill out in order to save your new user's information.

1. In the FIRST NAME textbox enter the user’s first name.

2. In the LAST NAME textbox enter the user’s last name.

3. In the SCHOOL field choose from the list of schools your district has created if you'd like to assign a school to the new user.

4. In the USER COMMON ID textbox, enter in a unique, non-changing, identifier for the user, such as an ID from your student information system or an employee ID number.

5. In the EMAIL ADDRESS textbox enter the user’s email address.

6. In the USERNAME textbox enter in the user's username.

7. In the PASSWORD textbox enter in a temporary password for the user.

8. In the REPEAT PASSWORD textbox enter in the same password.

9. In the DEACTIVATE USER ON field, enter in a date if you wish to have the user inactive to Embarc on a certain date.

Role and Access Information

1. In the EMBARC ROLE dropdown choose the role of the user. The roles of Curriculum Author and Departmental Curriculum Coordinator will need to be assigned to specific grade levels and departments so they can only edit coursework within those areas.

2. Click on the blue help icon next to the EMBARC ROLE dropdown for a list that explains role statuses.

3. The RESET TO EDUCATOR ON field is an optional field used if there is a specific date you would like to enter to have the user's role reset to being an Educator. For example, during the curriculum editing process the user may have a role of Curriculum Author, but once the coursework is approved, and you no longer wish for the user to have editing rights, you can change their role to Educator.

4. To allow the user to edit standards check the UPDATE STANDARDS box. Be careful with this option, allowing users to edit standards can be dangerous.

5. If you want to allow the user to view other teacher’s portals or lesson plans check the VIEW OTHER’S LESSON PLANS checkbox or the ACCESS OTHER’S CLASSROOM PAGE checkbox. This is valuable if you are going to create a generic user that substitute teachers can use to access the lesson plans and portal of the teacher they are subbing for.

 6. Click SAVE when you are finished to save the new user's information

Importing a List of Users

1. On the main user page, click IMPORT USERS

2. To view a sample file in the correct format for importing click on the CLICK HERE TO VIEW A SAMPLE IMPORT FILE...link.

3. Click SELECT FILE… to browse your computer and select the file you would like to import.

4. Click IMPORT.

*Please note -­‐ if the import file is a large file, you will get a message stating that the file will be queued and processed in the evening. Once the file is finished processing, you will receive an email stating that the upload is complete.

Once you have successfully imported your users you may need to edit each person’s Embarc role. All of the new users that you just imported have Educator as their role, if you want a user to be able to edit and write curriculum you will need to change them to Curriculum Author or above.  If the user’s existed in the system prior to this import, the import will not impact their Embarc role, nor their password if they had previously changed it.

1. On the main user page, search for the user you would like to edit.

   1. You can search for a user using keyword, role, school (if your district is using the school field), or status. Often the best way to search is to enter the first two letters of the user’s last name into the KEYWORD textbox.

2. Click on the name of the user you would like to edit.

3. To edit the user’s role use the EMBARC ROLE dropdown to select the correct role.

   1. For Curriculum Authors and Department Curriculum Coordinators you must specify the department and grade range they should have access to. This is important because if a user needs access to a certain course, their role cannot just be changed, the grade level range and the department may need to be changed as well.

4. Once you've finished, click SAVE.

Re­-Importing a List of Users

You may also use the user import to update existing user accounts in Embarc. Imported records are matched on a user's Common ID and then their Username. If a matching user already exists, the information for that user is updated using the imported data

Examples of when you would use the user import to update existing user accounts would be:

1. Add a unique Common ID for each user

2. Assign a Primary School to each user

3. Perform a mass update of staff email addresses

*Please note: Passwords that have been reset by individual users and Embarc Roles will not be affected during the import.

Maintaining an Existing User

1. On the main user page, search for the user you would like to edit

   1. You can search for a user using a Keyword, Role, School (if your district is using the School option), and Status. Often the best way to search is to enter the first two letters of the user’s last name into the KEYWORD textbox.

2. Click on the name of the user you would like to edit.

3. You can change the user’s first name, last name, user common ID, email address, username, or password by simply entering the new, correct information into the appropriate textbox.

4. You can change the user’s Embarc role. NOTE: For Curriculum Authors and Department Curriculum Coordinators you must specify the department and grade range they should have access to. This is important because if a user needs access to a certain course, their role cannot just be changed, the grade level range and the department may need to be changed as well.

5. If you temporarily want to change a user’s role from educator to something higher you can use the RESET TO EDUCATOR ON THIS DATE box. Simply enter the date you would like the user’s role to be reset on in the box.

6. To allow the user to edit standards check the UPDATE STANDARDS box. Be careful with this option, allowing users to edit standards can be dangerous.

7. If you want to allow the user to view other teacher’s classroom pages or lesson plans check the VIEW OTHER’S LESSON PLANS checkbox or the ACCESS OTHER’S CLASSROOM PAGE checkbox. This is valuable if you are going to create a generic user that substitute teachers can use to access the lesson plans and classroom pages of the teacher they are subbing for. 

Mass Maintenance

Mass Maintenance allows you to make changes to multiple users or to multiple items belonging to a user at one time.

1. On the main user page click MASS MAINTENANCE.

2. Then select if you would like to maintain multiple users or multiple things belonging to a single user. Click on the appropriate link for what you are trying to do.

Maintaining Multiple Users

1. Use the USER SELECTION CRITERIA to select the group of users you would like to edit.

You can search by user’s authority level, grade level, or department.

 2. Select the change you would like to make.

• You can add or remove a department by selecting the department from the DEPARTMENT dropdown and by selecting ADD A DEPARTMENT or REMOVE A DEPARTMENT.

• You can change the grade range a user has access to. To do this select the desired grade from the GRADE dropdown and select CHANGE THE MINIMUM GRADE or CHANGE THE MAXIMUM  GRADE.

• You can change the users’ role by selecting CHANGE THE USER ROLE and by selecting the desired role from the dropdown.

• You can change the educator reset date by selecting CHANGE EDUCATOR RESET DATE

• and entering the desired date in the textbox.

• You can reset the users’ passwords by selecting CHANGE THE PASSWORD and entering the new password in the PASSWORD and CONFIRM PASSWORD textboxes. 

• Once you have used the User Search Criteria to select your group of users and the Desired Change box to select what you would like to edit, click PREVIEW

• A list of users will appear below the Desired Change box. If there are any users listed that you do not want to edit uncheck the check box next to their name. Only users with a checked check box will be edited.

• When you have the correct group of users selected and the correct change selected click the APPLY CHANGE button.

Maintaining Multiple Items Belonging to a Single User

On this page you can reassign a user’s activities, change the sharing status of a user’s activities using the Reclassify Activities option, or you can reassign a user’s classes/lesson plans.

Reassigning Activities

1. In the SELECT A USER dropdown select the user in which you are taking the activities from

2. If you would like to reassign all of a user’s activities to another user click the REASSIGN ACTIVITIES link.

3. In the second SELECT A USER dropdown select the user in which you are reassigning the activities to.

4. In the SELECT A COURSE dropdown select the course that the activities you would like to reassign belongs to.

5. When you are finished click APPLY CHANGE.

Reclassifying Activities

1. In the SELECT A USER dropdown select the user in which you would like to change the sharing level or status for all of their activities.

2. Click RECLASSIFY ACTIVITIES.

3. In the SELECT A COURSE dropdown select the course that the activities you would like to reassign belong to.

4. Under ADJUST SHARING OF THE ACTIVITIES select the level of sharing you would like the activities to become.

5. Under ADJUST STATUS OF THE ACTIVITIES select the status you would like the activities to become.

6. When you are finished click APPLY CHANGE.

Reassigning Classes and/or Lesson Plans

1. In the SELECT A USER dropdown select the user you would like to reassign the classes and/or lesson plans from.

2. Click REASSIGN CLASSES AND/OR LESSON PLANS.

3. In the second SELECT A USER dropdown select the user in which you are reassigning the classes and/or lesson plans to.

4. In the SELECT A CLASS dropdown select the classes that you would like to reassign.

5. Select the appropriate checkbox, indicating if you would like to reassign lesson plans or classes.

6. When you are finished click APPLY CHANGE.

The Role of Activities in Embarc

In Embarc an activity can be created by all users, regardless of their authority level. Activities are the reusable part of the lesson plan, often thought of as the core lesson design, and represent about 80% of what is currently considered a lesson plan. Activities should represent the reusable or shareable portion of a lesson plan, whereas the Lesson Plan itself represents the portion that teachers should recreate every year.  It is important to have a consistent look to activities across the district, so the first section of this training manual walks through the administrative setup of activities in Embarc.

Activity Setup

1. Go to ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – ACTIVITY OPTIONS.

2. If you would like to choose an alternative name for your activities, enter it in the 3 activity name fields:

3. If you would like to require learning targets to be aligned to activities, check the REQUIRE LEARNING TARGET ALIGNMENT field. If you would like the teacher to enter Expectations and Measures for the activity, check the SHOW EXPECTATIONS AND MEASURES field. To make this a required field (teacher cannot save the activity without entering Expectations and Measures) check the REQUIRE EXPECTATIONS AND MEASURES field.

4. Under the FIELD DEFINITIONS heading you can write in a title for each additional (optional) field within the activity. You can also choose the display order of the field and whether the field is required. If a field is not given a title, the field will not be available on the activity edit page.

Please note: Once you start putting content into the additional field text box, you need to be careful when changing the titles of the field, because the content in the text box might not match the title.

TEACHING CONCEPTS/STYLES section allows you to choose one or more teaching concepts and styles to use with your activities. When you check one of these boxes there will be a list of concepts at the bottom of the activity edit page and teachers will be prompted to align their activity to the appropriate content.

1. The CONFIGURATION OPTIONS section has several additional options for your activities:

   1. Default all Activities to ‘Share Internally’ – checking this option sets the default security setting on an activity to allow viewing by all teachers at my district.  We suggest enabling this option.

   2. Default all Activities to ‘Allow others in my Department/Grade to edit’ – checking this option sets the default security setting on an activity to allow others in my Department and Grade to edit my activites.  This option is typically only used if teams of teachers jointly create the activities.

   3. Forward Activity Comments via email to the author – when a comment is entered on an activity, the comment will be emailed to the author of the activity.

   4. Show Activities on the public site – allows activities to be viewed on the district’s public Embarc website.

   5. Categorize Activities (Required, Model, Peer) – checking this option allows an administrator to to classify activities as ‘required,’ ‘model,’ or ‘educator submitted.’  This option is typically only used in large school districts.  When this option is enabled activities default to ‘educator submitted.

   6. Allow Activities to be Viewed by Other Districts – checking this option allows educators at other districts to see the activities you have created.

   7. Mark all Shared Internally Activities as Shared Externally (Viewed by other districts)  - Clicking this button changes the setting on all of your district’s activities from Shared Internally to Shared Externally (visible to other districts).  This option is typically only used once by a district.

Viewing and Approving a Pending Activity (system administrator and curriculum director access only)

For an activity to be seen on your district's public Embarc site, the activity must first be saved and published and then approved by a system administrator or curriculum director of Embarc at your district.

1. To view activities that are waiting to be published, go to the CURRICULUM menu and click on PENDING ACTIVITIES.

2. In the PENDING ACTIVITIES area, you can search for an activity by DEPARTMENT, AUTHOR, ACTIVITY (keyword), or STATUS of the activity.

3. Once you have found the activity you wish to review, click on the ACTIVITY name.

4. On the PENDING ACTIVITY DETAILS page, you can review the details of the activity. There are four options for editing the status of the activity from here:

   1. PENDING would not publish the activity and leave it in the pending activity area for further review

   2. PRIVATE would keep the activity private so only the author and a system administrator or curriculum director of Embarc can view it.

   3. UPDATE would notify the author that updates need to be made on the activity.

   4. PUBLISHED would clear all correspondence associated with the activity and make the activity viewable by the public.

5. If you would like to publish the activity, change the STATUS to PUBLISHED and click SAVE.

Please Note: Once an activity is set to the status of Published, the author of the activity can still edit the activity. Once they edit the activity, the status of the activity changes to Update. A system administrator or curriculum director will need to review the changes made to the activity and re-publish the activity for the changes to reflect on the activity on the public website.

About the Interventions Database

The goal of this feature is to assist districts to better utilize interventions available in the district.  The database is populated by district administration and is available for teachers to search by skill, sub-­‐skill, grade, department, course, and/or unit.

Turning on the Interventions Database

1. Click on ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS -­‐ DISTRICT OPTIONS

2. Click on SHOW GENERAL CONFIGURATION

3. Under the GENERAL CONFIGURATION, check the box to USE THE INTERVENTIONS DATABASE and click SAVE.

 Interventions will now show up as a menu item.

Adding an Intervention

On the Administrative site, a user with the authority level of Curriculum Director or higher will be able to add an intervention into the database.

1. Click on INTERVENTIONS on the left hand navigation bar and then click on ADD NEW

2. On this page you can enter in the details of your Intervention:

   1. Write in the name of the Skill and SubSkill for this Intervention. Once you've entered in the Skill and SubSkill, they will be saved and will be available in a drop down list for future Interventions.

   2. Minimum and Maximum Grade the Intervention is being used

   3. Intervention Name

   4. Optional areas such as: Reference, Materials, Steps to Implement, and Progress Monitoring can also be filled in.

3. You can tie an intervention to an Activity by clicking on the ADD ACTIVITY button.

4. Then enter the Activity Name and Description and click SAVE AND CONTINUE.

5. You can organize the Intervention by Department, Course and Unit. Click on the corresponding Department, Course and Unit and click ADD REFERENCE.

6. When you have finished adding your new Intervention, click SAVE.

Viewing and Searching Interventions from the Public Site

On the Embarc Public site, educators can view and search interventions that have been added from the Administrative site. Click on Interventions on the main page on the Embarc Public site.

Searching for an Intervention

1. Use the drop downs to define the area in which the intervention can be found, such as:

• Skill

• SubSkill

• Grade

• Department

• Course

• Unit

• Keyword Search

2. Click SEARCH and it will search through the available interventions.

Viewing an Intervention

1. Click on one of the interventions that appear in the list below the intervention search box.

2. After you click on the Intervention, the details of the Intervention will appear.

3. Click CANCEL/BACK to go back to the main interventions screen.

Selecting Your Courses

1. Under the CLASSROOM menu item, click on your CLASS NAME

2. Then click on the EDIT button. If you have not created a class yet, see the HOW TO-­‐ Create a Class training document.

3. If you would like to change the course that your class covers, click CHANGE COURSES under the COURSE heading.

4. Click the checkboxes next to the course(s) that you would like to be part of your class.

5. Click SAVE COURSES at the bottom of your screen

Selecting Course Colors and Projections

1. Select the schedule you would like for each course in the PROJECTION SCHEDULE dropdown. Schedules determine how your course will be laid out in the Curriculum Portal calendar. For example, if your school has a Day 1/Day 2 schedule you would pick what day your class falls on. The system will then use the projection schedule, along with your district calendar, to project the schedule your course will follow throughout the year.

   1. Your district determines projection schedule options.

2. Select the color you would like each course to appear in your calendar in the COLOR dropdown.

3. Click MAKE PROJECTIONS.

   1. NOTE: If you have ongoing units a warning will appear. This is just telling you that ongoing units will not be include on the calendar.

4. Click SAVE at the bottom of the screen.

5. Back on your Class Details page, you will see the CURRICULUM button. This will bring you to the Curriculum Portal you have just set up.

NOTE: For more information on how to use the Curriculum Portal please see the HOW TO-­‐ Curriculum Portal Basics training document.

Updating a Set of Standards 

Standards should be updated whenever a set of standards your district is responsible for is modified or redone entirely. This process should be done in three main steps. First you should bring the new standards into Embarc and assign them to a department, next you will need to go into each course and edit the learning target alignment, and finally once all the learning targets have been realigned to the new standards you will need to delete the old standards.

We also recommend running two reports when working on updating a set of standards. First, before you bring the new standards into Embarc, run the Standards Map report. This provides a graphical representation, by standard, of the grade levels where the standard is covered as defined by the curriculum. In short, this will show you which standards (based on a certain area, such as Common Core standards) you are using in your curriculum and which ones you are not. This will be helpful for you to see before adding in your new standards to Embarc because it will give you an idea of how much work you've done aligning learning targets to those standards in your curriculum.

The second report we recommend running is the Standards Coverage - Big Picture report. Run this report once you've added in your new standards and edited your learning target alignment from the old standards. The Standards Coverage - Big Picture report provides a view by standard of the corresponding learning targets grouped by course/unit/topic in grade order. This will help you to see which standards you have not yet written a learning target for or if you have, what the description of that learning target is.                                         

Bringing in New Standards

1. Click on ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS -­‐ DEPARTMENTS in the navigation bar on the left side of the screen.

2. Click on the Department in which your standards will be housed.

3. In the STANDARD PROVIDER dropdown choose the provider you would like to use for this department. A listing of standard sets for the selected provider will be displayed next.

4. Once you have chosen your Standard Provider, click the second dropdown to choose your STANDARD SET.

5. Once you have chosen your Standard Provider and Standard Set, the ADD and PREVIEW buttons will be activated. Click PREVIEW if you wish to view the details of the standards you have chosen. Click ADD to add the standards to the department you have created.

6. After clicking ADD, the AREA EDIT box will pop up, where you can give your standard area a name and abbreviation (no more than 5 characters). The name should refer to the kind of standards you are storing in this department -­‐ for example, Common Core Standards or ACT Standards.

   1. Keep the "Align Learning Targets to these standards" box checked.  This will ensure that the Standards you are bringing in will be available to align to Learning Targets.

   2. Click SAVE.

Your new Standard Set has now been added to your department for use in aligning standards to your curriculum. You can repeat these steps to continue to add additional Standard Sets to this department.

Making Old Standards Unavailable for Learning Target Alignment

Although you have now added the new set of standards, you do not want to delete the old standards yet because learning targets are still tied to those standards. However, you do not want the old standards to be available anymore for users to align learning targets to.

1. Staying on the same Department page you were just on to add the new set of standards, click on the area of the old standards.

2. The AREA EDIT box will appear. Uncheck the ALIGN LEARNING TARGET box and click SAVE.

Updating Learning Target Alignment

When updating your learning target alignment to the new set of standards, there are two paths you can take. The first path is if the new set of standards are very different from the previous set, therefore you need to manually go through your learning targets and align them to the new standards. In this case, the learning target description may need to be edited to reflect the new standard it is aligned to.

The second path is if the new standards are so similar to the existing standards that the realignment can be done by simply finding where an old standard was aligned and replacing it with a new standard.

Path 1 – Manually reviewing and realigning targets:

1. Click on the name of the course on the course search page that has learning targets aligned to old standards.

2. Check the EDIT MODE box and then click on LEARNING TARGET LIST.

3. Click the EDIT ICON next to each learning target that needs to have the alignment changed.

4. Click on SHOW AVAILABLE STANDARDS to see all the standards that are available to align your learning target to.

5. Update your learning target alignment by checking the updated standards and optionally unchecking the old standards. Click REFRESH/SAVE when finished.

Path 2 – Mass reassigning targets from an old to a new standard:

1. Go to CURRICULUM – STANDARDS – REALIGN STANDARDS.

2. In the ORIGNIAL STANDARD dropdown, select the standard you want to migrate learning targets FROM.

3. Choose the Department and Area the standard set is in. Optionally, you can choose the standard Strand or search by Covered Grade or Keyword. Then click on the standard that has learning targets that you wish to align to a new standard.

4. Check the box next to the learning targets you wish to align to the new standard or click Select All to choose all of the learning targets.

5. Then in the NEW STANDARD dropdown, select the standards you would like to migrate learning targets TO.

6. Choose the Department and Area the standard set is in. Optionally, you can choose the standard Strand or search by Covered Grade or Keyword. Then click on the standard that has learning targets that you wish to align to a new standard.

7. Click ALIGN TO NEW STANDARD to align the selected learning targets to the new standards. Additionally, you can click UNALIGN FROM OLD STANDARD to remove the alignment of old standards from the targets. This is not required as the alignment will be removed when the standards are removed from the department.

8. A message in green will come up informing you that your learning targets have been aligned to the new standard.

Deleting Old Standards

Once all of the learning targets have been realigned to the updated standards you should delete the old standards. There are two scenarios that you may face when you are deleting old standards. The first scenario is when you are deleting standards housed in only one department. The second scenario is when you are deleting standards housed in two or more department.

Deleting Standards Housed in ONE Department

1. Navigate to the Department and Area of the old standards.

2. Click the red 'X' in the DELETE column.

3. A message will come up asking you if you are sure you would like to delete the Standards. Click OK.

4. A final WARNING message will come up reminding you that deleting this standards area will delete all standards from this area. If you are certain you have removed the alignment of learning targets from these standards and these are the set of standards you wish to delete, click DELETE COMPLETELY.

The standards have now been deleted from this department and are no longer available for use in aligning to learning targets.

Deleting Standards from TWO or more Departments

1. Navigate to the Department and Area of the old standards.

2. Click the red 'X' in the DELETE column.

3. A message will come up asking you if you are sure you would like to delete the Standards. Click OK.

4. A final WARNING message will come up reminding you that deleting this standards area will delete all standards from this area. The message will also ask you if you would like to delete it (standards) everywhere or remove it (standards) from just this department. If you want to delete the standards just from the department you are in, but leave them elsewhere in the curriculum and leave the existing alignment in place, click REMOVE FROM DEPARTMENT. If you want to delete the standards from the entire curriculum, including their alignment to Learning Targets, click DELETE COMPLETELY.

Knowledge Prerequisites

1. The trainer needs to be comfortable with internet-based software.

2. The trainer needs to understand the General Curriculum Development Philosophy, with an emphasis on Understanding by Design.

Embarc Overview & Philosophy

Section One: Curriculum Key Points

1. Point out that Embarc is an extremely flexible and configurable system.

2. Explain that each district defines their own curriculum philosophy and actual fields that appear in Embarc.

3. Have the audience note that curriculum focuses on three primary things:

   1. What We Teach- This focus asks the question what are the learning targets or critical, measurable skills and knowledge that the students are being held accountable for?

   2. Why We Teach It

   3. Approximately How Long We Spend On It- Sometimes this portion can be uncomfortable for some teachers, but in the end there are only so many days in a school year and we need to plan out how we are going to use them most effectively.

Section Two: Instruction Key Points

1. Explain that activities are the How We Teach. Philosophically, our belief is that as long as we are teaching the same stuff, with the same goals, for about the same amount of time, How We Teach may vary from teacher to teacher.

2. Tell the audience that activities are the true artistry of being a quality educator.

3. Make sure the audience understands that every teacher in the district can contribute activities into the curriculum, that by default an activity is private to the teacher who wrote it, and that once the author becomes comfortable he or she can check a checkbox that allows other teachers to see the activity, thus creating a library of good ideas and best practices across the district

Section Three: Student Learning Key Points

1. At this point explain that based on having Consistent District Curriculum and Individual Teacher Activities the next step is to see student learning occur.

Section Four: Assessment Key Points

1. Here explain that in order to understand what their students are learning districts administer assessments, both formative and summative, analyze those assessments and often tell the world about them.

2. Tell the audience that you can simplify this picture into a three-step process.

   1. Plan what we are going to teach

   2. Teach it

   3. Measure the effectiveness of what/how we taught

3. Explain that typically when you show this to a district they either say this is what they do today, or this is what they are trying to get to.

4.  Then say that unfortunately this is a flawed process, because it really needs to be a FOUR-Step process.

Section Five: Adjusting the Curriculum Key Points

1. Tell the audience that the fourth step is for districts to adjust the curriculum based on their assessment results and any new knowledge, in order to make next year better.

2. Explain that because this step is missing, many schools’ curriculum processes collapse under their own weight because the curriculum is cumbersome to improve and quickly becomes out of date and unusable.

3. Then be sure the audience understands that the goal of Embarc is to give them an approach and tool that enables them to get into this process of continual, ongoing improvement.

4. This slide transition really is the key of effectively explaining the importance of Embarc. Our entire goal is, truly, to give the district the tools they need to turn curriculum into a living document.

Section Six: Embarc Products Key Points

1. Explain that the focus of the training is on the left half of the picture or the portion covered by Embarc.

2. Then explain that Embarc answer to the classroom management and assessment management portion of the picture. 

Describe/Narrate Triangle Slide

The goal of this slide is to introduce the audience to the basic organization of curriculum in Embarc.  This is a key slide because if the audience understands this layout, understanding the rest of the system and using it will be much easier for them. Embarc breaks curriculum into four basic levels: course, unit, topic, and learning target. The district defines the specific fields contained at each level. You should review the district configuration prior to the training session so that you know the actual fields that the district has defined at each level.

Section One: Course Key Points

1. Explain that the course level contains entire year, big picture type information.

2. Point out that standard fields at the course level include: Course Name, Credits (if any), and what grade the students should be in.

3. Also say that a district can define up to 10 additional fields. Fields often added at this level include: Enduring Understandings, Essential Questions, Materials and Resources, and Prerequisites.  State what fields the district you are at has defined at this level. 

4. Then ensure that the audience is comfortable with the terminology that the district defined, if they are not this will lead to problems later.

5. Finally remind them that Course Duration is optional at this level and can be expressed in terms of year, semester, trimester, quarter, hexmester, week, or term.

Section Two: Learning Target Key Points

1. Make sure the audience understands the definition of a Learning Target. Learning Targets are critical, measurable skills or knowledge that students are expected to gain. They are very finite and often teachable in 15 to 30 minutes.

2. Remind the audience that you are not talking about state or national standards.  Standards are typically end of year goals, while learning targets are an unpacking of the standards into manageable steps to be covered throughout the year.

3. Explain that as learning targets are developed, they are tied to the appropriate standard or standards.  Typically one standard results in multiple learning targets.

4. Also explain that while this is hard, time-consuming work, it is critical because if a district cannot articulate what it wants the students to learn, then how can the district hope to be successful.  

5. Aligning to standards at the learning target level is unique to Embarc.  There are two benefits of aligning at this level:  

   1. We have a very defined plan of attack for each standard

   2. We have a very reviewable curriculum where standard coverage can be easily confirmed.

6. Before you move on say that creating learning targets makes up about 50 - 60 percent of the work need to create a course.

7. While ideally targets should be created at the Course level for later use, Embarc  also allows targets to be defined at the Topic level.

Section Three: Unit Key Points

1. Explain that units are a logical breakdown of the course into the major things that will be taught.  

2. Encourage users to make meaningful units that reflect what they are teaching, as well as the manner in which they are teaching it.  

3. Point out that standard fields at the unit level include: Unit Name, Duration (typically in weeks or months), and Description.

4. Also point out that a district can define up to 20 additional fields. Fields often added at this level include: Essential Questions, Academic Vocabulary, Assessment, and Materials and Resources.  State what fields the district you are at has defined at this level. 

5. Ensure that the audience is comfortable with the terminology that the district defined, if they are not this will lead to problems later.

Section Four: Topics Key Points

1. Explain that topics are a logical breakdown of the unit.

2. Also explain that topics primarily serve to help in pacing within a unit and that each topic has an “estimated” duration

3. Point out that standard fields at the topic level include: Topic Name, Estimated Duration (typically in days or periods), and Description.

4. Also point out that a district can define up to 10 additional fields, however most districts do not add extra fields at this level.

5. Mention the side benefit of topics as well. The side benefit of a topic is that they tend to be a reality check for the unit. Often when teachers break a unit down to topics the sum of the topic durations is greater than the unit duration.  In other words, once they take a detailed look at what they want to accomplish in a unit they find that it cannot be accomplished it the time allocated.

Section Five: Assigning Learning Targets to Topics

1. Tell the audience to think of the course, unit, and topic as an outline of what they want to teach and the learning targets as what they are going to hold the students accountable to learn.

2. Explain that given this, the next logical step is to assign the learning targets to the appropriate topics.

3. Explain that tying the learning targets to the topics, allows districts to show what they’re teaching, how long they’re spending on it, and what they’re holding their students accountable for.

4. Ensure that the group understands that the relationship between Topic, Learning Target, and Standard is the key to alignment in Embarc.  This relationship drives all standards alignment type reports.

Section Six: Overview and Attachments Key Points

1. Explain to the audience that once the district has aligned their learning targets to standards the picture actually looks like this.

2. Say that now the district can perform analysis to tell what standards they have missed, which ones they have covered, and where they cover a particular standard.

3. Explain that additionally at the course, unit, and topic levels users can attach files or web links. Each attachment in Embarc has one of the four security levels explained below.

   1. COURSE DEPT/GRADE:  This option makes the attachment visible only to teachers from the user’s district in the department and grade level of the course

   2. MY DISTRICT: This option makes the attachment visible to any teacher or administrator in the user’s district.

   3. ALL EDUCATIORS: This option makes the attachment visible to any teachers in a district that use Embarc.

   4. THE PUBLIC: This option makes the attachment visible to anyone who visits the district’s public Embarc website. (ex. students and parents)

4. Attachments are most commonly used at the Course, Unit, Topic, Activity, and Lesson Plan levels.  The department also supports attachments but this option is seldom utilized.

5. Also regarding attachments, tell the audience that there is no limit on the number of attachments, nor their file types.

District Configuration

District Configuration is the process under which we set a district up.  At times during training you may discover that the district wants to modify the fields that they had previously configured.  Most common change requests are related to the district defined fields at the course and unit levels. In order to modify the district configuration do the following:

1. Go to the Administrative Site and login as a System Administrator.

2. Select DISTRICT OPTIONS under Administrative Functions in the left hand navigation bar.

3. Select either SHOW COURSE CONFIGURATION or SHOW UNIT CONFIGURATION based on the fields you desire to change.

4. Adjust the template accordingly and click the SAVE button.

Notes: 

Be very careful when changing the configuration if courses have already been created.  As a rule if you are adding a new field, add it to one of the blank fields available and use the DISPLAY ORDER to control the sequence that the fields are displayed in. Typically you should not change the title of an existing field if curriculum has already been entered, as you will create a situation with old content linked to a new title, which may cause confusion.

Standards Maintenance

Education Advanced, Inc. is responsible for maintaining the state and certain, commonly requested national standards for districts.  However, given that districts adopt standards at their own pace, the districts are responsible for pulling the appropriate standards into their district.

Sometimes during training you will need to assist a district in adding standards or in creating departments. You will need to do this if a department is missing or if standards that belong to a particular department are missing.

Departments are used to house the standards. Once you create a department, you can then add in the specific Standard Provider, Standard Set, and Standard Strands to that department.

Creating a Department

1. On the left hand navigation bar click on ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS - DEPARTMENTS

2. Next, click on ADD NEW to add in a new department or click the name of an existing department to add standards to it.

3. If creating a new department, fill in your Department name and the Prefix for the Department name and click save.

 You have now created a Department in which to house your standards.

Selecting and Adding Your Standards

Now that you have created or selected a Department in which to house your standards, you must choose which standards will be used in this department. This is done on the same page in which you just created your Department.

1. In the STANDARD PROVIDER dropdown choose the provider you would like to use for this department. A listing of standard sets for the selected provider will be displayed next.

2. Once you have chosen your Standard Provider, click the second dropdown to choose your STANDARD SET.

3. Once you have chosen your Standard Provider and Standard Set, the ADD and PREVIEW buttons will be activated. Click PREVIEW if you wish to view the details of the standards you have chosen. Click ADD to add the standards to the department you have created.

4. After clicking ADD, the AREA EDIT box will pop up, where you can give your standard area a name and abbreviation (no more than 5 characters). The name should refer to the kind of standards you are storing in this department - for example, Common Core Standards or ACT Standards.

   1. Keep the "Align Learning Targets to these standards" box checked.  This will ensure that the Standards you are bringing in will be available to align to Learning TargetsClick SAVE.

Your new Standard Set has now been added to your department for use in aligning standards to your curriculum. You can repeat these steps to continue to add additional Standard Sets to this department.

Notes

1. As a rule we recommend only copying standards into one department and using the cross-departmental alignment features of Embarc if courses want to align to standards housed in a different department. In other words the Language Arts standards should only reside within the Language Arts department.

2. If a district wants to align to standards that are not in our supported list of standards they should contact EAI. In most cases the district will need to add the standards as district standards, however in some cases EAI will add the desired standards to the pool of national or state standards that we manage.

3. If a course is being edited and standards are not displaying, check the department to ensure that the standards have been setup properly. 

4. If a course is being edited and not enough standards are being displayed, check the course standards to make sure that the user did not set them up and forgot to add all of the required standards.

User Maintenance

During a training session you may need to reset a user’s password or check a user’s department and security settings if they are unable to login to the system or access a course they believe they should have access to. In order to maintain a user do the following:

1. Click on ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS in the navigation bar on the left hand side of the screen.

2. Click on USERS.

3. On the main user page, search for the user you would like to edit.

   1. You can search for a user using their last name, authority level or login ID. Often the best way to search is to enter the first two letters of the user’s last name into the LAST NAME textbox.

4. Click on the name of the user you would like to edit.

5. Review the security roles

Department Curriculum Coordinators can only change statuses if the option "Allow Department Curriculum Coordinators to Change the Course Status" is turned on in the Security Section of the District Options.

Changing Authority Status

You can change the user’s authority level using the AUTHORITY dropdown.

NOTE: For Curriculum Authors and Department Curriculum Coordinators you must specify the department and grade range they should have access to. This is important because if a user needs access to a certain course, their authority cannot just be changed, the grade level range and the department may need to be changed as well.

Resetting a User’s Password

You can update the user’s password by entering the password in the PASSWORD and CONFIRM PASSWORD textboxes. The user will be prompted to create a new password the next time they login to Embarc. NOTE: User IDs and passwords are NOT case sensitive.

Troubleshooting

1. If a user cannot login, check their authority status to ensure that it is not set to “educator.” If the role is Curriculum Author or Departmental Curriculum Coordinator make sure that they are associated with one or more departments and grades.  If all of that is correct, reset their password and have them try again.

2. If a user can login, but cannot save changes to a course they feel they should have edit rights to (the SAVE button is missing) check the departments and grades associated with the user and make the necessary changes to allow them to access the course. Then have the user log out then log back in.

   1. You can also check the status of the course. Curriculum Authors or Departmental Curriculum Coordinators can only edit courses with a status of “Pending” or “Being Revised”.

Course Creation and Feedback/Suggestions

• See HOW TO-Create a Course help documentation in Embarc

Activity Creation

Activities are where individual teachers can communicate “how” they are going to teach the district curriculum. Ideally teachers will, over time, populate Embarc with a variety of educational activities that they share with their peers, thus creating a library of good ideas and best practices. 

By default, when a teacher creates an activity it is a private activity meaning that they are the only ones who can see it.  Once they become comfortable we would encourage them to scroll to the bottom of the activity and mark it as being shared so that their peers and co-workers can see it also.

Activities can be created from any spot where an educator is at the topic level of the curriculum or inside of a lesson plan.

• See HOW TO-Create an Activity help documentation in Embarc

Public Site Introduction

The public site is where the public can consume the curriculum. During your presentation, you will simply need to show the audience what the public site looks like to parents.  You can access the public site by selecting the Public Site link in the upper right section of the page or at the bottom of the left-hand navigation when logged into the Admin site

Viewing (and Copying) Another District’s Curriculum

Viewing another district’s curriculum is done from the Advanced Search Options portion of the Course Search page.  Copying a course is as simple as using the Copy button on the course view page and following the prompts.

• See HOW TO-Search Other District's Curriculum help documentation in Embarc

Reporting and Analysis

One of the key reasons for using a curriculum system is to be able to more easily look at the curriculum from a variety of perspectives and may inquiries into the curriculum to gain insights.  Embarc has over 30 reports all accessible from the Reports menu.

Reports

• See INTRODUCTION TO-Reports help documentation in Embarc

Advanced Search

• See INTRODUCTION TO-Advanced Teacher Training Guide help documentation in Embarc pages 9 – 10

Standards Search

• See INTRODUCTION TO-Advanced Teacher Training Guide help documentation in Embarc pages 25 – 28

• See HOW TO-View How Other Districts Align to the Same Standards help documentation in Embarc

Lesson Planning

Setup

• See HOW TO-Configure the Lesson Plan Component help documentation in Embarc

Usage

• See HOW TO-Create a Lesson Plan help documentation in Embarc

Assessments

Assessments can be administered online, via scan form, or on traditional paper.  Question types include True/False, Yes/No, Multiple Choice, or constructed response.  All question types other can Constructed Response can be auto scored by the system.

Assessment Creation

• See HOW_TO-Create_an_Assessment help documentation in Embarc  Assessment Section

Giving Assessments Setup

Students

Students can be entered manually, imported manually, or imported automatically.  We do not recommend manually entering students, this should only be done in an emergency situation.  Most districts start with the manual import process, then migrate to a scheduled, weekly, automated process.  In addition to just students, the import process includes Teachers, Classes, and Class Rosters.

Testing Periods

• See HOW_TO-Maintain_Testing_Periods help documentation in Embarc Assessment Section

Creating and Using Testing Sessions

• See HOW_TO-Create_a_Testing_Session help documentation in Embarc Assessment Section

What is Project Based / Personalized Learning (PBL)?

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is a way for students to learn through identifying a real-world problem and developing its solution. Personalized Learning is where different students may take different approaches or paths to complete the course.  The key to both is while the path may vary by student or groups of students the basic knowledge and skills the students need to acquire are consistent.  The students show what they learn as they journey through the unit, not just at the end. Education Advanced, Inc. has incorporated support for PBL in the classroom management portion of the software, teachers can create assignments for their class, a select group of students, or for individual students. The idea of PBL is that after a student selects a project to complete, the teacher creates this as an assignment  and identifies which learning targets the student will be addressing in the project. The teacher can then track the student’s progress through completion of the project. Each learning target is graded on a rubric basis.

Adding Assignments

There are two ways to get to the Add Assignment screen.

1. Go to the CLASSROOM menu item and click on your class name. If you have not created a class yet, see the HOW-TO ADD A CLASS training document under the HELP & TRAINING menu item.

2. Once you are on your class details page, click on the ASSIGNMENTS tab in the upper right hand corner.

3. Then click ADD ASSIGNMENT.

OR

1. Go to the CLASSROOM menu item and click on the ASSIGNMENTS tab.
   *for this option, you must already have a class created. You cannot create an assignment without the assignment being tied to a class.

2. Then click ADD ASSIGNMENT.

3. Fill out the following areas on the New Assignment Details page:

   1. Select the CLASS for which your assignment will be located.

   2. Enter the name of your assignment in the ASSIGNMENT NAME textbox

   3. Enter a short description of your assignment in the DESCRIPTION textbox.

   4. If you would like to give your assignment start and end dates enter them in the DISPLAY TO STUDENT boxes.

   5. The assignment will automatically show up during these dates.

   6. If you do not enter a start and end date, the assignment will stay up until you manually take it down.

   7. If you would like, enter your assignment’s due date in the DUE DATE box.

   8. If you would like your assignment to be visible before or after the start and end dates select the appropriate check boxes. When you view assignments in Embarc you can see all the assignments for that particular day, you also have the option using arrows to go forward a few days or backward a few days. If you choose to have an assignment visible before the start date students are able to work ahead and if you choose to have it visible after the end date any students who were not in class can see assignments for past days.

   9. In the ATTACHMENTS box you can post any web links needed for your assignment.

   10. If you would like to upload a file, click CHOOSE FILE and select the file from your computer.

   11. Click SAVE when you are done adding to your assignment.

4. Your assignment will now appear on the assignments screen.

How to Score an Assignment Based on Learning Targets

1. Go to CLASSROOM – ASSIGNMENTS.

2. Click EDIT to edit the assignment.

3. Next to SCORING, leave it set as LEARNING TARGETS if you wish to score your assignment based on the learning targets you’ve selected for the assignment.

4. Next to POINTS POSSIBLE you will see that assignments can have a set point value specified when they are created, or you can allow the system to calculate the point value based on the number of Learning Targets aligned and the max point value of the Scoring Rubric. Click on the blue ? for more information on calculating points.

5. Next to the RUBRIC section, you will see how a Scoring Rubric can be assigned. This is used to evaluate student performance for each Learning Target. Scoring Rubrics can be used from a district defined rubric bank, a teacher defined rubric bank, or be uniquely defined for the assignment.

   1. REPLACE RUBRIC – this allows you to replace the rubric you are using for this assignment with a different one from the list of rubrics.

      1. You will get a message asking if you are sure you want to replace the current rubric. If you do, any student scores you have already completed will be removed.

      2. Choose the rubric you wish to use to score the assignment.

      3. The new rubric will now be available in your assignment.

   2. NEW RUBRIC – this allows you to create a new rubric to use to score your assignment.

      1. You will get a message asking if you are sure you want to create a new rubric. If you do, any student scores you have already completed will be removed.

      2. Enter in your RUBRIC NAME and DESCRIPTION and click SAVE.

      3. Then enter in your MAX POINT VALUE and the POINTS, NAME, and DESCRIPTION field.

      4. You now have a new rubric to use when scoring your assignment.

   3. EDIT RUBRIC – this allows you to edit the existing scoring rubric you have.

      1. Once the rubric screen opens you can edit the Rubric Name, Description, and/or Criteria. When you are finished editing, click SAVE.

      2. Your rubric is now saved with the changes you have made.

   4. ADD RUBRIC TO MY REPOSITORY – this allows you to add the rubric you have created and/or edited to your repository of rubrics to use at another time.

      1. After you click on ADD RUBRIC TO MY REPOSITORY you will get a message stating that the rubric has been successfully copied and is now available in your list of rubrics.

6. After the Rubric section, scroll down and click on ADD LEARNING TARGETS.

7. Choose the course that is attached to this class that contains the learning targets you wish to choose for this assignment. Once you choose the course, the learning targets that have been written for that course will appear below for you to choose from.

   1. If you’d like to see a more specific list of learning targets that were written for your course, you can choose which Unit or Topic the learning target is in, or the specific Standard it is aligned to. If your district is using Power Standards or Priority Learning Targets you can search those as well for your learning targets.

8. There are two columns of boxes to choose from when checking which learning targets you would like to use in your assignment. If you check a box in the first column, you have selected the learning target to be used for scoring in the assignment. If you also check the box in the 2X column, that learning target will be counted as double the weight for scoring.

9. You can also view the learning targets by STANDARD.

10. Click SAVE once you have finished checking all the learning targets you would like to use for your assignment.

How to Review and Score an Assignment that is Linked to Learning Targets

1. Go to CLASSROOM – ASSIGNMENTS.

2. Find the assignment you wish to score and click the icon in the SCORE column. *Please note: the assignment cannot be scored until the student has completed the assignment.

3. Scroll down on the page to the STUDENTS section and find the student whose assignment you wish to review. Click on the icon in the REVIEW column.

There are several options when scoring an assignment that is linked to learning targets.

Apply one score to all the learning targets in the assignment.

1. Under the SCORE TO ALL LEARNING TARGETS heading, check the score you would like to give all the learning targets. Then click SCORE ALL LEARNING TARGETS.

2. Now all learning targets have the same score marked.

3. When you are finished scoring the assignment, click SAVE SCORES at the bottom of the page. If you would like to save the scores and go on to the next assignment, click SAVE/NEXT.

4. The assignment will now show up as Reviewed and will have the Points listed for the student to view.

Apply a note to the entire assignment.

1. Click on NOTE FOR ALL LEARNING TARGETS.

2. Enter your note for all the learning targets in the NOTES field. When you are finished entering your note, click SAVE TO ALL. Please be aware of the Warning note: This note will be applied to all Learning Targets for this assignment and student. Any existing notes will be lost!

3. If you are sure you would like to apply your note to all the learning targets, click OK. If not, click CANCEL.

4. You will now see that your note shows up on all the learning targets.

Score Each Learning Target in the Assignment Separately

1. Under the LEARNING TARGETS list, score one learning target at a time by clicking the radio button to the left of the score.

2. Once you have marked each individual score, click SAVE SCORES at the bottom of the page.

3. You have now scored the student’s assignment by scoring each learning target separately.

Apply a Note to Individual Targets on the Assignment

1. Under the LEARNING TARGETS list, click on the NOTE icon.

2. Write your response to the learning target in the NOTES text box. Click SAVE when you are finished.

3. The note icon will now show up yellow indicating that a note has been entered for this learning target.

4. Click on the Notes icon for other learning targets to continue adding individual notes to targets.

Rubrics

Rubrics can be created new at the assignment level or they can be selected from district-level rubrics or teacher-level rubrics. Once a rubric is selected for an assignment it is copied as an assignment-level rubric and is no longer tied to the district or teacher-level rubric. Which means, that if the district level rubric is changed, the assignment rubric that it was based on will not be changed. This also means that if you select a district-level rubric for your assignment, you can make changes to it without changing the district-level rubric because you are now changing the assignment level rubric.

How to Create a New Rubric

1. Click on CLASSROOM – SCORING RUBRICS

2. Click ADD RUBRIC to add a new rubric

3. Give your rubric a name and a description in the RUBRIC NAME and DESCRIPTION boxes. Then click SAVE to be able to add criteria to your rubric.

4. Enter in the criteria for your rubric in the CRITERIA section. Then click SAVE when you are finished.

5. You now have a district scoring rubric. Click ADD RUBRIC if you wish to create more.

How to Copy a District-Level Rubric to a Teacher-Level Rubric

1. Click on CLASSROOM – ASSIGNMENTS.

2. Click on EDIT next to the assignment name.

3. On the Assignment Details page, scroll to the RUBRICS section. Click on SELECT RUBRIC.

4. Click on the name of the district rubric that you wish to copy over to your own list of rubrics.

5. The rubric will now show up for the assignment.

6. If you want the rubric to show up on your list of teacher-level rubrics, click on ADD RUBRIC TO MY REPOSITORY.

7. Now go under CLASSROOM – SCORING RUBRICS.

8. You will see the district-level rubric you copied over to your teacher-level repository of rubrics. To edit the rubric, click on the name of the rubric.

9. Make any changes you want to the rubric and click SAVE.

Reports

List Students and Learning Targets Assigned/Not Assigned

This report provides the ability to view all targets assigned or not assigned to all students in a class or    particular student. Also note that this information can be returned with the learning targets show alphabetically, grouped within the course scope and sequence or by standard.

1. Click on the CLASSROOM tab and then click on REPORTS AND EXPORTS.

2. Under the Classroom Reports click on List Students and Learning Targets Assigned/Not Assigned.

What is Project Based / Personalized Learning (PBL)? 

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is a way for students to learn through identifying a real-world problem and developing its solution. Personalized Learning is where different students may take different approaches or paths to complete the course.  The key to both is while the path may vary by student or groups of students the basic knowledge and skills the students need to acquire are consistent.  The students show what they learn as they journey through the unit, not just at the end. Embarc has incorporated support for PBL in the classroom management portion of the software,  teachers can create assignments for their class, a select group of students, or for individual students. The idea of PBL is that after a student selects a project to complete, the teacher creates this as an assignment  and identifies which learning targets the student will be addressing in the project. The teacher can then track the student’s progress through completion of the project. Each learning target is graded on a rubric basis. 

Adding Assignments

 There are two ways to get to the Add Assignment screen.

1. Go to the CLASSROOM menu item and click on your class name. If you have not created a class yet, see the HOW-TO ADD A CLASS training document under the HELP & TRAINING menu item.

2. Once you are on your class details page, click on the ASSIGNMENTS tab in the upper right hand corner.

3. Then click ADD ASSIGNMENT.

OR

1. Go to the CLASSROOM menu item and click on the ASSIGNMENTS tab.
   *for this option, you must already have a class created. You cannot create an assignment without the assignment being tied to a class.

2. Then click ADD ASSIGNMENT.

3. Fill out the following areas on the New Assignment Details page:

   1. Select the CLASS for which your assignment will be located.

   2. Enter the name of your assignment in the ASSIGNMENT NAME textbox

   3. Enter a short description of your assignment in the DESCRIPTION textbox.

   4. If you would like to give your assignment start and end dates enter them in the DISPLAY TO STUDENT boxes.

   5. The assignment will automatically show up during these dates.

   6. If you do not enter a start and end date, the assignment will stay up until you manually take it down.

   7. If you would like, enter your assignment’s due date in the DUE DATE box.

   8. If you would like your assignment to be visible before or after the start and end dates select the appropriate check boxes. When you view assignments in Embarc you can see all the assignments for that particular day, you also have the option using arrows to go forward a few days or backward a few days. If you choose to have an assignment visible before the start date students are able to work ahead and if you choose to have it visible after the end date any students who were not in class can see assignments for past days.

   9. In the ATTACHMENTS box you can post any web links needed for your assignment.

   10. If you would like to upload a file, click CHOOSE FILE and select the file from your computer.

   11. Click SAVE when you are done adding to your assignment.

4. Your assignment will now appear on the assignments screen.

How to Score an Assignment Based on Learning Targets

1. Go to CLASSROOM – ASSIGNMENTS.

2. Click EDIT to edit the assignment.

3. Next to SCORING, leave it set as LEARNING TARGETS if you wish to score your assignment based on the learning targets you’ve selected for the assignment.

4. Next to POINTS POSSIBLE you will see that assignments can have a set point value specified when they are created, or you can allow the system to calculate the point value based on the number of Learning Targets aligned and the max point value of the Scoring Rubric. Click on the blue ? for more information on calculating points.

5. Next to the RUBRIC section, you will see how a Scoring Rubric can be assigned. This is used to evaluate student performance for each Learning Target. Scoring Rubrics can be used from a district defined rubric bank, a teacher defined rubric bank, or be uniquely defined for the assignment.

   1. REPLACE RUBRIC – this allows you to replace the rubric you are using for this assignment with a different one from the list of rubrics.

      1. You will get a message asking if you are sure you want to replace the current rubric. If you do, any student scores you have already completed will be removed.

      2. Choose the rubric you wish to use to score the assignment.

      3. The new rubric will now be available in your assignment.

   2. NEW RUBRIC – this allows you to create a new rubric to use to score your assignment.

      1. You will get a message asking if you are sure you want to create a new rubric. If you do, any student scores you have already completed will be removed.

      2. Enter in your RUBRIC NAME and DESCRIPTION and click SAVE.

      3. Then enter in your MAX POINT VALUE and the POINTS, NAME, and DESCRIPTION field.

      4. You now have a new rubric to use when scoring your assignment.

   3. EDIT RUBRIC – this allows you to edit the existing scoring rubric you have.

      1. Once the rubric screen opens you can edit the Rubric Name, Description, and/or Criteria. When you are finished editing, click SAVE.

      2. Your rubric is now saved with the changes you have made.

   4. ADD RUBRIC TO MY REPOSITORY – this allows you to add the rubric you have created and/or edited to your repository of rubrics to use at another time.

      1. After you click on ADD RUBRIC TO MY REPOSITORY you will get a message stating that the rubric has been successfully copied and is now available in your list of rubrics.

6. After the Rubric section, scroll down and click on ADD LEARNING TARGETS.

7. Choose the course that is attached to this class that contains the learning targets you wish to choose for this assignment. Once you choose the course, the learning targets that have been written for that course will appear below for you to choose from.

   1. If you’d like to see a more specific list of learning targets that were written for your course, you can choose which Unit or Topic the learning target is in, or the specific Standard it is aligned to. If your district is using Power Standards or Priority Learning Targets you can search those as well for your learning targets.

8. There are two columns of boxes to choose from when checking which learning targets you would like to use in your assignment. If you check a box in the first column, you have selected the learning target to be used for scoring in the assignment. If you also check the box in the 2X column, that learning target will be counted as double the weight for scoring.

9. You can also view the learning targets by STANDARD.

10. Click SAVE once you have finished checking all the learning targets you would like to use for your assignment.

How to Review and Score an Assignment that is Linked to Learning Targets

1. Go to CLASSROOM – ASSIGNMENTS.

2. Find the assignment you wish to score and click the icon in the SCORE column.*Please note: the assignment cannot be scored until the student has completed the assignment.

3. Scroll down on the page to the STUDENTS section and find the student whose assignment you wish to review. Click on the icon in the REVIEW column.

There are several options when scoring an assignment that is linked to learning targets.

Apply one score to all the learning targets in the assignment.

1. Under the SCORE TO ALL LEARNING TARGETS heading, check the score you would like to give all the learning targets. Then click SCORE ALL LEARNING TARGETS.

2. Now all learning targets have the same score marked.

3. When you are finished scoring the assignment, click SAVE SCORES at the bottom of the page. If you would like to save the scores and go on to the next assignment, click SAVE/NEXT.

4. The assignment will now show up as Reviewed and will have the Points listed for the student to view.

Apply a note to the entire assignment.

1. Click on NOTE FOR ALL LEARNING TARGETS.

2. Enter your note for all the learning targets in the NOTES field. When you are finished entering your note, click SAVE TO ALL. Please be aware of the Warning note: This note will be applied to all Learning Targets for this assignment and student. Any existing notes will be lost!

3. If you are sure you would like to apply your note to all the learning targets, click OK. If not, click CANCEL.

4. You will now see that your note shows up on all the learning targets.

Score Each Learning Target in the Assignment Separately

1. Under the LEARNING TARGETS list, score one learning target at a time by clicking the radio button to the left of the score.

2. Once you have marked each individual score, click SAVE SCORES at the bottom of the page.

3. You have now scored the student’s assignment by scoring each learning target separately.

Apply a Note to Individual Targets on the Assignment

1. Under the LEARNING TARGETS list, click on the NOTE icon.

2. Write your response to the learning target in the NOTES text box. Click SAVE when you are finished.

3. The note icon will now show up yellow indicating that a note has been entered for this learning target.

4. Click on the Notes icon for other learning targets to continue adding individual notes to targets.

Rubrics

Rubrics can be created new at the assignment level or they can be selected from district-level rubrics or teacher-level rubrics. Once a rubric is selected for an assignment it is copied as an assignment-level rubric and is no longer tied to the district or teacher-level rubric. Which means, that if the district level rubric is changed, the assignment rubric that it was based on will not be changed. This also means that if you select a district-level rubric for your assignment, you can make changes to it without changing the district-level rubric because you are now changing the assignment level rubric.

How to Create a New Rubric

1. Click on CLASSROOM – SCORING RUBRICS

2. Click ADD RUBRIC to add a new rubric

3. Give your rubric a name and a description in the RUBRIC NAME and DESCRIPTION boxes. Then click SAVE to be able to add criteria to your rubric.

4. Enter in the criteria for your rubric in the CRITERIA section. Then click SAVE when you are finished.

5. You now have a district scoring rubric. Click ADD RUBRIC if you wish to create more.

How to Copy a District-Level Rubric to a Teacher-Level Rubric

1. Click on CLASSROOM – ASSIGNMENTS.

2. Click on EDIT next to the assignment name.

3. On the Assignment Details page, scroll to the RUBRICS section. Click on SELECT RUBRIC.

4. Click on the name of the district rubric that you wish to copy over to your own list of rubrics.

5. The rubric will now show up for the assignment.

6. If you want the rubric to show up on your list of teacher-level rubrics, click on ADD RUBRIC TO MY REPOSITORY.

7. Now go under CLASSROOM – SCORING RUBRICS.

8. You will see the district-level rubric you copied over to your teacher-level repository of rubrics. To edit the rubric, click on the name of the rubric.

9. Make any changes you want to the rubric and click SAVE.

Reports

List Students and Learning Targets Assigned/Not Assigned 

This report provides the ability to view all targets assigned or not assigned to all students in a class or    particular student. Also note that this information can be returned with the learning targets show alphabetically, grouped within the course scope and sequence or by standard.

1. Click on the CLASSROOM tab and then click on REPORTS AND EXPORTS.

2. Under the Classroom Reports click on List Students and Learning Targets Assigned/Not Assigned.

Creating a District Scoring Rubric  

Rubrics are a way for the district or teacher to define a scoring scale once and reuse it across assignments with the goal of making assignment creation easier. Rubrics can be created at the district level and used by all teachers, at the individual teacher level and used across assignments, or at the individual assignment level. Below is an example of how to create a district scoring rubric. 

1. Go to ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – DISTRICT SCORING RUBRICS. 

2. Click ADD RUBRIC to add a new rubric. 

3. Give your rubric a name and a description in the RUBRIC NAME and DESCRIPTION boxes. Then click SAVE to be able to add the criteria to your rubric. 

4. Enter in the criteria for your rubric in the CRITERIA section. Then click SAVE when you are finished. 

5. You now have a district scoring rubric. Click ADD RUBRIC if you wish to create more. 

Adding a Class

Classes are the basis for many things in Embarc. Classes are needed to use the curriculum details page, to create lesson plans and to post assignments. If you are an elementary teacher, or you have the same students all day long, create one class. If you are a high school teacher, or have different students throughout the day, you will probably want to create a class for each set of students or each course. This is because you will want to publish assignments and create lesson plans for each separate group of students.

1. Click on CLASSES under the CLASSROOM menu item on the left hand navigation. Or click on ADD A CLASS...

2. Once on the Classes page, click ADD CLASS.

3. Enter the name of your class in the CLASS NAME textbox.

4. If you are going to be publishing assignments with your class in the CLASS INTRODUCTION/OVERVIEW/GREETING textbox enter any information you would like your students to see each time they view the assignments.

5. Click SAVE when you are finished.

6. Once you save your class, additional fields show up that are optional for you to fill in.

7. Choose the PRIMARY COURSES COVERED BY THIS CLASS to tie your class to a course(s). Once you have chosen your course(s), click SAVE COURSES.

   1. If you are an elementary teacher or someone who has the same group of students the whole day, you will most likely have multiple courses for your class.

   2. If you are a high school teacher or someone who teaches distinct courses to different groups of students throughout the day, you will probably only have one course for each class.

   3. If you are only teaching one course per class, it still may be helpful to include other courses that students in your class may be taking. This will allow you to look for cross-­‐ curricular learning opportunities if you are using the Curriculum Portal. If you are a math teacher, but you include the science courses in the Curriculum Portal, you will be able to see the calendar for the science class and see what they are covering in that class, as well as in your class.

8. After you click SAVE COURSES, you can choose the PROJECTION SCHEDULE as well as the color code for your course, if you will be using the Curriculum Portal. The projection schedule tells Embarc how many days a week this course occurs for this class and is used when combining your curriculum and district calendars to give you a projected pacing for the class. You can skip this step if you will not be using Class Projections or the Curriculum Portal.

9. You can also add a Document and/or Link to your Class:

   1. Choose the TYPE of attachment you are adding: CURRICULUM RESOURCE, FILE, WEB LINK, GOOGLE DRIVE. Adding a CURRICULUM RESOURCE allows you to choose an attachment that has already been added to the course, unit or topic level to which your class is assigned. Adding a FILE allows you to search your computer for a file to add as an attachment, i.e. a Word document or PowerPoint. Adding a WEB LINK allows to you enter in a web address to add as an attachment, such as a YouTube video. Adding a file from GOOGLE DRIVE allows you to browse your Google Drive items, just like browsing your computer, and link them as an attachment.

   2. If you are adding a CURRICULUM RESOURCE or FILE, click SELECT to choose the type of file you will be adding. If you are adding a WEB LINK, type in the name of the web address to link out to.

   3. Enter in the DISPLAY NAME for the attachment.

   4. Optionally, you can add in a DESCRIPTION for the attachment.

   5. When you are finished, click ADD ATTACHMENT

10. If you have a co-teacher who will also be teaching this class and will want access to the class, select your co-teacher by clicking ADD TEACHER.

11. If you are going to be creating lesson plans with your class, choose the appropriate lesson plan template in the LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE dropdown.

12. Click SAVE when you are finished.

You have now successfully created a class. From this point you can create lesson plans, publish assignments, or begin using the Curriculum Portal. For additional help see the training documents HOW TO-­‐ Add an Assignment, HOW TO-­‐ Create a Lesson Plan, and HOW TO-­‐ Set-­‐up the Curriculum Portal.

Turning on the Assignments Feature

 Please note - this is an area that only system administrators in Embarc are able to access.

1. Go to ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS - DISTRICT OPTIONS

2. Click on SHOW GENERAL CONFIGURATION.

3. Check USE BASIC ASSIGNMENTS.

4. Click SAVE.

The Basic Assignments feature is now turned on for your district.

Adding Assignments

There are two ways to get to the Add Assignment screen.

1. Go to the CLASSROOM menu item and click on your class name. If you have not created a class yet, see the HOW-TO ADD A CLASS training document under the HELP & TRAINING menu item.

2. Once you are on your class details page, click on the ASSIGNMENTS tab in the upper right hand corner.

3. Then click ADD ASSIGNMENT.

OR

1. Go to the CLASSROOM menu item and click on the ASSIGNMENTS tab.
   *for this option, you must already have a class created. You cannot create an assignment without the assignment being tied to a class.

2. Then click ADD ASSIGNMENT.

3. Fill out the following areas on the New Assignment Details page:

   1. Select the CLASS for which your assignment will be located.

   2. Enter the name of your assignment in the ASSIGNMENT NAME textbox

   3. Enter a short description of your assignment in the DESCRIPTION textbox.

   4. If you would like to give your assignment start and end dates enter them in the DISPLAY TO STUDENT boxes.

4. The assignment will automatically show up during these dates.

5. If you do not enter a start and end date, the assignment will stay up until you manually take it down.

   1. If you would like, enter your assignment’s due date in the DUE DATE box.

   2. If you would like your assignment to be visible before or after the start and end dates select the appropriate check boxes. When you view assignments in Embarc you can see all the assignments for that particular day, you also have the option using arrows to go forward a few days or backward a few days. If you choose to have an assignment visible before the start date students are able to work ahead and if you choose to have it visible after the end date any students who were not in class can see assignments for past days.

   3. In the ATTACHMENTS box you can post any web links needed for your assignment.

   4. If you would like to upload a file, click CHOOSE FILE and select the file from your computer.

   5. Click SAVE when you are done adding to your assignment.

6. Your assignment will now appear on the assignments screen.

Viewing an Assignment

1. To view an assignment, go to the public webpage.

   1. The address of this website is:  http://<YOUR_DISTRICT>.embarc.com

   2. Or you can click on the PUBLIC SITE link from within the Embarc administrative site

2. Once you are on the public site, click CLASS INFORMATION in the navigation bar on the left hand side of your screen.

3. Select the TEACHER who assigned the class assignment.

4. Then select the CLASS

5. You will then see the assignments for the class. Use the arrows to search for past or future assignments.

Enabling Google Drive for Attachments 

1. Go to ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – DISTRICT OPTIONS. 

2. Click on SHOW GENERAL CONFIGURATION. 

3. Check ENABLE GOOGLE DRIVE FOR ATTACHMENTS. 

4. Now you will be able to search through your Google Drive when adding attachments in Embarc. 

Saving and Sharing Your Google Document 

1. Within your Google Account, open the Google Document you would like to share.  

2. Make sure you have saved your document and then click FILE in at the top of the screen 

3. Under File, click SHARE.  

4. In the Sharing Box, click the link that says “CHANGE.”  

5. Then select, “ANYONE WITH A LINK” to allow others to view the document without having to log into Google.

6. Then click SAVE.  

Adding an Attachment from Your Google Drive 

There are many places in Embarc where you can add an attachment including at the course, unit and topic levels. In this example, you will see how to add an attachment to the course by searching through your Google Drive. 

1. Click on the name of your course. 

2. Then check the EDIT MODE box so you are in editing mode in the course. 

3. Then click on ATTACHMENTS. 

4. Under TYPE click the GOOGLE DRIVE radio button. 

5. Click SELECT to search through your files on Google Drive. 

6. Click on the file you’d like to add as an attachment and then click SELECT. 

7. The DISPLAY NAME field will automatically fill in as the name of the file. Edit this if you’d like, and add a Description, and select if you’d like the attachment visible to My District, All Educators or The Public. Then click ADD ATTACHMENT. 

8. A message in green will come up informing you that your attachment has been successfully added. 

NOTE: In Embarc there is a sharing program where districts can allow their curriculum to be searched and copied by other Embarc districts. This allows for a well-rounded community of users, sharing and exchanging ideas and resources for curriculum. For more information on how to search and copy another district’s curriculum, please see our help documentation titled: How to Search Other District’s Curriculum and How to Copy Other District’s Curriculum.

How to Copy an Entire Course

*In this example, we are creating a copy of our own district’s kindergarten physical education course. That way we can keep the original kindergarten course but use the new copied version to make a 1^st grade physical education course (with some tweaks to make it a 1^st grade course).

1. Under the CURRICULUM menu item, click on CURRICULUM COPY.

2. In the COPY FROM DISTRICT dropdown, make sure your district is selected.

3. In the COPY/COPY FROM DEPARTMENT dropdown, choose the name of the department you are copying FROM.

4. In the COPY/COPY FROM COURSE dropdown, choose the name of the course you would like to copy.

5. If you’d like to copy the entire course, click COPY COURSE on the right hand side. Additionally on this screen you can:

   1. Click COPY LT(s) to copy just the learning targets in this course

   2. Use the COPY/COPY FROM UNIT option to copy just a unit in this course

   3. Use the COPY/COPY FROM TOPIC option to copy just a topic in this course

6. Next you need to decide where you’d like to paste the course you just copied. In the PASTE INTO DEPARTMENT dropdown, choose the department where you are going to paste your course.

7. Click PASTE COURSE.

8. A green message will state that your course has been successfully copied.

9. The new, copied course will now show up in your course listing with a _COPY after the name of the course.

How to Copy A Unit When Working in a Course

In this example, I’ve added a new unit into my kindergarten physical education course that I’d like to copy into all of my physical education courses. I’m going to start by copying it from the kindergarten course and paste it into the 1^st grade course.

1. Click EDIT next to the course that you wish to copy FROM.

2. Click on the unit you wish to copy.

3. Click COPY UNIT at the top of the page.

4. You will get a message saying the unit was copied successfully. Navigate to the course you wish to paste the unit into.

5. Click EDIT next to the course you wish to paste TO.

6. At the top of the page, click on PASTE UNIT.

7. You will get a green message saying your unit was successfully copied into the course.

8. The new unit will appear at the top of the unit list with a _COPY behind the unit name.

Finding Curriculum

1. Use the Embarc Administrative website to search other district’s curriculum and find the curriculum you would like to copy. NOTE: For help see HOW TO: Search Other District’s Curriculum

Copying Curriculum

1. On the left hand navigation bar click on CURRICULUM COPY

2. In the COPY FROM DISTRICT dropdown choose the district you would like to copy curriculum from

3. In the COPY/COPY FROM DEPARTMENT dropdown choose the department you would like to copy curriculum from

4. Next, the COPY/COPY FROM COURSE dropdown should appear allowing you to choose the course you would like to copy from

At this point, depending on what level of curriculum (course, unit, topic, or learning targets) you would like to copy, the steps may vary. Specific instructions for copying each level of curriculum are described below.

Copying a Course

After selecting the course in step four, click the COPY COURSE button in the upper right hand corner of the screen

Copying Learning Targets

1. The option to copy learning targets is available as soon as you select a course

2. At any point that you would like to copy learning targets, simply click on the COPY LT(S) button in the upper right hand corner of the screen.  Whenever you copy learning targets you are copying all of the learning targets from the entire course.

Copying a Unit

1. Select the unit you would like to copy from the COPY/COPY FROM UNIT dropdown

2. Click the COPY UNIT button in the upper right hand corner of the screen

Copying a Topic

1. Select the unit from the COPY/COPY FROM UNIT dropdown

2. Select the topic you would like to copy from COPY TOPIC dropdown

3. Click the COPY TOPIC button in the upper right hand corner of the screen

Placing Copied Curriculum into Your District’s Curriculum

Once you have successfully copied a piece of curriculum from another district, you need to "paste" it into your own curriculum. After clicking the COPY button discussed in the previous steps, you will be brought to a page that will ask where you would like to paste the information.

1. In the PASTE INTO DEPARTMENT dropdown choose the department you would like to place the curriculum into

At this point, depending on what level of curriculum (course, unit, topic, or learning targets) you copied, the steps for pasting may vary. Specific instructions for pasting into each level of curriculum are described below.

Pasting a Course

Click the PASTE COURSE button in the upper right hand corner of the screen

Pasting Learning Targets

1. In the PASTE INTO COURSE dropdown select what course you would like to place the learning targets into

2. Click the PASTE LT(s) button in the upper right hand corner of the screen

Pasting a Unit

1. In the PASTE INTO COURSE dropdown select what course you would like to place the unit into

2. Click the PASTE UNIT button in the upper right hand corner of the screen

Pasting a Topic

1.  In the PASTE INTO COURSE dropdown select what course you would like to place the topic into

2. In the PASTE INTO UNIT dropdown select what unit you would like to place the topic into

3. Click the PASTE TOPIC button in the upper right hand corner of the screen

Creating a Course

NOTE: Before you create a new course, it is always a good idea to check and make sure the course is not already created. To do this, use the basic search options on the Course Page to search for the course you would like to create.

1. On the left hand navigation bar click on COURSES. This is the default "homepage" once you first log into the Administrative website.

2. In the upper right hand corner click the ADD COURSE button.

3. On this screen, the fields you will see vary based on your district’s configuration options. Provide information for all required fields as well as any optional fields that your district has setup.

   1. Required Fields: In each district the department, the beginning and ending grade, the course name, and the number of credits will be present. NOTE: These fields are highlighted in the image below.

   2. Optional Fields: In addition you may need to specify the course duration, course type, if it is NCAA approved, the course code, and up to 10 district definable fields.

   3. Course Status: Depending on the district, teachers may or may not have the ability to change the course status. The course status determines what phase of life the course is in, who can see it, and who can make changes to the course.

   4. District Definable Fields: District definable fields are text boxes into which you can enter up to 25,000 characters. NOTE: While you are typing a scroll bar will appear when you filled up the box. If you do not like the scroll bar, click on the COMPUTER ICON in the far right of   the tool bar and the screen will expand. To go back to the normal size, simply click the COMPUTER ICON again. NOTE: You may copy and paste information from other programs into the boxes for each field.

4. However, depending on your browser a message may appear asking you to allow access to your clipboard you MUST click ALLOW ACCESS. If you do not, what you are attempting to paste will not show up and the browser message will not reappear. The only way to fix this is to restart the web browser. In browsers such as Google Chrome, another window may appear for you to paste your information into, and then it will appear in the district definable field.

5. When you paste, any previous formatting (ie. bold, italics, bullets, etc.) will not be copied. You must reformat your text using the formatting toolbar at the top of the field.

6. The best way to use text that is copied from a web page is to first paste the text into a blank Notepad document, or a program that will remove special web page formatting. Then copy the text from the Notepad (or other) document and paste it into the Embarc text box. The formatting will have been removed and you can use the tools in the Embarc text control to add in bullets, special characters, etc.

7. To spell check all information on the page, you must manually click the SPELL CHECK button in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

8. Once you have set all of the fields for your course click the SAVE button.

9. After your course is saved, key course fields (e.g. Department, Beginning and Ending Grade, Course Name, Credits, Duration, Course Type, etc.) are disabled to keep you from accidently changing something. If you do need to change on of these fields, click the ENABLE EDITING OF THESE FIELDS link at the top of the page to re-­‐enable them allowing you to make changes.

Adding Attachments

1. Now we are going to add an attachment to your course. Scroll down to the ATTACHMENTS section at the bottom of the screen or click the ATTACHMENTS link on the top of the screen.

2. Enter a DISPLAY NAME that describes your attachment (e.g. Final Assessment)

3. Click SELECT to select the file you would like to attach, or enter a web address in the WEB LINK field provided

4. Select whom you would like the attachment to be visible to. Options for attachment visibility vary based on your district configuration options and may include:

   1. COURSE DEPT/GRADE:  This option makes the attachment visible only to teachers from your district in the department and grade level of the course

   2. MY DISTRICT: This option makes the attachment visible to any teacher or administrator in your district.

   3. ALL EDUCATIORS: This option makes the attachment visible to any teachers in a district that use Embarc.

   4. THE PUBLIC: This option makes the attachment visible to anyone who visits your district’s public Embarc website. (ex. students and parents)

5. Click the ADD ATTACHMENT button to save your attachment

OPTIONAL: Creating a Course Specific List of Standards

This particular process is most often utilized at the high school level when standards are no longer grade specific, but created by department. For example the science standards include standards for physics, biology, and chemistry, but as a biology teacher the only standards I want to see are the biology standards. By creating a personalized list of standards I can eliminate the chemistry and physics standards from the list of standards I can pick from to align my learning target.

1. On the scope and sequence page click the COURSE STANDARDS button.

2. Use the SEARCH COURSE PRIMARY STANDARDS box to set your search parameters for the standards you would like to select.

3. When you are done setting your parameters click the REFRESH/SAVE button.

4. Standards that fall under your search parameters will appear in the box below the search standards box.

5. Select the CHECK BOX next to the standards you would like in your personalized list.

6. Click the REFRESH/SAVE button again to see the list you have created and edit it. If you need to delete a standard you selected click the RED X next to it

7. Once your list is the way you would like it, click the gray button in the upper right hand corner that says SAVE

NOTE: Make sure that you select the correct standards. If later you realize you are missing a standard be sure to go back and make sure that you selected all the standards you intended to.

Creating Learning Targets (Key Concepts/Knowledge and Skills)

There are three possible approaches to creating Learning Targets. All of these choices are available once a user selects the Learning Target button located on the Course Edit page.

Option One: Learning Targets to Standards

This option allows users to create a Learning Target in a vacuum and then associate it with one or more standards. To create learning targets this way users should follow the steps below:

1. Click the LEARNING TARGET button.

2. Now click on the link that says NEW LEARNING TARGET in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

3. In the LEARNING TARGET text box write your learning target.

4. The EXTENDED DESCRIPTION text box is a place where you can describe your learning target in greater detail. Some learning targets may stand alone, for example “students will count to 100”, and will not need further explanation.

5. Some districts may require you to list a formative assessment for your learning target. This may be in the form of a dropdown with pre-­‐selected assessment types, a text box, or both.

6. Depending on your district you may need to categorize what type of learning target you are creating.

7. Next we are going to select the standard that your learning target aligns to. Scroll down on the screen until you see the STANDARD FILTERS box. By default, the department and grades will automatically be filled in with the department and grade of the course, unless you have defined a custom set of standards for the course. If a custom set exists the department and grade will default to the custom course standards.

8. In the DEPARTMENT dropdown verify that the correct department is selected. If not, select what department you would like standards for

9. In the AREA dropdown verify that the correct area is selected. If not, select what kind of standards you would like.

10. In the MINGRADE and MAXGRADE dropdowns verify that the correct grade range is selected. If not, select what grade you would like standards for.

11. Standards that match what you specified in the STANDARDS FILTER box will automatically appear in the STANDARDS box.

12. Click on the STANDARDS to which you would like to align your learning targets. NOTE: Some districts may want you to specify what level the standard alignment is, such as if they are introducing, reinforcing, or assessing the standard. NOTE: It is possible to do cross-­‐departmental standard alignment. Simply change the department in the DEPARTMENT dropdown.

13. Click the gray button at the bottom of the screen that says SAVE.

Option Two: Standards to Learning Targets

This option takes users through a process where they choose a standard and then deconstruct that standard into learning targets. This is the most common way to write Learning Targets.

1. Click the LEARNING TARGET button in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

2. Now click the NEW LEARNING TARGET BY STANDARD link in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

3. Click the SELECT link next the standard you would like your learning target to address.

4. In the LEARNING TARGET text box enter your learning target.

5. The EXTENDED DESCRIPTION text box is a place where you can describe your learning target in greater detail. Some learning targets may stand alone, for example “students will count to 100”, and will not need further explanation.

6. Some districts may require you to list a assessment for you learning target. This may be in the form of a dropdown with pre-­‐selected assessment types, a text box, or both.

7. Click the SAVE LEARNING TARGET button on the bottom of the screen.

8. The text boxes will clear and you can write another learning target aligned to the same standard you selected in step 3.

9. A user can click EXISTING LEARNING TARGETS FOR THIS COURSE/STANDARD to see the learning targets they have already written.

10. If you would like to select a new standard click on the gray button that says CANCEL/BACK at the top of the screen. This will take you back to step 3.

Option Three: Creating a New Learning Target from a Standard

This option is typically only available to System Administrators or Curriculum Directors and is used in situations where the standards are so finite that there is no need to further deconstruct them into Targets.  This allows users to select one or more standards and automatically create learning targets that are direct copies of those standards.

1. Click the LEARNING TARGET button in the right hand corner of the screen.

2. Then click the NEW LEARNING TARGET FROM STANDARD link in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

3. You can use the search fields to find the standards you would like to make into learning targets.

4. Then you can select the standards from the list you would like to make into learning targets.

5. Once you have selected the standards you want to make into learning targets, click SAVE.

Creating a Unit

Now we are going to create a unit. A unit is one step below a course meaning that multiple units comprise a course. If your course is Geometry your units may be “shapes” and “angles”.

1. On the main course screen, click the NEW UNIT button.

2. Enter the unit’s title in the UNIT NAME textbox.

3. Enter the time frame for the unit in the DURATION textbox/dropdown. NOTE: There is an option to make the unit ongoing. An ongoing unit is one that doesn’t have a time frame.

4. Depending on the district, there may be up to 20 DISTRICT DEFINABLE FIELDS that need to be filled out. The district definable fields are text boxes and each one can hold up to 25,000 characters.

5. Click SAVE when you are done to save your unit.

6. Once the unit is saved, the UNIT STANDARDS button will be enabled. This button is similar to  the COURSE STANDARDS button on the main course page. It allows a user to create a preselected list of primary standards that the unit will cover.  This does not mean that the unit is aligned to these standards, what it will do is filter the Learning Targets that are later presented for alignment to targets aligned to these standards. NOTE: Once you add two units, the quick navigate bar will appear. The quick navigate bar shows you all the sections of your course you have created. In the image below it shows the two units that have been created for the course. You can click on any part of the quick navigate bar to quickly hop from one page to another in your course. NOTE: The inverted triangle in the purple navigation bar on the right side of your screen is there to help you remember the different levels of curriculum: course, unit, topic, and learning target. The portion of the triangle that is blue is the level of curriculum you are currently in.

7. Now you can add attachments to your unit, add another unit, or add topics to your unit. In the next section we will go through how to add a topic.

Adding Topics to a Unit

Topics are one step lower than units, meaning that topics are what comprise units. A topic should be the main things that are going to be done in a unit. The topics help provide you with pacing, and additionally serve as a checkpoint to see if the curriculum you are creating is realistic. Often Embarc users find that the combined time frames of their topics exceed the time allotted for their unit. By having time frames for your topics you will be able to check yourself and make sure you can fit all of your topics into your unit.

1. On the unit page click the gray button that says NEW TOPIC.

2. In the TOPIC NAME textbox enter your topic’s title.

3. In the DURATION textbox/dropdown enter your topic’s timeframe. NOTE: There is an option to make a topic ongoing. An ongoing topic doesn’t have a time frame. Unlike ongoing units, ongoing topics are often a good idea. For example, if you have a poetry unit one of your topics may be rhyme scheme and the other topics may be Edgar Allen Poe and Maya Angelou. Rhyme scheme would be ongoing if you are going to study the rhyme scheme of both poets.

4. Depending on the district, there may be up to 10 DISTRICT DEFINABLE FIELDS that need to be filled out. The district definable fields are text boxes and each one can hold up to 25,000 characters.

5. Click SAVE.

6. Now you can add attachments, create more units and topics, or tie learning targets to your topic. In the next section we will go through how to tie learning targets to your topics.

Assigning Learning Targets to Topics

1. Click the gray button that says ASSIGN LEARNING TARGET.

2. On the next screen you should see all the learning targets you created previously in Section Three: Creating Learning Targets.

3. Clicking FILTER BY UNIT will display all of the Learning Targets that are aligned to Standards which were specified via the Unit Standards button on the unit page.

4. Select the learning target(s) to which you would like to tie your topic by clicking the CHECK BOX in front of the learning target.

5. There are two ways to tie learning targets to topics. The first way is by SHARING the learning target.

6. The second way is by COPYING the learning target.

   1. Sharing a Learning Target will keep one version of the Learning Target. Any time you update the Learning Target, it will be updated in every place the Learning Target exists.

   2. Copying a Learning Target will create another version of the Learning Target. Any time you update this new 'copied' Learning Target, it will only update that version of the Learning Target, and not the original Learning Target.

Typically you will be sharing the target. Copying is only done in cases where you want to edit the target and not impact any other uses of it.

Viewing and Printing a Course

There are multiple ways to view your course each with a slightly different layout, but the same information. Use whatever way works the best for you.

QUICK NAVIGATE BAR: The quick navigate bar, which appears once you have at least two units created, displays all the levels of your course when you hover over it with your mouse. You can navigate through your course by clicking on the corresponding level on the quick navigate To view your course using the Quick Navigate Bar simply hover your mouse over the blue box near the top of the screen that says QUICK NAVIGATE

BIG PICTURE: This way of viewing your course will show you an outline of your course. You can navigate to a page in your course by clicking on the corresponding link in big picture.

To view your course using Big Picture, click on BIG PICTURE in the purple navigation bar on the left hand side of your screen

PRINTING YOUR COURSE: If you would like a paper copy of your course you may print it. The print out includes all the course information. To print the course click PRINT COURSE in the purple navigation bar on the left hand side of the screen. This will open up a PDF, which you can then print.

Miscellaneous Information

The SUGGESTED CONTENT CHANGES area is an optional area within the course. The Course Comments and Suggested Attachments area were added for two reasons:

1. During the curriculum development process, teaching teams found it helpful to be able to review the courses they were working on, or review courses in other departments, and provide feedback as to how improve the course.

2. Throughout the year, teachers wanted a place to record their thoughts as to how to improve their course. At the end of the year, the teaching team can review the comments and suggestions that were made in the course and make changes to the course, if necessary.

3. The SUGGESTED CONTENT CHANGES area is located beneath the ATTACHMENTS section on a course, unit, or topic.

4. To add a comment to the course, enter your comment in the COURSE COMMENTS area and click ADD COMMENT.

To add in a suggested attachment, go to the SUGGESTED ATTACHMENTS area

1. Enter in your attachment's DISPLAY NAME

2. Enter in the WEB LINK (optional)

3. Choose your FILE (optional)

4. Enter in your attachment's DESCRIPTION (optional)

5. Choose who you'd like your attachment VISIBLE TO

6. Click ADD ATTACHMENT when you are finished

Also, you can subscribe to receive email updates when suggestions and comments are added to the course. Click SUBSCRIBE sign up.

Overview

The Embarc Lesson Planning component is designed to leverage all of the effort that has gone into creating your district’s curriculum.  Assuming you have fully populated your curriculum and added activities, lesson planning can now focus on scheduling what aspects of the curriculum you are delivering when, what activities or attachments you are utilizing and finally any information unique to the particular group of students you are working with this year.  Any information that you would like to carry over to the next year should, ideally, be documented either in the curriculum itself or in an activity.

Setting Up Your Lesson Plan

In order to create lesson plans you first need to create a class. If you do not know how to create a class, please see the HOW TO-Add a Class training document.

1. Click on LESSON PLANS (name may change from district to district) in the navigation bar on the left hand side of the screen under the CLASSROOM menu item.

   1. You can also click on your class name from the CLASSROOM - CLASSES menu item to create a lesson plan.

   2. Then click on PLANS (this is the district abbreviation, may change from district to district) or ADD ENTRY

2. If you clicked on PLANS (or whichever name your district has chosen for the Lesson Plan abbreviation) there are three different ways to view your lesson plans on this page.

   1. VIEW WEEK (default view): This option will show tabs for each day of the week. Under each tab, the lesson plans for that day are listed by period/hour.

   2. VIEW ALL PLANS: This option will give you a list of all your lesson plans sorted by date and time.

   3. VIEW CALENDAR: This option shows you a calendar with the time of each lesson plan blocked off.

   4. VIEW PLAN BOOK: This option will show all courses taught by the teacher in a traditional teacher’s plan book type of view and entries can be dragged and dropped between time slots and days. For more information on the Plan Book, please see the HOW TO – Advanced Lesson Planning training document.

3. There are two ways you can add a lesson plan for your class. Click on the ADD LESSON PLAN button in the upper right hand corner of the screen, or click on ADD ENTRY under the specific date you'd like to add the lesson plan for.

4. Once on the Lesson Plan Details page, fill out all of the fields that are associated with your class in the available dropdowns.

   1. Note: The district determines the template options. In this example, the teacher is going to specify the times for the lesson.

   2. In this example, the district has setup a bell schedule that is being used to specify the periods for the lesson plan.

   3. In this example, the district has setup blocks of time for the lesson plans, in which teachers can pick a specific block, such as 60 minutes for reading or 90 minutes for math, and so on. This is seen more often at the elementary level.

NOTE: The screen may have different fields based on what template you have chosen. For example, if you are at a school that has periods or hours there may be a dropdown to select what period/hour your lesson is for.

NOTE: Steps 6-­‐10 are setting the primary focus of the lesson plan, this will control what Learning Targets, Activities, and Attachments you are prompted with.  Additionally, this information is used in certain reports that Embarc supports.

1. Select the department your lesson plan belongs to in the DEPARTMENT DROPDOWN.

2. Select the course your lesson plan belongs to in the COURSE DROPDOWN.

3. Select the unit your lesson plan belongs to in the UNIT DROPDOWN.

4. Select the topic your lesson plan belongs to in the TOPIC DROPDOWN.

5. When you have filled in all the fields on this page click SAVE AND CONTINUE.

NOTE: These steps are only required the first time you create a lesson plan for a class. For each subsequent lesson plan within that class this information will be filled in automatically and is adjustable.

Writing Your Lesson Plan

1. Once you click SAVE AND CONTINUE you will see any learning targets, activities, and attachments that are tied to the course, unit, and topic of your lesson plan. You may also see other fields your district has chosen to remind you of.

   1. For example you may see vocabulary or key questions.

2. Select the learning targets, activities, and attachments that will be used during your lesson plan.

   1. You can also create a new activity right from this screen.

3. Click SAVE AND CONTINUE.

4. If you would like to add additional Learning Targets from other areas of this course or even from other courses into your lesson plan, click on the ADD ADDITIONAL CURRICULUM CONTENT link.

5. Choose the department of the content you would like to add in the DEPARTMENT DROPDOWN.

6. Choose the course of the content you would like to add in the COURSE DROPDOWN.

7. Choose the unit of the content you would like to add in the UNIT DROPDOWN.

8. Choose the topic of the content you would like to add in the TOPIC DROPDOWN.

9. Select the learning targets that coincide with the content you would like to add in the LEARNING TARGETS BOX.

10. Select the activities that coincide with the content you would like to add in the ACTIVITIES box.

11. Select any attachments that coincide with the content you would like to add in the ATTACHMENTS box.

12. Click SAVE AND CONTINUE.

13. Under the ADDITIONAL LESSON PLAN INFORMATION complete any district definable fields that may be present.

    1. Fields with a red * beside them are required, the others just complete if it applies to your lesson.

14. Choose the TYPE of attachment you are adding: FILE, WEB LINK or GOOGLE DRIVE. Adding a FILE allows you to search your computer for a file to add as an attachment, i.e. a Word document or PowerPoint. Adding a WEB LINK allows to you enter a web address to add as an attachment, such as a YouTube video. Adding a file from GOOGLE DRIVE allows you to browse your Google Drive items, just like browsing your computer, and link them as an attachment (your district has to have enabled Google docs in order to have this option).

15. If you are adding a FILE, click SELECT to choose the type of file you will be adding. If you are adding a WEB LINK, type in the name of the web address to link out to.

16. Enter in the DISPLAY NAME for the attachment.

17. Optionally, you can add in a DESCRIPTION for the attachment.

18. Select to whom you would like your resource to be visible. The options for visibility may vary from district to district. Common options are:

    1. MY DISTRICT: This setting allows only educators and administration from your district to view your resource.

    2. ALL EDUCATORS: This allows any educators from other Embarc districts to view your resource. People who have access to your resource at this level are teachers from any Embarc district, teachers from your district, and administrators.

    3. THE PUBLIC: This allows the resource to be viewed by anyone browsing your curriculum, including parents, students, other teachers, and administration.

19. When you are finished on this page, click SAVE at the bottom of the screen.

20. You have now successfully completed your lesson plan.

Recurring Lesson Plans

You can recur a lesson plan if you have a lesson plan that you use over and over again throughout the year. For example, if you have a spelling test lesson that you do each Friday you could recur this lesson to occur at the same day and time each week.

1. If you would like your plan to recur, click the RECURRENCE link at the top of the screen.

2. When you click the RECURRENCE link, a new box will appear.

3. The SPECIFIC DAY AND TIME RECURRANCE tab allows you to specify at what dates and times you would like your lesson to repeat.

   1. Example: This is the lesson you use on days when students are taking an exam.

4. The RECUR BY DAY tab allows you to have a lesson repeat multiple days in a row.

   1. Example: The lesson will take multiple days to complete.

5. The RECUR BY WEEK tab allows you to have a lesson repeat the same day and time each week.

   1. Example: You have a lesson for independent reading time that you do every Friday morning.

6. When you are finished, click RECUR.

Copying and Pasting Lesson Plans

In addition to recurring lessons, you can also copy and paste lesson plans. The difference between copy/paste and recurring is if you make a change to a recurred lesson that change will be made every place the lesson is used. If you make a change to a copy/paste lesson, the change will only be made in the lesson you made it in.

1. To do this, click COPY at the bottom of the lesson plan.

2. On the main lesson plan page, navigate to the date and time/period you would like to paste the lesson plan to.

3. Click PASTE.

Getting to the Topic Level

In order to add an activity you must first navigate to the topic level of an existing course or if you are in the process of creating a course you must first create a unit and a topic, before you can add an activity. To learn how to create those parts of your course see the How to: Create a Course training document.

1. After you login you should see the main course screen. Use the SEARCH OPTIONS to find the course you would like to add an activity to.

2. When you find the course, click on the course NAME.

3. Once inside your course, navigate to the TOPIC you would like to add the activity to. There are four ways you can do this.

   1. QUICK NAVIGATE: If your course has two or more units you can use the quick navigate bar to jump to the topic.

   2. BIG PICTURE: Under the CURRICULUM menu item, click on BIG PICTURE.

      1. Then find the topic you would like to add your activity to and click on the TOPIC NAME.

   3. SCOPE AND SEQUENCE: Under the CURRICULUM menu item, click on SCOPE AND SEQUENCE.

      1. Then find the topic you would like to add your activity to and click on the TOPIC NAME.

   4. And the fourth option, you can click on the unit where the topic belongs that you want to add the activity to. The list of units is under the course overview textbox.

      1. Once you are on the unit page, click on the topic you would like to add the activity to. The list of topics is located under the unit overview textbox.

      2. Once on the topic page, scroll down until you see the ADD ACTIVITY button and click it

Creating an Activity

1. Enter the name of your activity in the NAME textbox.

2. Enter a description of your activity in the DESCRIPTION textbox.

3. Choose any LEARNING TARGETS that can be assigned to this activity. The DEPARTMENT, COURSE, UNIT, and TOPIC dropdowns allow you to do cross departmental alignment, which is choosing learning targets from a course that is different from the one you are creating the activity in.

4. Click the SAVE AND CONTINUE button on the bottom of the screen

5. At the activity level there can be up to ten district definable fields. Enter the appropriate information into each district definable field your district has created.

   1. Common district definable fields at the activity level are: differentiation for advanced learners and differentiation for struggling learners.

6. Next you can add expectations and measurements for your activity. To do this, enter the appropriate information into the STUDENT EXPECTATIONS AND MEASURES field. Then click ADD  EXPECTATION.

   1. You can add multiple expectations and measurements as there may be multiple things you want the students to learn in this activity.

   2. Expectations can now be reordered by using your cursor to drag and drop the item by the :: symbol in the first column.

7. You can also add a Resource and/or Attachment to your activity. Choose the TYPE of attachment you are adding: FILE, WEB LINK, GOOGLE DRIVE, or NOTE. Adding a FILE allows you to search your computer for a file to add as an attachment, i.e. a Word document or PowerPoint. Adding a WEB LINK allows to you enter in a web address to add as an attachment, such as a YouTube video. Adding a file from GOOGLE DRIVE allows you to browse your Google Drive items, just like browsing your computer, and link them as an attachment. Adding a NOTE allows you to enter in a brief note that will be treated as an attachment.

8. If you are adding a FILE, click SELECT to choose the type of file you will be adding. If you are adding a WEB LINK, type in the name of the web address to link out to.

9. Enter in the DISPLAY NAME for the attachment.

10. Optionally, you can add in a DESCRIPTION for the attachment.

11. Select to whom you would like your resource to be visible. The options for visibility may vary from district to district. Common options are:

    1. MY DISTRICT: This setting allows only educators and administration from your district to view your resource.

    2. ALL EDUCATORS: This allows any educators from another Embarc district to view your resource. People who have access to your resource at this level are teachers from any Embarc district, teachers from your district, and administrators.

    3. THE PUBLIC: This allows the resource to be viewed by anyone browsing your curriculum, including parents, students, other teachers, and administration.

12. Select all teaching concepts that apply. Your list of available concepts is determined by your district.

13. Select the level of sharing.  You can allow other educators in other districts to view the activity (ALL DISTRICTS) if the district option has been turned on, allow only educators in your district to view the activity (MY DISTRICT), or allow no one else to view the activity (JUST ME).  You can also decide if others can edit this activity, if other districts can copy it, and if you wish to receive emails.  Finish by clicking the Save button.

Deleting an Activity

1. To delete an Activity, you must first be on the Topic edit page.  Scroll down to the Activities box and click on the EDIT icon next to the Activity.

2. Once you are on the Activity edit page, scroll down just past the Miscellaneous Options box, and click on the DELETE button.

3. A dialog box will appear asking if you are certain you would like to delete the activity, if you are, click OK

Rating an Activity

Educators can rate activities that belong to their colleagues. Ratings are on a 1-­‐5 scale with half star increments. The average rating appears at the top of the activity page with a link to the bottom of the page where you can enter a review. Reviews include a rating and a comment. You can review an activity only once. The author of a review, as well as System Administrators, can edit or delete the review. The three most recent reviews will show along with a link to show all reviews.

1. Click on the ACTIVITY NAME to see the Activity details page.

2. You will then see the details of the Activity, the area where you can rate the Activity, and most recent reviews on the Activity.

3. To add your own review to the Activity, click on SEE ALL REVIEWS.

4. Then, under Review This Activity, mouse over the stars to choose how many stars you would like to give this activity to show your rating. Enter in a comment, and click SAVE. Both the rating and comment are required in order to save the review.

Copying and Pasting Activities

 If you'd like to move an activity from one Topic to another, you must perform a copy and paste on the Activity.

1. From the topic edit page start by clicking on the ACTIVITY NAME for the item that you would like to copy.

2. Once you are on the detail page of the Activity, click on COPY in the upper right hand corner.

3. Then go into the Topic that you wish to paste this Activity into, and click the PASTE ACTIVITY button by the Activities section. (You can copy the Activity into any Topic, even those that belong to other Courses or Units).

4. Once you click on Paste Activity, the software will add your Activity to the Topic and will take you to the Activity edit screen where you can review the details of the Activity.

*Reminder* When you copy and paste an Activity, it creates a copy of the Activity. The Activity will still exist in the original Topic. If you no longer want the Activity in the original Topic, you must delete the Activity from the original Topic.

Publishing an Activity

In order for your activity to be seen on your district's public Embarc site, you must first publish your activity and have it approved by a system administrator of Embarc at your district.

1. To publish your activity, find your activity, and click on the EDIT icon to the right of the activity name.

2. On the ACTIVITY DETAILS page, click on the SAVE & PUBLISH button.

3. Your activity is now available to be viewed in the Pending Activity area that system administrators have access to in order to approve, edit or deny the publishing of activities. The activity can still be viewed on the administrative site with the level of security you have set for it, but it will not be available on the public site until it is approved by a system administrator.

Viewing and Approving a Pending Activity (system administrator access only)

In order for an activity to be seen on your district's public Embarc site, the activity must first be saved and published and then approved by a system administrator of Embarc at your district.

1. To view activities that are waiting to be published, go to the CURRICULUM menu and click on PENDING ACTIVITIES.

2. In the PENDING ACTIVITIES area, you can search for an activity by DEPARTMENT, AUTHOR, ACTIVITY (keyword), or STATUS of the activity.

3. Once you have found the activity you wish to review, click on the ACTIVITY name.

4. On the PENDING ACTIVITY DETAILS page, you can review the details of the activity. There are four options for editing the status of the activity from here:

   1. PENDING would not publish the activity and leave it in the pending activity area for further review

   2. PRIVATE would keep the activity private so only the author and a system administrator of Embarc can view it.

   3. UPDATE would notify the author that updates need to be made on the activity.

   4. PUBLISHED would clear all correspondence associated with the activity and make the activity viewable by the public.

5. If you would like to publish the activity, change the STATUS to PUBLISHED and click SAVE.

Once you have logged on to either the administrative or public site, click on PREFERENCES in the navigation bar on the left hand side of the screen.

On the Preferences page you can change your password, unsubscribe to any curriculum content you have subscribed to, change your “homepage”, or change settings for lesson plan

Changing Your Password

1. Go to PREFERENCES - CHANGE PASSWORD.

2. To change your password enter your old password in the CURRENT PASSWORD textbox.

3. Enter your new password in the NEW PASSWORD and REENTER NEW PASSWORD textboxes.

4. Click SAVE.

Setting a Home Page

Users have the ability to set a home page that they will be taken to every time they log into Embarc.  Go to PREFERENCES - USER PREFERENCES.

1. There are 4 options for the Home Page: Course List, Course View, Class List, and Assessment List. Choose a Starting Page.

2. Once you have chosen a starting page, depending on the page that you chose, more options will be available to you. For example, if you select Course List Page, you can also set the Department, Grade, Status, Keyword, and School. You can customize these filters so you can have a more specific page that you land on when you log on to Embarc.

3. You can reset the filter to the system default at any time by clicking on RESET FILTERS TO SYSTEM DEFAULTS.

Here are other ways you can set a Home Page:

COURSE LIST (default page when logging into Embarc)

1. Go to CURRICULUM - COURSES.

2. Set your Department filter, Grade Level, Course Status, and School to whatever you choose. Then click SET FILTERS FOR HOME PAGE.

3. A message will appear stating that you have selected your home page.

COURSE VIEW

1. Go to CURRICULUM - COURSES.

2. Click on the name of the course that you'd like to set as your home page.

3. When you are on the COURSE DETAILS page, scroll down to the bottom and click on SET AS HOME PAGE.

A message will appear stating that you have selected your home page.

CLASSES

1. Go to CLASSROOM - CLASSES.

2. Click on SET AS HOME PAGE.

3. A message will appear stating that you have selected your home page.

ASSESSMENTS

1. Go to ASSESSMENTS - ASSESSMENT

2. Click on SET AS HOME PAGE

3. A message will appear stating that you have selected your home page.

Setting a "Favorite" Course

The favorites functionality is available under the PREFERENCES - USER PREFERENCES section which allows you to easily remove courses from your list of favorites and modify the filters if you have the Course List page set as your Home Page. 

When viewing a course, either from your district or another district, in View mode (not in Edit mode), a link will be shown at the bottom of the Course Details page. This link will mark the course as one of your favorite courses.

Once you've added the course as a favorite, you can quickly get to the list of your favorite courses by going to the Course Search page. Click on VIEW MY FAVORITE COURSES to see the list of courses you've chosen as your favorites.

If you've chosen another district's course as one of your favorites, the district name will show up in parenthesis () behind the course name.

Additionally, on this page, if you select the SET FILTERS FOR HOME PAGE link, it will store these courses as your Home Page and you will be taken to this list of courses each time you log into Embarc.

Subscription Information

1. Go to PREFERENCES - USER PREFERENCES

2. To unsubscribe to a piece of curriculum content, uncheck the checkbox next to the curriculum content you no longer want to subscribe to. Then click SAVE.

Lesson Plan Options

1. Go to PREFERENCES - USER PREFERENCES

2. Here you can control what view you’d like as the default view for your Lesson Plan page. Either a Weekly View, Plan Book View, Calendar View, or View All.

3. You can also control the type of information you'd like printed on your Lesson Plan printout.

4. This can also be controlled if you print the Lesson Plan via the Reports section of Embarc, on the Lesson Plan Print report page itself. Go to CURRICULUM - REPORTS - LESSON PLAN ANALYSIS/CURRICULUM MAPING REPORTS. Click on the LESSON PLAN PRINT report

5. There are also options you can set for the Lesson Plan Book, if you choose to view your lesson plans as a plan book.

6. Select the items you want displayed on the Plan Book and the order you want them in. The default is to show only the lesson plan name.

Overview

Every Embarc district has its own public website where parents, students, and the community can view and access curriculum that your district has chosen to show on the public website. Parents and students can view the district’s curriculum for all courses in a status of “Published” or “Being Revised.” This access includes the ability to view the course, unit, topic, and learning target information as well as any published activities, lesson plans, and public attachments.  The primary goal of this document is to explain how to view your district’s public site, including finding it’s address, how to customize what information is visible to the public, and how to publish your courses.  Optionally your public site can contain lesson plans and activities for your district and those will also be addressed in this document.

Your District’s Public Embarc Website

There are three ways to access the Embarc public site from the Embarc administrative site:

1. Click on the PUBLIC SITE menu item in the left hand navigation:

2. Click on PUBLIC SITE in the upper right hand corner:

3. Click on ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – DISTRICT OPTIONS

 At the bottom of this page you will see the list of your district’s links, including the link to the public site:

Configuration Options regarding what gets published

There are many configuration settings that your district can adjust for the public site. Please note: These options are found under the Administrative Functions menu item, so they can only be accessed by an administrator of Embarc at your district.

Security Configuration:

1. Go to ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – DISTRICT OPTIONS.

2. Click on SHOW SECURITY CONFIGURATION

3. The option “Allow additional External (viewable to the general public) attachments” will allow your curriculum authors to specify if specific attachments are visible to the general public

Course Configuration:

1. Click on SHOW COURSE CONFIGURATION

2. The option “Show the Course Code on the Public Site” works with the first feature on this list (“Track the Course Code”).  The course code field is used to record your course code from another system, typically a student management system.

3. The checkbox “Public” to the right of the course field titles allows you to control whether the fields are visible to the general public or not.

Unit and Topic Configuration:

1. Click on SHOW UNIT CONFIGURATION or SHOW TOPIC CONFIGURATION

2. The checkbox “Public” to the right of the field titles allows you to control whether the fields are visible to the general public or not.

3. For Topics, you can also control whether or not the topic duration is shown on the public site

Other Configuration Options:

In the SHOW GENERAL CONFIGURATION area, the following options are available

1. The option “Show Preselect Standards on the Public Site” allows you to show the list of preselect standards on the public site that have been chosen under the Course Standards or Unit Standards button.

2. The option “Show Standards Aligned to Learning Targets on the Public Site Course Details page” allows you to show a list of actual standards being covered in the course on the public site.  This list is determined by summarizing the standards linked to the course’s learning targets.

3. The option “Content to Show on the Public Site” allows you to choose which levels of the course you would like to be seen on the public site.

4. The option “Public Site Disclaimer” allows you to override Embarc’s standard disclaimer on the bottom of each public page.

5. The option “Public Site – Rows per List Page / Admin Site – Rows per List Page” allows you to specify how many records are returned per list page. This is a balancing act, the higher the number the fewer pages users need to search through, the lower the number the faster the pages are displayed.

6. The option “Public Site – General Public Starting Page” allows you to choose between 3 basic page layouts for the default view parents will see when they view the curriculum.

In the SHOW RARELY USED OPTIONS CONFIGURATION the following options are available.

1. The option “Don't show the 'Being Revised' message for courses in a status of Being Revised on the Public site” allows you to remove the 'Being Revised' message behind a course name that is on the public site when the course is in a status of Being Revised.

2. The option “Show Key Concept/Generalization Details on the Public Site” allows you to choose to not show the Learning Target details on the public site.

3. The option “Show Key Concept/Generalization Summary List on the Public Site” allows you to add a button to the Course Details page on the public site that provides a summary of all of the Key Concepts/Learning Targets for a course.

Changing the Course Status

As your course moves throughout its development cycle, there are six different course statuses that can be assigned to the course. Each status has its own level of visibility and editability.  The only statuses visible on the public site are “Published” and, by default, “Being Revised”.

1. To change the status of a course, click on the EDIT icon to the right of the course name:

2. Once you are on the Scope and Sequence page, click on the COURSE NAME.

3. By the STATUS field, you will see a little blue question mark. If you click on this, it will give you a description of the six course statuses.

4. Click on the STATUS dropdown.

5. Choose which status you would like your course to have and click SAVE.

6. Your course now has a new status.

Please note: If you chose the status of Published or Being Revised, your course is now visible on your district’s public Embarc site.

Changing the Status of Multiple Courses

Often you may want to publish multiple courses at the same time, for example we want to publish are Math Department.  While you can use the Individual Course publishing process discussed earlier, we also give you, assuming you have administrative access, a way to change the status of multiple courses at once.

1. Under Administrative Functions, choose Mass Maintenance, then choose “Click here to change the course status for multiple courses”.

2. Set your filters at the top and select the Preview button, this will show you a list of courses that will be impacted by the change.

3. Deselect (uncheck) any courses you do not want changed, set the Desired Course Status, and choose apply changes

4. A confirmation message will be displayed and the status will be updated on all of the desired courses.

5. By the STATUS field, you will see a little blue question mark. If you click on this, it will give you a description of the six course statuses.

6. Click on the STATUS dropdown.

7. Choose which status you would like your course to have and click SAVE.

8. Your course now has a new status.

Please note: If you chose the status of Published or Being Revised, your course is now visible on your district’s public Embarc site.

Viewing Curriculum on the Public Website

To view a course on the public website, it must be in the status of Published or Being Revised.

1. To view a course on the public site, click on the PUBLIC SITE link.

2. Once you are on the public site, you are viewing the site just as a parent, student, or member of your community would view the site. There is no login or password needed to view curriculum that has been published to your district’s public Embarc site. The landing page of your public site is determined in the district settings as mentioned in the district options section. Click on the name of a course to see the course details.

3. Once you are on the COURSE DETAILS page you can click on a unit to view its details, see the Scope & Sequence, Course Summary, Learning Targets, or Standards. Once again, the information that is shown on each page is determined by your district’s settings.

Publishing an Activity

In order for your activity to be seen on your district's public Embarc site, within the context of the curriculum, you must first publish your activity and have it approved by a system administrator of Embarc at your district.  Please note that an option also exists to share activities on the public site within the lesson planning process of Embarc.

1. To publish your activity, find your activity, and click on the EDIT icon to the right of the activity name.

2. On the ACTIVITY DETAILS page, click on the SAVE & PUBLISH button.

3. Your activity is now available to be viewed in the Pending Activity area that system administrators have access to in order to approve, edit or deny the publishing of activities. The activity can still be viewed on the administrative site with the level of security you have set for it, but it will not be available on the public site until it is approved by a system administrator.

Viewing and Approving a Pending Activity (system administrator access only)

In order for an activity to be seen on your district's public Embarc site, the activity must first be saved and published and then approved by a system administrator of Embarc at your district.

1. To view activities that are waiting to be published, go to the CURRICULUM menu and click on PENDING ACTIVITIES.

2. In the PENDING ACTIVITIES area, you can search for an activity by DEPARTMENT, AUTHOR, ACTIVITY (keyword), or STATUS of the activity.

3. Once you have found the activity you wish to review, click on the ACTIVITY name.

4. On the PENDING ACTIVITY DETAILS page, you can review the details of the activity. There are four options for editing the status of the activity from here

   1. PENDING would not publish the activity and leave it in the pending activity area for further review.

   2. PRIVATE would keep the activity private so only the author and a system administrator of Embarc can view it.

   3. UPDATE would notify the author that updates need to be made on the activity.

   4. PUBLISHED would clear all correspondence associated with the activity and make the activity viewable by the public. If you would like to publish the activity, change the STATUS to PUBLISHED and click SAVE.

5. You can now view the activity on your district’s public site by clicking on the PUBLIC SITE link.

6. Then click on then name of the course.

7. Then click on SCOPE & SEQUENCE, the Activities link will show for any topics with published Activities.

8. The Activities page will show all Published Activities associated with the Topic

Viewing Lesson Plans on Your District’s Public Embarc Site

Having lesson plans visible on the public site is optional for your district.  To enable this option, allow them to be viewed on the public site, you must first have your lesson plan template made viewable to the public.

1. As an Embarc Administrator, go to ADMNISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – DISTRICT OPTIONS.

2. Then click on SHOW LESSON PLAN CONFIGURATION.

3. Click on the lesson plan template you would like to make public.

4. At the top of the page, check the box that says LESSON PLANS VIEWABLE BY THE PUBLIC.

5. Click SAVE.

You can also choose which fields on your lesson plan template you’d like to show on your public site.

1. Go to ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS – DISTRICT OPTIONS.

2. Click on SHOW LESSON PLAN CONFIGURATION

3. Click on the name of your template

4. Check the box next to PUBLIC if you would like to make that field viewable on the public site.

5. Click SAVE when you are finished.

Viewing your lesson plans on the public Embarc site

1. Click on the PUBLIC SITE menu item OR, click on PUBLIC SITE on the top right of the page. Your district should also have a link available on your district website for parents and students to access.

2. Once you are on the public site, click on CLASS INFORMATION.

3. Click into the TEACHER field to find the teacher’s name.

4. Click on the CLASS field to find the name of the class you are looking for

5. You will now see Lesson Plan information for your class.

Resetting Your Password

A user can change their password whenever they wish from both the administrative website as well as the public website. 

Public Site

1. In a web browser, visit your district’s PUBLIC Embarc site. The address of this website is:   http://<YOUR_DISTRICT>.embarc.com

2. On the left hand navigation bar click on EDUCATOR LOGIN.

3. Enter your UserID and Password and click the LOGIN button

Changing Your Password

1. Click on USER PREFERENCES in the left hand navigation bar.

2. Then click on CHANGE PASSWORD.

3. Enter your current password in the CURRENT PASSWORD textbox.

4. Then, enter your new password twice in the ENTER NEW PASSWORD and REENTER NEW PASSWORD textboxes.

5. Then click SAVE.

Forgot Your Password

The first step when someone forgets or loses their password is to click the FORGOT YOUR PASSWORD link located on both the Embarc Administrative and Public websites.

This will send the user an email with the UserID and Password assigned to the email address entered that they can use to login to Embarc. If for some reason this doesn’t work or if the email is not coming through because of your district's security settings, then the password can be reset by an administrator.

The next steps are the steps an administrator can take to reset a user’s password.

Resetting a User’s Password

 Log into the Embarc Administrative website

1. In a web browser, visit http://admin.embarc.com

2. Select your State and District from the dropdowns

3. Enter your UserID and Password

4. Click the LOGIN button

5. On the left hand navigation bar click on ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS

6. Next, click on USERS

7. Fill in the LAST NAME or LOGIN ID of the user who's password you would like to reset

8. Click the SEARCH button

9. In the listing of users, click on the USER’S NAME, this will bring you to the page to change your user’s password

10. Enter a new password for this user in the PASSWORD field

11. Enter the password again in the REPEAT PASSWORD textbox NOTE: This is a temporary password. The user will be prompted to change it the first time they login. Therefore, using something easy to remember and generic can be helpful (ex: password).

12. Click the SAVE button.

Searching Curriculum in Other Districts

1. Once you have logged on to the Embarc administrative site, click on the COURSES button under the CURRICULUM menu item.

2. Then click on SHOW ADVANCED SEARCH OPTIONS.

3. The advanced search allows you to search your district and other districts using a variety of different search methods and parameters.

   1. Keywords: This allows you to narrow your search using keywords like “Everyday Math” or “Frog Dissection.” Using this field helps you limit your search and is especially helpful when you’re looking for lessons or curriculum that specifically address some particular activity, program or concept. YOU MUST PUT SOMETHING IN THIS FIELD FOR THE SEARCH TO WORK.

   2. Courses: This dropdown allows you to choose from PUBLISHED ONLY, ALL ACTIVE COURSES, or ALL ARCHIVED COURSES. PUBLISHED ONLY will limit your search to only courses that have already been published. ALL ACTIVE will show you all courses in a district, except those that are archived. ALL ARCHIVED will show you courses that once were published, but are no longer being offered.

   3. Start/End Grades: These fields allow you to limit the grade levels of your results. This is helpful if you are an elementary teacher and do not need results from the high school level and vise versa.

   4. Match on: This allows you to choose whether your results must match your keywords exactly or if your results can just match some of the words/phrases in your keywords.

   5. Look For: This choice allows you to limit your search by level. You may search for courses, units, topics, learning targets, or activities.

   6. Look At: This feature is used in only rare cases and allows you to search for your keyword at one level, but receive results from another. For example, if grammar is consistently a topic in all Language Arts courses, but you wanted to see the learning targets associated with grammar you could search for grammar at the topic level, but get results at the learning target level. In this case “topics” would be what you want to “look at” and the “learning targets” would be what you “look for.”

   7. District: This dropdown allows you to search courses from your district only (MY DISTRICT), courses from all districts (ALL DISTRICTS), or a specific district. To search a specific district select the district you desire to search from the dropdown menu.

   8. Department: This search menu allows you to specify from what department you would like your search results to come. For example if you search “Newton” you may get both science and social studies results, however if you are a history teacher by selecting social studies you can eliminate any science related results. Please note: The department filter is not available if searching ALL DISTRICTS.

4. Fill in the fields based on your preferences and your search parameters.

5. Click on SEARCH in the upper right hand corner of the preferences box.

6. Your search results will be displayed below the preferences box.

   1. If your search yielded more than 10 results you will need to use the arrows in the upper right hand corner to page through the results.

   2. Click on the course name to view the details of the course.

7. Clicking on the COPY COURSE button will transfer you to the “Curriculum Copy” page with the Copy From District, Department, and Course preselected for you.

8. To go back to your search results, click on the Cancel/Back button in the upper right hand corner.

Step 1: Activate CCI Content

After you have purchased the rights to own the CCI Deconstructed Standards for your district, you will receive a License Key to unlock the content. Here is how you enter the License Key:

1. Click on ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS -­‐ CONTENT PARTNERS

2. On the CONTENT PARTNERS page, enter your License Key and click Verify License

Step 2: Copying Curriculum

You copy licensed content the same as you copy curriculum from other districts.

1. On the left hand navigation bar click on CURRICULUM COPY

2. In the COPY FROM DISTRICT dropdown choose the content partner from which you would like to copy curriculum. In the case of purchased Learning Targets from the Common Core Institute, you would choose “The Common Core Institute, IL”.

3. In the COPY/COPY FROM DEPARTMENT dropdown choose the department from which you would like to copy curriculum

4. Next, the COPY/COPY FROM COURSE dropdown should appear allowing you to choose the course from which you would like to copy.

5. To copy licensed content you will use the Copy LT(s) button which is available as soon as you
   select a course. Simply click on the COPY LT(S) button in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Later you will be given a chance to select only the learning targets you want for your course.
   *Note: On this screen, the fields that you will see vary based on your district's configuration options. The "Copy LT (s)" button may have different wording based on what is set up in your district's configuration.

Step 3: Placing Copied Curriculum into Your District’s Curriculum

Once you have successfully copied a piece of curriculum from the content partner, you need to "paste" it into your own curriculum. After clicking the COPY button discussed in the previous steps, you will be brought to a page that will ask where you would like to paste the information.

1. In the PASTE INTO DEPARTMENT dropdown choose the department into which you would like to place the curriculum

2. In the PASTE INTO COURSE dropdown select what course into which you would like to place the
   learning targets. The course you would like to place learning targets into should already exist. If not, it must be created as a new course.

3. Click the Continue button in the upper right hand corner of the screen

Step 4: Select the Relevant Learning Targets

Once you have selected the course where you want the learning targets copied, you will be brought to a page that will allow you to select only the learning targets you would like to use. This page may take several seconds to appear.

1. At the top of the page you can select a department, area, strand, minimum and maximum grades, and where/how standards are covered. This will allow you to reduce the number of learning targets you see to only those that pertain to the course you are working with.

   1. By default, if your district aligns standards to grades, the grade filters will be visible and will be set to the grade levels of the course to which you are copying.

2. Use the Search button to refresh the list of learning targets.

3. The list contains learning targets grouped by their corresponding standard.

Grade level/range ID

1. The information for the standard includes the ID, grade range, and text.

2. You can select learning targets three different ways

   1. Clicking the checkbox at the top of the list will select/unselect all learning targets that are in the list.

   2. Clicking the checkbox next to the standard will select/unselect all learning targets for that standard.

   3. Individual learning targets can be selected/unselected by clicking the checkbox to the left of the learning target.

3. Once a learning target is selected it will remain visible when the filter list changes.

4. Once you have all the learning targets selected that you want to copy to your course, click the "Paste LT(s)" button. This will start the operation that will add the learning targets and attach them to your standards.

5. A progress bar will be displayed to show you the steps of the operation.

If you complete this process and realize you have forgotten some learning targets, you can add additional learning targets by repeating the process.

Select STANDARDS in the navigation bar on the left hand side of the screen Searching Other Districts

1. Select the DEPARTMENT in the dropdown you would like to search in.

2. Select the DISTRICT in the dropdown you would like to search in

3. Select the AREA in the dropdown you would like to search in

4. Select if you would like to search for a SPECIFIC STRAND or ALL STRANDS in the dropdown

5. Click SEARCH

6. Click on the COVERED icon to see the district’s learning targets associated with that standard.

7. Once you click on the COVERED icon, you will see the learning targets associated with that standard. You can click on the learning target, course, unit, or topic to see the details of that course.

Introduction

The purpose of this document is to introduce users to the advanced features available in Embarc. Primarily this will focus on viewing your curriculum and searching other district’s curriculum. In addition we will discuss how to create activities, use the teacher portal, and use the comment portion of Embarc. Many of these topics have their own training document that explains the topic in greater detail and walks you through the process of using the feature correctly. If you have additional questions or if you would like more information please see the documents referenced in each section.

Advanced Search

The advanced search allows you to search other districts and your own using a variety of different search methods and parameters. To access the advanced search, click the SHOW ADVANCED SEARCH OPTIONS link located in the bottom, right corner of the Course Search box.

1. Keywords: This allows you to narrow your search using keywords like “Everyday Math” or “Frog Dissection”. Using this field helps you limit your search and is especially helpful when you’re looking for lessons or curriculum that specifically address some particular activity, program or concept. YOU MUST PUT SOMETHING IN THIS FIELD FOR THE SEARCH TO WORK.

2. Courses: This dropdown allows you to choose from PUBLISHED ONLY, ALL ACTIVE COURSES, or ALL ARCHIVED COURSES.  Published only will limit your search to only courses that have already been published.  All active will show you all courses in a district, except those that are archived. All archived will show you courses that once were published, but are no longer being offered.

3. Start/End Grades: These fields allow you to limit the grade levels of your results. This is helpful if you are an elementary teacher and do not need results from the high school level and vice versa.

4. District: This dropdown allows you to search courses from your district only (MY DISTRICT), courses from all districts (ALL DISTRICTS), or a specific district. To search a specific district select the district you desire to search from the dropdown menu.

5. State: This dropdown allows you to choose what state you want to see districts from.

6. Department: This search menu allows you to specify what department you would like your search results to come from. For example, if you search “Newton” you may get both science and social studies results, however if you are a history teacher by selecting social studies you can eliminate any science related results.

7. Look For: This choice allows you to limit your search by level. You may search for courses, units, topics, learning targets, or activities.

8. Look At: This feature is used in only rare cases and allows you to search for your keyword at one level, but receive results from another.  For example, if grammar is consistently a topic in all Language Arts courses, but you wanted to see the learning targets associated with grammar you could search for grammar at the topic level, but get results at the learning target level. In this case “topics” would be what you want to “look at” and the “learning targets” would be what you “look for”.

9. Match On: This allows you to choose whether your results must match your keywords exactly or if your results can just match some of the words/phrases in your keywords.

10. Fill in the fields based on your preferences and your search parameters.

11. Click on SEARCH in the upper right hand corner of the preferences box.

12. Your search results will be displayed below the preferences box.

    1. If your search yielded more than 10 results you will need to use the arrows in the upper right hand corner to page through the results.

    2. Click on the course name to view the details of the course.

Viewing Learning Targets

Embarc offers a variety of ways to view your district’s learning targets. The sections below explain the two most common ways to view learning targets. There is not a training document for this subject, if you have more questions please see your curriculum director or contact EAI directly.

Topic Level

As a rule, anytime you navigate to the topic level of a course the appropriate learning targets will be presented.  This way will only show the learning targets for the topic you are on, it will not show you the learning targets for the entire course.

You can get to the topic level by searching for the course you would like to see the learning targets for and then clicking on it. Once inside your course, you can click on the unit of the topic you want to see learning targets for and then clicking on the topic itself. On the topic page you will see the learning targets that have been assigned to that topic.

Learning Target Link

One quick way to view the learning targets for a course is from the Course Details page. This way will allow you to see all the learning targets for a course at one time.

1. Search for the course whose learning targets you would like to see and then click on it.

2. Once on the Course Details page, select the LEARNING TARGETS link to view the course’s learning targets.

3. Once you click the learning targets button, you will see a list of all the learning targets associated with the course.

4. You can view learning targets by alphabetical order, their unit, their topic, or the standards they are aligned to.

5. If you click the Details icon (the magnifying glass) you will see detailed information about the topic including where it is taught and what standards it is aligned to.

Comments: Providing Feedback/Recording Thoughts

Comments can be provided at the course, unit, or topic levels.  Comments are located at the bottom of each page and are open for all educators in your district to provide feedback.  Originally designed to gather feedback during the curriculum-­‐authoring phase, the comment sections are now used extensively as a diary during the teaching process to record ideas for improving the curriculum moving forward.

Notes

1. Comments are displayed from newest to oldest.

2. You can subscribe at the course, unit, or topic level. To do this, simply click the SUBSCRIBE button. You can subscribe at the course, unit or topic level. Clicking subscribe will cause an email to be generated to you each time a comment is added at that level or below.

3. A System Administrator or the comment author can delete comments, by clicking the RED X.

Suggested Attachments

This is a place where teachers can compile any attachments that they would like associated with a course throughout the year. Then a system administrator can go through and approve the attachments he or she would like to be associated with the course.

1. Give your suggested an attachment a name in the DISPLAY NAME textbox.

2. Choose who you would like your suggested attachment to be VISIBLE TO.

3. Then click ADD ATTACHMENT.

Views of the Curriculum 

Embarc offers a multitude of ways to view the curriculum.  This is one the key benefits of using Embarc; we strive to provide you with whatever view into the curriculum you need at a particular point in time.

Course Print

Course Print prints the Course Summary report, which includes a Scope and Sequence for the course as well as complete details including the course’s units, topics, and learning targets.  By default this printout does not include standards, but these can be obtained by running the Course Summary report from the Reports menu and requesting that standards be included in the printout. To view a course via Course Print follow the steps below:

1. In the Course Search box, search for the course you would like to view.

2. When you find the course, click on the course’s name in the Course Results box.

3. Once on the main course page, click PRINT COURSE on the left hand menu.

Scope and Sequence Page

The Scope and Sequence page provides a nice overview of the entire course, access to any unit or topic, and access to the list of activities associated with any topic. To view a course using the Scope and Sequence page follow the steps below:

1. In the Course Search box, search for the course you would like to view.

2. When you find the course, click on the course’s name in the Course Results box.

3. Once on the main course page, click SCOPE AND SEQUENCE in the left hand menu.

Big Picture

The Big Picture provides a complete outline of the course including the course’s units, topics, learning targets, and durations.  All entries in the outline are hyperlinks thus providing you the ability to jump to any desired portion of the course for more details. To view a course using the Big Picture follow the steps below:

1. In the Course Search box, search for the course you would like to view.

2. When you find the course, click on the course’s name in the Course Results box.

3. Once on the main course page, click the BIG PICTURE on the left hand menu.

Curriculum Portal

The Curriculum Portal is designed for more technical users and is a more complex screen. It provides you complete access to all of the components of one or more courses.  The information displayed is controlled by a class created by you and the Course Navigation window located in the upper left portion of the Curriculum Portal page. For more information on how to use the Curriculum Portal please see the HOW TO-­‐Setup the Curriculum Portal.

Creating Classes

1. Click on CLASSES under the CLASSROOM menu item on the left hand navigation. Or click on ADD A CLASS...

2. Once on the Classes page, click ADD CLASS.

3. Enter the name of your class in the CLASS NAME textbox.

4. Check “students may “Self-Join” this class/organization using a code” if you wish for students to self-join the class rather than having you add them to the class. Clicking this option will prompt a code to appear that students can enter on the Student Portal.

5. Check “this is an organization/extra-curricular activity” if this isn’t an academic class.

6. Choose the class color for your lesson plans.

7. Check “Always show course colors in lesson plan views” if you would rather have your COURSE color show in your lesson plan rather than your class color.

8. Check “Show this class to students” if you wish for the class to be shown on the student portal.

9. Click SAVE when you are finished. Once you save your class, additional fields show up that are optional for you to fill in.

10. If you are going to be publishing assignments with your class in the CLASS INTRODUCTION/OVERVIEW/GREETING textbox enter any information you would like your students to see each time they view the assignments.

11. Choose the PRIMARY COURSES COVERED BY THIS CLASS to tie your class to a course(s). Once you have chosen your course(s), click SAVE COURSES.

    1. If you are an elementary teacher or someone who has the same group of students the whole day, you will most likely have multiple courses for your class.

    2. If you are a high school teacher or someone who teaches distinct courses to different groups of students throughout the day, you will probably only have one course for each class.

    3. If you are only teaching one course per class, it still may be helpful to include other courses that students in your class may be taking. This will allow you to look for cross-­‐ curricular learning opportunities if you are using the Curriculum Portal. If you are a math teacher, but you include the science courses in the Curriculum Portal, you will be able to see the calendar for the science class and see what they are covering in that class, as well as in your class.

12. After you click SAVE COURSES, you can choose the PROJECTION SCHEDULE as well as the color code for your course, if you will be using the Curriculum Portal. The projection schedule tells Embarc how many days a week this course occurs for this class and is used when combining your curriculum and district calendars to give you a projected pacing for the class.

13. Click SAVE at the bottom of the screen.

14. Back on your Class Details page, you will see the CURRICULUM button. This will bring you to the Curriculum Portal you have just set up.

Curriculum Portal Basics

For a full introduction to all the aspects of the Curriculum Portal, please see the INTRODUCTION TO Curriculum Portal training document.

Course Navigation Tree and Projection Calendar - both of these areas will allow you to dig further into the curriculum by selecting an area of interest. Selecting an area in either the curriculum tree or the calendar will reposition the other navigation tool to the same area and refresh all of the information on the page to show the desired area.

Activities 

Activities are the “how you teach” portion of Embarc. In Embarc every teacher in the district can add activities. By default when you create an activity it is a private activity, meaning that you are the only one who can see it. Ideally over time, you will share your activity with your peers, thus populating Embarc with a variety of educational activities and creating a library of good ideas and best practices.

Activities are created at the topic level. The topic page is not only where activities can be created, but also it is also where activities can be viewed, printed, or edited.

The actual Activity Edit page for your district may appear different than the following images.  The district has the ability to define their own fields and select what educational concepts they would like to emphasize.

The following steps will walk you through creating an activity. For more information about activities please see the HOW TO-­‐ Create an Activity training document.

1. There are several ways to get to the topic level.

   1. To do get to the topic level, simply click on the COURSE in the Course Search box, then select the appropriate UNIT from the Course page, and then click on the desired TOPIC from the Unit page.

   2. You also could choose to use the Big Picture or Course Outline pages to navigate to the Topic level if you prefer.

2. Once you are on the topic page, scroll down until you see the ADD ACTIVITY button. Then click on it.

3. Once on the activity screen, then enter the name of your activity in the NAME textbox.

4. Then enter a description of your activity in the DESCRIPTION textbox.

5. When you have finished that click the SAVE AND CONTINUE button on the bottom of the screen.

6. Below the name and description of the activity, all the learning targets that are aligned to that topic will appear.

7. Select the learning targets that are addressed by your activity. To do this, click the checkbox in front of the target(s) your activity addresses.

8. At the activity level there can be up to ten district definable fields. Enter the appropriate information into each of your district’s definable fields.

9. Next you can add expectations and measurements for your activity. To do this, enter the appropriate information into the expectation field and the measurement field and then click ADD EXPECTATION.

   1. You can add multiple expectations and measurements, as there may be multiple things you want the students to learn in this activity.

10. You can also add a Resource and/or Attachment to your activity. Choose the TYPE of attachment you are adding: FILE, WEB LINK, GOOGLE DRIVE, or NOTE. Adding a FILE allows you to search your computer for a file to add as an attachment, i.e. a Word document or PowerPoint. Adding a WEB LINK allows to you enter in a web address to add as an attachment, such as a YouTube video. Adding a file from GOOGLE DRIVE allows you to browse your Google Drive items, just like browsing your computer, and link them as an attachment. Adding a NOTE allows you to enter in a brief note that will be treated as an attachment.

11. If you are adding a FILE, click SELECT to choose the type of file you will be adding. If you are adding a WEB LINK, type in the name of the web address to link out to.

12. Enter in the DISPLAY NAME for the attachment.

13. Optionally, you can add in a DESCRIPTION for the attachment.

14. Select to whom you would like your resource to be visible. The options for visibility may vary from district to district. Common options are:

    1. MY DISTRICT: This setting allows only educators and administration from your district to view your resource.

    2. ALL EDUCATORS: This allows any educators from another Embarc district to view your resource. People who have access to your resource at this level are teachers from any Embarc district, teachers from your district, and administrators.

    3. THE PUBLIC: This allows the resource to be viewed by anyone browsing your curriculum, including parents, students, other teachers, and administration.

Looking at Standards

Both district and state/national standards are available in Embarc.  Typically your analysis will be focused on the state/national standards.  The most basic needs when analyzing standards are to see what standards do you or do you not cover and, if you do cover them, where do you cover them. To see what standards you cover and where you cover them follow the steps below:

1. Click CURRICULUM - STANDARDS in the left hand navigation bar.

2. In the DEPARTMENT and AREA dropdowns select the standards you would like to search for.

3. In the DISTRICT dropdown, select the district whose standards you would like to look at. MY DISTRICT, which is the default option, allows you to search your own district’s standards and learning targets.

   1. If you select a district other than your own, you will see only the standards used by that district and when you click the COVERED icon you will see that district’s learning targets.

4. In the COVERED FEWER THAN _____ TIMES blank you can enter whatever number of times you desire to see standards covered less than.

   1. If you want to see any standards you do not cover at all, enter “1”.

5. In the STANDARDS BY GRADE dropdowns, select if you want to see standards covered, introduced, or mastered and the grade you want to view them covered by.

6. You can click on the COVERED ICON to see courses, units, and topics that address a particular standard. If you click on the COVERED ICON, you will see a page that lists every place that standard is covered throughout the curriculum.

7. If you click on the standard’s number or text you will betaken to the full standard,

Assignments

There are two ways to get to the Add Assignment screen.

1. Go to the CLASSROOM menu item and click on your class name. If you have not created a class yet, see the HOW-TO ADD A CLASS training document under the HELP & TRAINING menu item.

2. Once you are on your class details page, click on the ASSIGNMENTS tab in the upper right hand corner.

3. Then click ADD ASSIGNMENT.

4. Fill out the following areas on the New Assignment Details page:

   1. Select the CLASS for which your assignment will be located.

   2. Enter the name of your assignment in the ASSIGNMENT NAME textbox

   3. Enter a short description of your assignment in the DESCRIPTION textbox.

   4. If you would like to give your assignment start and end dates enter them in the DISPLAY TO STUDENT boxes.

   5. The assignment will automatically show up during these dates.

   6. If you do not enter a start and end date, the assignment will stay up until you manually take it down.

   7. If you would like, enter your assignment’s due date in the DUE DATE box.

   8. If you would like your assignment to be visible before or after the start and end dates select the appropriate check boxes. When you view assignments in Embarc you can see all the assignments for that particular day, you also have the option using arrows to go forward a few days or backward a few days. If you choose to have an assignment visible before the start date students are able to work ahead and if you choose to have it visible after the end date any students who were not in class can see assignments for past days.

   9. In the ATTACHMENTS box you can post any web links needed for your assignment.

   10. If you would like to upload a file, click CHOOSE FILE and select the file from your computer.

   11. Click SAVE when you are done adding to your assignment.

5. Your assignment will now appear on the assignments screen.

Viewing an Assignment

1. To view an assignment, go to the public webpage.

   1. The address of this website is:  http://<YOUR_DISTRICT>.embarc.com

   2. Or you can click on the PUBLIC SITE link from within the Embarc administrative site

2. Once you are on the public site, click CLASS INFORMATION in the navigation bar on the left hand side of your screen.

3. Select the TEACHER who assigned the class assignment.

4. Then select the CLASS.

5. You will then see the assignments for the class. Use the arrows to search for past or future assignments.

Creating Lesson Plans

In order to create lesson plans you first need to create a class. If you do not know how to create a class, please see the HOW TO-Add a Class training document.

1. Click on LESSON PLANS (name may change from district to district) in the navigation bar on the left hand side of the screen under the CLASSROOM menu item.

   1. You can also click on your class name from the CLASSROOM - CLASSES menu item to create a lesson plan.

2. Then click on PLANS (this is the district abbreviation, may change from district to district) or ADD ENTRY

3. If you clicked on PLANS (or whichever name your district has chosen for the Lesson Plan abbreviation) there are three different ways to view your lesson plans on this page.

   1. VIEW WEEK (default view): This option will show tabs for each day of the week. Under each tab, the lesson plans for that day are listed by period/hour.

   2. VIEW ALL PLANS: This option will give you a list of all your lesson plans sorted by date and time.

   3. VIEW CALENDAR: This option shows you a calendar with the time of each lesson plan blocked off.

   4. VIEW PLAN BOOK: This option will show all courses taught by the teacher in a traditional teacher’s plan book type of view and entries can be dragged and dropped between time slots and days. For more information on the Plan Book, please see the HOW TO – Advanced Lesson Planning training document.

4. There are two ways you can add a lesson plan for your class. Click on the ADD LESSON PLAN button in the upper right hand corner of the screen, or click on ADD ENTRY under the specific date you'd like to add the lesson plan for.

5. Once on the Lesson Plan Details page, fill out all of the fields that are associated with your class in the available dropdowns. Note: The district determines the template options. In this example, the teacher is going to specify the times for the lesson. NOTE: Steps 5-­‐9 are setting the primary focus of the lesson plan, this will control what Learning Targets, Activities, and Attachments you are prompted with.  Additionally, this information is used in certain reports that Embarc supports.

6. Select the department your lesson plan belongs to in the DEPARTMENT DROPDOWN.

7. Select the course your lesson plan belongs to in the COURSE DROPDOWN.

8. Select the unit your lesson plan belongs to in the UNIT DROPDOWN.

9. Select the topic your lesson plan belongs to in the TOPIC DROPDOWN.

10. When you have filled in all the fields on this page click SAVE AND CONTINUE.

Writing Your Lesson Plan

1. Once you click SAVE AND CONTINUE you will see any learning targets, activities, and attachments that are tied to the course, unit, and topic of your lesson plan. You may also see other fields your district has chosen to remind you of.

   1. For example you may see vocabulary or key questions.

2. Select the learning targets, activities, and attachments that will be used during your lesson plan.

   1. You can also create a new activity right from this screen.

3. Click SAVE AND CONTINUE.

4. If you would like to add additional Learning Targets from other areas of this course or even from other courses into your lesson plan, click on the ADD ADDITIONAL CURRICULUM CONTENT link.

5. Choose the department of the content you would like to add in the DEPARTMENT DROPDOWN.

6. Choose the course of the content you would like to add in the COURSE DROPDOWN.

7. Choose the unit of the content you would like to add in the UNIT DROPDOWN.

8. Choose the topic of the content you would like to add in the TOPIC DROPDOWN.

9. Select the learning targets that coincide with the content you would like to add in the LEARNING TARGETS BOX.

10. Select the activities that coincide with the content you would like to add in the ACTIVITIES box.

11. Select any attachments that coincide with the content you would like to add in the ATTACHMENTS box.

12. Click SAVE AND CONTINUE.

13. Under the ADDITIONAL LESSON PLAN INFORMATION complete any district definable fields that may be present.

    1. Fields with a red * beside them are required, the others just complete if it applies to your lesson.

14. Choose the TYPE of attachment you are adding: FILE, WEB LINK or GOOGLE DRIVE. Adding a FILE allows you to search your computer for a file to add as an attachment, i.e. a Word document or PowerPoint. Adding a WEB LINK allows to you enter a web address to add as an attachment, such as a YouTube video. Adding a file from GOOGLE DRIVE allows you to browse your Google Drive items, just like browsing your computer, and link them as an attachment (your district has to have enabled Google docs in order to have this option).

15. If you are adding a FILE, click SELECT to choose the type of file you will be adding. If you are adding a WEB LINK, type in the name of the web address to link out to.

16. Enter in the DISPLAY NAME for the attachment.

17. Optionally, you can add in a DESCRIPTION for the attachment.

18. Select to whom you would like your resource to be visible. The options for visibility may vary from district to district. Common options are:

    1. MY DISTRICT: This setting allows only educators and administration from your district to view your resource.

    2. ALL EDUCATORS: This allows any educators from other Embarc district to view your resource. People who have access to your resource at this level are teachers from any Embarc district, teachers from your district, and administrators.

    3. THE PUBLIC: This allows the resource to be viewed by anyone browsing your curriculum, including parents, students, other teachers, and administration.

19. When you are finished on this page, click SAVE at the bottom of the screen.

20. You have now successfully completed your lesson plan.

Curriculum Portal Basics

The Curriculum Portal is designed for more technical users and is a more complex screen. It provides you complete access to all of the components of one or more courses.  The information displayed is controlled by a class created by you and the Course Navigation window located in the upper left portion of the Curriculum Portal page.

1. Click on CLASSROOM in the navigation bar on the left hand side of the screen. Then click on the CLASS NAME which you would like to use to access the Curriculum Portal.

2. Once you are on the class details page for your class, click on the CURRICULUM link.

Curriculum Portal Basics

Course Navigation Tree and Projection Calendar - both of these areas will allow you to dig further into the curriculum by selecting an area of interest. Selecting an area in either the curriculum tree or the calendar will reposition the other navigation tool to the same area and refresh all of the information on the page to show the desired area.

1. The CURRENTLY VIEWING box shows you the Department, Grade Level, and Course Name that you are viewing. You can click on any of the items in the JUMP TO section to go to specific areas in the course, such as Course Details, Attachments, etc. You can also click on PRINT COURSE to bring up a PDF that is a detailed report of your course including the scope and sequence and breakdown of the units, topics, and learning targets.

*The section below changes based on what you choose in the viewing tree at the top of the Curriculum Portal page. For example, in the view below, it is showing the details of the course. There are alternate views if you select a unit or topic.

1. COURSE DETAILS - shows you the details of your Course Overview, as tabs that show Units with Learning Targets and Units with Standards.

2. ATTACHMENTS - this area shows all of the attachments at the course, unit, topic, and activity level. You can click on the attachment to be brought right to the attachment, whether it's a document or web page.

   1. Additionally, you can create an assignment for students using the ASSIGN  link. Click on the ASSIGN link, and it will bring up a box to fill in the details of your assignment.

   2. Choose the Class for which the assignment you are creating (by default, it is the class in which you are currently viewing in the Curriculum Portal). Type in the Assignment Name (by default, it fills in the name of the attachment that you are creating the assignment off of). You can also enter a Description. Then choose the Start Date of the assignment, as well as the Due Date. When you are finished, click ADD ASSIGNMENT. The assignment will now show up on the Student Portal page for the student to see.

3. STANDARDS  - the Standards box shows a summary of the standards aligned to each level in the course. Aligned standards are determined by the assigned learning targets and their corresponding aligned standards.

4. LEARNING TARGETS - the Learning Target box shows a summary of the learning targets for each level in the course.

5. ACTIVITIES - the Activities box shows all of the activities for each level of the course. Click on the activity name to see the details of the activity.

6. COURSE, UNIT, or TOPIC COMMENTS - Write and view comments for the course, unit, or topic that can be printed off during a review period of the curriculum in one of the report options.

7. SUGGESTED COURSE, UNIT, or TOPIC ATTACHMENTS - Create an attachment as a suggestion for the course, unit, or topic that the curriculum team can review and add if necessary.

Curriculum and Assessment Philosophy

Embarc was developed as a result of working directly with school districts to develop a curriculum management solution that provides value to the most important end user -­‐ the frontline educator. The basic founding belief we live by is that curriculum initiatives that don't have the teacher's buy-in and directly impact them on a daily basis are doomed to failure. With this goal in mind we have developed our product offerings around what we call our “Continuous Instructional Improvement Model.”

 Quite simply, this is a fancy name for four basic steps:

1. Plan what you are going to do – Using Embarc, develop a consistent district curriculum that is available to all stakeholders.

2. Execute the plan – Embarc serves as a repository for educational resources, courses, lesson plans, attachments and web links directly tied to the curriculum. It serves as a catalyst for teachers to reference the curriculum.

3. Analyze the plan's effectiveness – Either by using our enhanced offering, Embarc, or by using some other district common assessment tool, measure the effectiveness of the curriculum.

4. Improve the plan – Given the areas of concern that may be brought to light by the measurement process AND new knowledge becoming available constantly, adjust the curriculum at least annually in an effort to form a foundation for continual improvement.

Curriculum Terminology

When authoring a course within Embarc, the details are created using the hierarchy shown below. The broadest description of a course is the Course itself. Once a course is defined, Learning Targets (clear, understandable, and measurable knowledge/skills) that will be addressed throughout the course are written. The course is then broken out into the major Units that the course covers. Each unit is further described using the Topics that will be discussed during that unit. Finally, the Learning Targets are assigned to the appropriate topics. Each learning target is also aligned to one or more standards. This allows us to easily report on gaps and redundancies with regard to standards within the district-wide curriculum. Once the agreed upon curriculum has been described, Activities that reference it and demonstrate how to convey the material can be added by all educators.

SAMPLE COURSE:

• [C] Math -­‐ Grade 4

• [U] Numeration

• [T] Whole Numbers

• [T] Decimals

• [T] Fractions

• [LT] Students will be able to add and subtract fractions.

• [A] Fraction Puzzle Activity

Websites

This site is where teachers and administrators go to view, create, and modify curriculum. When accessing this site, you must first choose your state and your district. You can also view and search other Embarc district's curriculum that have chosen to share their curriculum. Users who can access this site have been given a user-specific login and password by the system administrator of Embarc at their district.

Public Website

The public website allows parents, students, and other interested parties to review and gain a better understanding of the district’s curriculum. Parents and students have complete access to the district’s curriculum for all courses in a status of “Published” or “Being Revised.” This access includes the ability to view the course, unit, topic, and learning target information as well as any published activities and public attachments.

How to Create a Course Basic Steps

1. Create the desired Course

2. If a high school Course, create a list of Course specific Standards (optional)

3. Unpack the standards for the course into Learning Targets (optional but suggested)

4. Create the appropriate Units and Topics for the Course and link the Targets to the Topics

   1. If you skipped step 3, you would create Targets at this point in the process

Logging In

The following are the steps that you should follow in order to create curriculum.

1. To access the administrative portion of Embarc, go to http://admin.buildyourowncurriculum.com.

2. Once there, you will need to enter a UserName and password and click LOGIN.

   1. If this is the first time you have logged into the software, the system will prompt you to change your password once you login.

Creating a Course

1. Once the you have logged in and changed your password if prompted, you will be on the Course List page. On this screen you need to click the ADD COURSE button on the upper right side of the screen.

2. Next you should select the department in the drop down menu and identify the grade level of the students that will be eligible to take this course.

   1. Ex: Begin Grade Level 10, End Grade Level 12 or Begin Grade Level 4, End Grade Level 4.

3. Then enter the name of the course, indicate the number of credits the course is worth, and enter the overview, a brief description of the course.

4. In addition to the basic course fields, each district can define up to 10 district configurable fields each of which can hold up to 25,000 characters. Each of these fields has a toolbar that allows you to perform basic editing functions.

5. Once all of the course information is entered, click SAVE.

Optional Items at the Course Level

Depending on what options your district has chosen to enable, the following optional steps may be accessible from the Course Edit page before you have performed the initial save.

• Primary Author – If this feature is enabled, at the bottom of the Course Edit page there will be a text box for entering the name of the primary author for the course.

  • This field is just for internal purposes and merely serves to let you know who the district expert is for a particular course.

• Preselect Standards –Embarc automatically filters the standards presented when working on a course based on the department and grade level of the course.

  • For elementary and middle school courses this is typically perfect.

  • For high school courses, you may want to further customize the list of standards shown when working on a particular course. For example instead of seeing all of the high school science standards, a Biology teacher may only want to see the Biology standards.

  • The COURSE STANDARDS button is visible in the upper right hand section of the Course Edit page (directly below the Delete button) if your district has enabled this feature.

• Select this button to access a screen where you can select the primary standards that a course is going to be addressing. The purpose of this is twofold, to perform a preliminary review of the standards in order to focus on course development and to make aligning to the standards easier by shrinking the default number of standards for a user to align their Learning Targets to.

  • Please note, that a user can always align to more standards, this is just a list of the primary or default standards.

• Attachments – If this feature is enabled, at the bottom of the Course Edit page you will be able to see an area for attaching files or web links.

  • Depending on your district’s configuration, each attachment can be specified as being visible to the general public, any teacher using Embarc, just your district, or just teachers within your district that are associated with the same department and grade level as the course that the item is attached to.

• School Filter – If this feature is enabled, at the bottom of the Course Edit page you will be able to see a dropdown titled Exclude School.

  • Using this feature, a user can exclude a course from being available at certain schools. This is more useful in a large district with multiple high schools.

Once the basic course information is saved, you have a few choices regarding how to proceed. Embarc suggests adding learning targets (your district may call these Learning Targets, Key Concepts, or Knowledge and Skills) at this point. A learning target is a “clear, understandable, measurable, skill or knowledge” that students are held accountable for during a course, typically created by “unpacking” or “deconstructing” standards. It is best to define learning targets at this point because by examining the standards that students are held accountable for, and defining learning targets accordingly, units and topics that successfully address what the student should be learning will follow naturally. Other options available at this point include: creating units or refining the standards that a course will address.

Read-Only View vs. Edit Mode

Once a course has been created the default view is set to read-only. When clicking through the course, unit, and topic pages, you cannot edit the curriculum until you click the Edit button on any one of the pages. For example, if a you click on a course name from the main course search page, you will see the course in the read-only view, which will allow you to go through the course and see what has been entered, but you will not be able to change any information.

Read-Only View

Click on the name of a course. Note that the Edit Mode box is unchecked. If you click on the name of a unit or topic, you will be able to read what has been entered but you cannot make any changes until you are in edit mode.

Edit Mode

If the you have the proper user authority, grade level, and departments assigned to them, and if the course is in the proper status you can click the Edit icon associated with the desired course and you will enter the course in edit mode.

Note that the Edit Mode box is checked. If you click on the name of a unit or topic, you will be able to edit the information.

You are now in editing mode for the rest of your session in this course. Once you leave the course and return to the course search page, your access will revert to Read Only.

Create Learning Targets

There are three possible approaches to creating Learning Targets. These choices are available once a you select the Learning Targets button located on the Course Details page.

Option One: Learning Targets to Standards

This option allows you to create a Learning Target in a vacuum and then associate it with one or more standards. To create learning targets this way you should follow the steps below:

1. From the scope and sequence page, click the EDIT MODE checkbox in the middle of the screen.  

2. The course is now in Edit mode. Then click on the LEARNING TARGETS LIST link.

3. Then click on the link that says NEW LEARNING TARGET in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

4. You now can enter your learning target in the LEARNING TARGET text box.

5. The EXTENDED DESCRIPTION text box is an optional field to further describe the target if needed.  We suggest keeping the target simple for students to understand, and leveraging this field to add any additional details needed.

6. Some districts may require users to list a formative assessment for their learning target. This may be in the form of a dropdown with pre-selected assessment types, a text box, or both.  The goal of this is not to specify a question on a test, this is more to identify what type of tool/assessment you would leverage to see if the student understands this target.

7. Depending on the district, you may be requested to categorize what type of learning target you are creating.

8. Next we are going to select the standard or standards that your learning target aligns to. Scroll down on the screen until you see the STANDARD FILTERS box.

   1. By default, the department and grades will automatically be filled in with the department and grade of the course, unless you have defined a custom set of standards for the course. If a custom set exists the department and grade will default to the custom course standards.

9. In the DEPARTMENT dropdown verify that the correct department is selected. If not, select what department you would like standards for

10. In the AREA dropdown verify that the correct area is selected. If not, select what kind of standards you would like.

11. In the MINGRADE and MAXGRADE dropdowns verify that the correct grade range is selected. If not, select what grade you would like standards for.

12. Standards that match what the filters specified in the STANDARDS FILTER box will automatically appear in the STANDARDS box.

13. Next you should select the STANDARDS to which you would like to align your learning target to.

14. Some districts may require users to list a formative assessment for their learning target. This may be in the form of a dropdown with pre-selected assessment types, a text box, or both.  The goal of this is not to specify a question on a test, this is more to identify what type of tool/assessment you would leverage to see if the student understands this target

15. Once a you have successfully created a learning target click SAVE.

Option Two: Standards to Learning Targets

This option is a process where you choose a standard and then deconstruct that standard into learning targets. This is the most common way to write Learning Targets.

1. From the scope and sequence page click the EDIT MODE checkbox in the middle of the screen.  

2. The course is now in Edit mode. Then click on the LEARNING TARGETS LIST link.

3. Then click the NEW LEARNING TARGET BY STANDARD link in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

4. Next, click the SELECT link next to the standard you would like your learning target to address.

5. In the LEARNING TARGET text box type in the learning target.

6. Clicking the EXISTING LEARNING TARGETS FOR THIS COURSE/STANDARD to see the learning targets that have already been written for this standard in this course.

7. The EXTENDED DESCRIPTION text box is an optional field to further describe the learning target if needed.  We suggest keeping the target simple for students to understand and leveraging this field to add any additional details if needed.

8. Some districts may require users to list a formative assessment for their learning target. This may be in the form of a dropdown with pre-selected assessment types, a text box, or both.  The goal of this is not to specify a question on a test, this is more to identify what type of tool/assessment you would leverage to see if the student understands this target.

9. Once a you are finished with your learning target click the SAVE LEARNING TARGET button on the bottom of the screen.

10. The text boxes will then clear and the you can write another learning target aligned to the same standard you selected in step 3.

11. If the you would like to select a new standard you need to click on the gray button that says CANCEL/BACK at the top of the screen. This will take you back to the list of standards in step 3.

Option Three: Creating a New Learning Target from a Standard

This option is typically only available to System Administrators or Curriculum Directors and is used in situations where the standards are so finite that there is no need to further deconstruct them into Targets. This allows you to select one or more standards and automatically create learning targets that are direct copies of those standards.

1. From the scope and sequence page click the EDIT MODE checkbox in the middle of the screen.

2. The course is now in Edit mode. Then click on the LEARNING TARGETS LIST link.

3. Then click the NEW LEARNING TARGET FROM STANDARD link in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

4. You can use the search fields to find the standards you would like to make into learning targets.

5. Then select the standards from the list you would like to make into learning targets.

6. Once you have selected the standards you want to make into learning targets click SAVE.

Creating Units

1. To create units, choose the NEW UNIT link on the Scope and Sequence page.

2. Next, enter the unit’s title in the UNIT NAME textbox.

3. Then enter the time frame for the unit in the DURATION textbox/dropdown.

   1. Ex: 5 days, 3 weeks, 2 months, etc. NOTE: There is an option to make the unit ongoing. An ongoing unit is one that doesn’t have a time frame. If your units do not have time frames it becomes very difficult to follow and stay on track with your curriculum. An example of a unit that may have an on-going timeframe is an ongoing concept like "Six Traits Writing" in an English Language Arts course.

4. Depending on the district, there may be up to 20 DISTRICT DEFINABLE FIELDS that need to be filled out. The district definable fields are text boxes and each one can hold up to 25,000 characters.

   1. Each of these fields is displayed with a tool bar as shown in the Create Course section to allow you to perform certain basic editing.

5. Click SAVE when you are done entering information to save the unit.

6. Once the unit is saved, the UNIT STANDARDS button will be enabled. This button is similar to the COURSE STANDARDS button on the main course page. It allows a you to create a list of primary standards that the unit will cover.  PLEASE NOTE:  Adding items to this list does not constitute alignment of a standard. Adding items to this list is intended to make the actual creation of learning targets and the assignment of those learning targets to topics easier.

Optional Items at the Unit Level

Depending on what options a district has chosen to enable, you may or may not be able to add attachments once you have saved the basic unit information.

Attachments – If this feature is enabled, at the bottom of the Unit Edit page you will see an area for attaching files, web links, or Google Drive documents. Depending on a district configuration, each attachment can be specified as being visible to the general public, any teacher using Embarc, or just the user’s district.

Creating Topics

Topics are somewhat unique to Embarc. The goal of a topic is to identify the major items being addressed within a unit and approximately how much time will be spent on each item. This serves to create more consistent pacing within a unit, and also serves as a “reality check” during the curriculum development process to ensure that the units can be completed within the time allocated to them.

1. To create topics, you click the NEW TOPIC button located on the Scope and Sequence page.

2. In the TOPIC NAME textbox enter your topic’s title.

3. In the DURATION textbox/dropdown enter your topic’s timeframe.

   1. Recognize that these will be an estimate of the time needed for a topic.  It is natural for some variation in these durations from year to year, based on your students, the key is it needs to be a reasonable amount of variation.

4. Depending on the district, there may be up to 10 DISTRICT DEFINABLE FIELDS that need to be filled out. The district definable fields are text boxes and each one can hold up to 25,000 characters.

   1. Each of these fields has a tool bar as shown in the Create Course section to allow you to perform certain basic editing.

   2. When you have completed entering the Topic information, click the SAVE button.

Optional Items at the Topic Level

Depending on what options your district has chosen to enable, you may or may not be able to add attachments once you have saved the basic topic information.

Attachments – If this feature is enabled, at the bottom of the Topic Edit page you will see an area for attaching files, Google Drive items, or web links. Depending on your district configuration, each attachment can be specified as being visible to the general public, any teacher using Embarc, or just your district.

Assigning Learning Targets

Once you have saved the topic, you can now assign Learning Targets to the topic or create new Learning Targets that will automatically be tied to the topic. There are three options available for Learning Targets from this screen. They are summarized below. For detailed instructions for each option, see the section earlier in this document.

1. To create a NEW learning target, select the NEW LEARNING TARGET button.

2. Select NEW LEARNING TARGET BY STANDARD to select a standard and then deconstruct that standard into learning targets.

3. To USE a learning target that has already been created, either at the course level or when working on another topic select the ASSIGN LEARNING TARGETS button.

   1. This will take you to a screen that displays all of the learning targets for the course not currently assigned to this topic, allows you to select one or more of the targets, and either share or copy them.

      1. Sharing a Learning Target will keep one version of the Learning Target. Any time you update the Learning Target, it will be updated in every place the Learning Target exists.

      2. Copying a Target will create another version of the Learning Target. Any time you update this new 'copied' Learning Target, it will only update that version of the Learning Target, and not the original Learning Target.

   2. The FILTER BY UNIT option is dependent on if you assign any Unit specific standards earlier in the process.  If so, this will default to Yes and will only show targets associated with the earlier assigned standards.  If you did not define Unit standards this will default to No and will display all the Learning Targets that are available for this course.

4. If you would like to re‐order the Learning Targets, simply click REORDER LEARNING TARGETS at the bottom of the Learning Target list.

   1. Move the mouse over the :: symbol next to the Learning Target. When the cursor changes to a hand, click and drag the item you would like to move and release the mouse when it is in the right position.

Miscellaneous Information

The SUGGESTED CONTENT CHANGES area is an optional area within the course. The Course Comments and Suggested Attachments area were added for two reasons:

1. During the curriculum development process, teaching teams found it helpful to be able to review the courses they were working on, or review courses in other departments, and provide feedback as to how to improve the course.

2. Throughout the year, teachers wanted a place to record their thoughts as to how to improve their course. At the end of the year, the teaching team can review the comments and suggestions that were made in the course and make changes to the course, if necessary.

The SUGGESTED CONTENT CHANGES area is located beneath the ATTACHMENTS section on a course, unit, or topic. To add a comment to the course, enter your comment in the COURSE COMMENTS area and click ADD COMMENT. To add in a suggested attachment, go to the SUGGESTED ATTACHMENTS area.

1. Enter in your attachment's DISPLAY NAME

2. Enter in the WEB LINK (optional)

3. Choose your FILE (optional)

4. Choose your file from GOOGLE DRIVE (optional)

5. Enter in your attachment's DESCRIPTION (optional)

6. Choose who you'd like your attachment VISIBLE TO

7. Click ADD ATTACHMENT when you are finished.

Also, you can subscribe to receive email updates when suggestions and comments are added to the course. Click SUBSCRIBE to sign up.

Searching Curriculum in Other Districts (and yours)

To search and view other district's curriculum, go to the Courses page and click on Show Advanced Search Options.

1. The advanced search allows you to search your district and other districts using a variety of different search methods and parameters.

   1. Keywords: This allows you to narrow your search using keywords like “Everyday Math” or “Frog Dissection.” Using this field helps you limit your search and is especially helpful when you’re looking for lessons or curriculum that specifically address some particular activity, program or concept. YOU MUST PUT SOMETHING IN THIS FIELD FOR THE SEARCH TO WORK.

   2. Courses: This dropdown allows you to choose from PUBLISHED ONLY, ALL ACTIVE COURSES, or ALL ARCHIVED COURSES. PUBLISHED ONLY will limit your search to only courses that have already been published. ALL ACTIVE will show you all courses in a district, except those that are archived. ALL ARCHIVED will show you courses that once were active, but are no longer being offered.

   3. Start/End Grades: These fields allow you to limit the grade levels of your results. This is helpful if you are an elementary teacher and do not need results from the high school level and vice versa.

   4. Match on: This allows you to choose whether your results must match your keywords exactly or if your results can just match some of the words/phrases in your keywords.

   5. Look For: This choice allows you to limit your search by level. You may search for courses, units, topics, learning targets, or activities.

   6. Look At: This feature is used in only rare cases and allows you to search for your keyword at one level, but receive results from another. For example, if grammar is consistently a topic in all Language Arts courses, but you wanted to see the learning targets associated with grammar you could search for grammar at the topic level, but get results at the learning target level. In this case “topics” would be what you want to “look at” and the “learning targets” would be what you “look for.”

   7. District: This dropdown allows you to search courses from your district only (MY DISTRICT), courses from all districts (ALL DISTRICTS), or a specific district. To search a specific district select the district you desire to search from the dropdown.

   8. Department: This search allows you to specify from what department you would like your search results to come. For example if you search for “Newton” you may get both science and social studies results, however if you are a history teacher by selecting social studies you can eliminate any science related results. However, if you search “ALL DISTRICTS” the department dropdown is not available because all districts do not have the same department.

   9. State: Allows you to specific a certain state’s curriculum you would like to search.

   10. Sort By: Allows you to choose how you would like your search results sorted – by Grade, Department, or District.

2. Fill in the fields based on your preferences and your search parameters. Click on SEARCH in the upper right hand corner of the preferences box.

3. Your search results will be displayed below the preferences box.

   1. If your search yielded more than 10 results you will need to use the arrows to page through the results.

   2. Click on the course name to view the details of the course.

4. To go back to your search results, click on the Back button in the upper right hand corner.

Copying and Pasting Curriculum

Embarc provides the capability to copy courses, units, topics, and learning targets either between courses within a district, or from other districts.

Setup Information

There are three options, configurable by System Administrators via the District Options page that impact Copy/Paste functionality.

1. Allow Courses, Units and Topics to be copied – this option must be turned on in order to perform any copy/paste activity. This option will allow Curriculum Authors and Departmental Curriculum Coordinators to perform copy/paste activities within their district only, and will allow Curriculum Directors or System Administrators to perform cross‐district copy/paste activity.

2. Allow Departmental Curriculum Coordinators to perform cross‐district copies – This option allows Departmental Curriculum Coordinators to perform cross-district copy/paste activities. Please note that this option will have no impact unless the Allow Courses, Units and Topics to be copied is also turned on

3. View/Copy curriculum from other districts and allow them to do the same - This allows other districts to see your district's curriculum and it also allows your district to see their curriculum.

Cross ­District Copy/Paste Procedures

1. To copy curriculum from another district, users must first search other district's curriculum to find the district/department/course/unit/topic that they would like to copy by going to the Courses menu item and clicking on Show Advanced Search Options.

2. Search for curriculum using the steps shown above in the “Searching Other District’s Curriculum (and yours)” section. Once you click on the name of a course you’d like to copy, you will be taken to the course’s SCOPE AND SEQUENCE page. From here, click on COURSE DETAILS.

3. Click on the COPY COURSE button.

4. On the CURRICULUM COPY page, verify that the district, department, course, unit, and/or topic that you would like to copy FROM is correct. Then click COPY COURSE.

   1. You can copy an entire course by selecting the course and not choosing any specific units or topics.

   2. You can also copy just the course learning targets by clicking on the COPY LT (S) button.

5. Once you click on the COPY button, the next page will prompt you to specify the department in which the course should be pasted TO. Choose the department and then click PASTE COURSE.

6. A green message will appear confirming that you have successfully copied the course. You can click on the Click Here link to be taken directly to the course.

Alternate Views

Embarc offers three unique views of your curriculum: Scope and Sequence, Course Details and Big Picture. While the default view is the Scope and Sequence view, you can change this in your User Preference settings at any time. Below is a description of each view.

Scope and Sequence

1. From the COURSE page, click on the name of the course you wish to work in.

2. Because you clicked on the name of the course and didn’t click on the Edit icon to the right of the course name, you are in read-only mode in the course. If you would like to edit the course, check the Edit Mode checkbox.

3. You can now see that you can add a NEW UNIT and NEW TOPIC. You can also change the order of your units and topics by clicking on the :: symbol to the left of the topic name (or by right-clicking on the :: symbol to get up and down arrows) and by clicking on the REORDER UNITS button.

4. If you would like to edit the course, unit or topic descriptions, click on the name of the course, unit or topic. Additionally, you can click on the LEARNING TARGETS LIST button to view and edit your learning targets for the course.

5. To the right of the topic names you will notice some icons. The blue jogging symbol indicates that an activity exists for that topic. If you hover over the icon, it will tell you how many activities exist for that topic. Click on the icon to view the activities and to add more. The yellow conversation bubble allows you to add and view suggestions to the course. Lastly, the number indicates how many learning targets exist for the topic.

Course Details

1. From the Scope and Sequence view, click on the COURSE DETAILS menu item on the left-hand navigation.

2. On this view, you have a more detailed version of your course which includes the general course information.

3. If you wish to edit the course, click on the EDIT COURSE button.

4. The page title at the top of the screen will inform you that you are now in editing mode. You can now edit information such as the course Status and Course Overview.

Big Picture

1. From the Course Details view, click on the BIG PICTURE menu item on the left-hand navigation.

2. The Big Picture view gives you the least details of your course but allows you to see, at-a-glance, your unit names and duration, your topic names and duration, and the learning targets that have been assigned to each topic.

3. You can click on any of the underlined items to be taken directly to the detailed page of that area.

User Preferences

 You can set your preferred course view mode from the User Preferences area in Embarc.

1. Click on USER PREFERENCES in the left-hand navigation.

2. Under the COURSE VIEW MODE section, click on either Scope & Sequence (Flattened) or Course Detail (Traditional).

3. Then click SAVE at the top of the screen.

4. Your user preferences have now been saved.

Throughout this document the phrase Embarc will be used in a generic sense to reference the curriculum management products offered by Education Advanced, Inc.

Curriculum and Assessment Philosophy

Embarc was developed as a result of working directly with school districts for the past several years to produce a curriculum management solution that provides value to the most important end user -­‐ the actual, frontline educator.  The basic founding belief we live by is that curriculum initiatives that don't have the teachers’ buy in and directly impact them on a daily basis are doomed to failure.  With this goal in mind we have developed our product offerings around what we call our “Continuous Instructional Improvement Model." Quite simply, this is a fancy name for four basic steps:

1. Plan what you are going to do – Using Embarc, develop a consistent district curriculum that is available to all stakeholders.

2. Execute/Teach the plan – Embarc serves as a repository for educational resources, lesson plans, attachments and web links directly tied to the curriculum, and it serves as a catalyst for teachers to reference the curriculum.

3. Measure/Analyze the plan's effectiveness – Either by using our assessment product included in Embarc or by using some other district common assessment tool, measure the effectiveness of the curriculum.

4. Adjust the plan – Given the areas of concern which may be brought to light by the measurement process AND new knowledge becoming available constantly, adjust the curriculum at least annually to form a foundation for continual improvement.

Curriculum Terminology

When authoring a course within Embarc, the details are created using the hierarchy shown below.  The broadest description of a course is the Course itself.  We then determine what Standards the course should be addressing and then unpack or deconstruct the standards into Learning Targets (clear, understandable, and measurable knowledge/skills).   Armed with this clear understanding of the standards and targets, the course is then broken out into the major Units that the course covers.  Each unit is further described using the Topics that will be discussed during that unit.  And finally the topic is refined by assigning the previously created Learning Targets that will be addressed.  This allows us to easily report on gaps and redundancies with regard to standards within the district-wide curriculum. Once the agreed-upon curriculum has been described, Activities that reference it and demonstrate how to convey the material can be added by all educators.

SAMPLE COURSE:

[C] Math -­‐ Grade 4

[U] Numeration

[T] Whole Numbers

[T] Decimals

[T] Fraction

[LT] Students will be able to add and subtract fractions.

[A] Fraction Puzzle Activity

Embarc

The goal of Embarc is to provide educators with a modern classroom management solution that is based on the core, agreed-upon, curriculum.  More importantly, teachers using Embarc have access to all of the resources stored within the Embarc repository in managing their classroom. The following table provides an overview of the features included in each edition.

Introduction

Once you have created and added your district’s curriculum to Embarc you have the ability to run a variety of reports to analyze the curriculum that your district has created. These reports can be found in the Report Section of Embarc. To get to the area, login to administrative website. Then under Curriculum, in the left-hand navigation bar, click “REPORTS.”

Report Organization

The reports are organized into three categories: Course Reports, Standards Reports, and Other Reports.

• Course Reports aid in analyzing and printing your curriculum.

• The Standards Reports help you analyze your curriculum’s alignment to key national, state and district standards. These reports will tell you how far you are in the alignment process, what standards you are covering and what standards you are not, and how often your curriculum references a standard.

• The Other Reports are miscellaneous reports that do not fall into one of the other two categories. These reports deal with looking at lesson plans and activities, users, and specific district statistics.

Report Viewer

When you run a report, the results are all displayed in a common report viewer. This will open in another window or tab depending on your browser settings. If you are not seeing a report when you run it, you may need to disable your browser’s popup blocker. Within the Report Viewer you can use the arrows to page through your report.

From the Report Viewer you can also export your report using the “Export To Selected Format” dropdown. Export formats include: Adobe Acrobat (PDF), CSV, Excel Worksheet, PowerPoint, and Word.  To view a report in one of these formats, select the format and click the EXPORT button.

On certain reports, you can navigate to desired parts of the report you would like to view using the Navigation Map found to the left of the report. The Navigation Map is available on the Standards Coverage Report, Standard Map Report, and the Standards Coverage - Big Picture Report.

Other reports allow you to drill into reports for more detail. This feature is available on the Standards Map Report and the Curriculum Map Report. By clicking on a standard in the report, it will open a new report that shows the details behind that particular standard.

Course Reports

Course Summary

The Course Summary Report provides a complete overview of a course including the overview, scope and sequence, units, topics, learning targets, and activities. Based of the report’s audience, you can select various levels of detail. You can also save your preferences by selecting the SAVE PREFERENCES link on the main Course Summary list. 

Course/Schedule Projector

This report provides a calendar view of the course, based on a District defined Calendar and Schedule. There are two options for running this report. One is to make a projection for an existing class that a teacher has created. This may cover multiple courses. The other is to create a projection for any course and calendar combination. If you view a projection for an existing class, multiple courses may appear if they have been selected as part of that particular class.

Note that this report is only visible if your course/schedule projections are turned on. Also in order for this report to be accurate, you must create and maintain your district calendars and schedules.

Projection Details Report

This report provides a listing of Learning Targets or Standards grouped by Unit or Topic with their Projected Dates and Durations. Note that this report is only visible if your course/schedule projections are turned on. Also in order for this report to be accurate, you must create and maintain your district calendars and schedules.

Activities By Course

The Activities by Course Report provides a listing, by Department and/or Course of Activities, their sharing level, and their author.  

Activities By Course, Unit, Topic, and Learning Target

This report provides a listing of Activities by Course, Unit, Topic, and Learning Target. This report is popular as an auditing tool for districts that want every target included in an activity.

Unit Details

The Unit Details Report provides the complete details of a unit, including attachments, topics, activities, and learning targets.

Curriculum Map

The Curriculum Map Report provides a "traditional" curriculum map of either a specific unit or the entire course. The report can be produced as either a 5, 6 or 7 column map depending on whether you specify a field for the 4th and 5^th column or not. The last two columns are are system defined and will contain your Topics/Learning Targets and your Standards.

Learning Target Checklist by Course/Unit/Topic

This report provides an Excel Spreadsheet containing the Learning Targets for a Course, organized by Unit and Topic. Some educators use this report as a basis for a student spreadsheet to track progress.

Standards By Course

This report provides a listing, by course of ALL the standards/benchmarks covered by a course as defined by standards being aligned to targets and targets assigned to topics.

Standards By Unit

This report provides a listing, by unit of ALL the standards covered by a course or unit as defined by the curriculum.

Course Status

This report provides a listing of courses and their corresponding status. The Course Status report is filterable by Department and/or Status.

Course Content Audit

This report provides a quick overview regarding the state of the course's development. The Course Content Audit report is useful as a tool for quantitative analysis of a course’s progress. When running the report the user can specify which fields are audited for content.

Comments List

The Comments List Report provides a list of all of the comments and suggested attachments for one or more courses organized by units and topics. This can be very useful for PLC team reviews and is an important part of the cycle of ongoing curriculum improvement. Throughout the year teachers can add comments and suggestions for improvement as they teach a particular course. Then a PLC team can run this report, print it out, and use the comments to improve the course for next year. 

Attachments by Course

This report provides a listing of attachments associated with a Course, at the Course, Unit, Topic, and Activity levels.

Standards Reports

Standards Map

This report provides a graphical representation, by standard, of the grade levels where a particular standard is covered as defined by the curriculum. The red lines show where a standard should be covered as defined by the standard creators. The red lines default to state or national standards, but they can be modified based on district specific beliefs. The black lines show where, based on your curriculum, you are teaching a particular standard. If you want to see the Standards Details Report for a particular standard, simply click on that standard under the STANDARD column. The Course Count/Learning Target Count located in the far right column shows the number of courses that use a learning target compared to the total number of references made to a learning target within your curriculum.

Standards Listing

The Standards Listing Report provides a printable listing of standards grouped by department. Standards are filterable by department, area, grade level, and power standard.

Primary Standards By Course

This report provides a listing, by course of all the PRIMARY standards/benchmarks covered by a course as defined by the curriculum, including the number of times each standard is addressed.  Primary standards are standards that your district has pre-selected as the standards that a course should cover. Given this, the Primary Standards By Course Report is only applicable if your district is using the course standards pre-selection option.

Courses By Standards

This report provides a listing, by standards of all of the courses that cover it as defined by the curriculum.  It includes a count of the number of Learning Targets within the course that aligned to this standard.

Standards Coverage – Big Picture

The Standards Coverage – Big Picture Report provides a view by standard of the corresponding learning targets, grouped by course/unit/topic in grade order. This report provides a complete, detailed view of the standards coverage in the curriculum.

Standards/Learning Target Analysis Reports

This link provides access to a variety of reports to assist in analyzing the district coverage of standards and learning targets. Reports provide a breakdown of Learning Targets by Standard and Standards with no Learning Targets. Additionally if you are using Embarc, reports are available to show Questions that are aligned to Standards or Learning Targets as well as reports to identify Standards or Learning Targets that do not have any Questions associated with them.

Standards without Learning Targets

This version shows you any standards within the standard set that are not tied to a learning target anywhere in your curriculum. These are likely standards that you are not hitting yet and should focus on as you continue to improve your curriculum.

Standards with Learning Targets

This version will show you all of the standards that are tied to a learning target(s) within your curriculum. Under each standard the learning targets associated with that standard are listed.

Targets by Standard

Provides a breakdown of Learning Targets by Standard by Standard Set Department. The goal is to help verify that all standards have been properly unpacked or deconstructed. To aid in clarity, the targets are grouped by course and displayed in grade order sequence. Targets will show on this report as soon as they are created, regardless of whether they have been assigned to Topics or not.

Available Standard Sets

Provides a listing of standards available in Embarc for the district to use. Typically used during the     district setup process to review the available standards and determine which should be assigned to departments for the district.

Assessments Users

If your district uses Assessments, then you have access to additional reports under this section. These reports including: Standards Assessed, Standards Not Assessed, Learning Targets Assessed, and Learning Targets Not Assessed. These reports will analyze your assessments within Assessments and allow you to see what learning targets/standards you are or are not assessing.

Other Reports

Lesson Plan Analysis/Curriculum Mapping Reports – Lesson Plan Print

This report provides the ability to print a group of Lesson plan segments filtered by educator, class, and date range.

Lesson Plan Analysis/Curriculum Mapping Reports - Curriculum Coverage

The Curriculum Coverage Report compares a group of Lesson plans defined for a particular class against a particular course and reports on any Learning Targets defined in the course but not covered in the Lesson plans.

Lesson Plan Analysis/Curriculum Mapping Reports - Time Allocation

This report analyzes a group of Lesson plans defined for a particular class and provides a time breakdown by primary course and unit. This report is most applicable to grade school situations.

User Activity Reports - Whole Staff Audit

This report gives you a spreadsheet with each of your staff member’s names, what site they logged-in to, the last date they logged-in, and how many times they have logged-in to the system.

User Activity Reports - Individual User Detail Audit

This report allows you to select a specific user to run the report on. The report will show you the date/times and the sites a user has logged-in to throughout the past year.

User List

Provides list of all users in a district and their access rights.

District Statistics

Provides summary information per department of counts and averages for courses, units, topics, and learning targets. You can run this report for a particular department or for a particular course within a department. This report is very helpful to get a point-in-time, quantitative, snapshot of your curriculum development progress.

District Space Usage

Provides summary information per school, teacher, and class for the amount of space that is used by students.

Creating an Announcement

Announcements in Embarc allow a teacher to post general announcements within their classroom for the entire class or for subsets of the class. These announcements may be reminders of what to bring to class tomorrow or helpful hints regarding a homework assignment. Announcements can be linked to files, web links, curriculum resources, or a file from Google Drive.

1. Click on the CLASSROOM menu item in the navigation bar on the left side of the screen.

2. There are two approaches to adding an announcement.

   1. One option is to add it from the navigation bar on the left side of the screen by clicking on the ANNOUNCEMENT tab.

   2. The other option is to choose the class you want to add an announcement for on the left side of the screen by clicking on it, and then select ANNOUNCEMENT from the CLASS OPTIONS listed at the top of the page.

3. To add a new announcement, click ADD ANNOUNCEMENT.

4. First, you must select a CLASS in which the announcement is going to take place. If you have not already created a class, please see the document under the HELP & TRAINING menu item titled HOW TO: ADD A CLASS.

   1. Fill in the ANNOUNCEMENT title.

   2. Fill in the DESCRIPTION of the announcement.

   3. Check the THIS IS A HIGH PRIORITY checkbox, if you wish for the student to be advised that the announcement is a high priority to review.

   4. Select the dates you wish for this announcement to be seen by students in the DISPLAY TO STUDENTS date field. If you choose not to have an end date, the announcement will display until you choose to end it.

   5. In the VISIBLE TO section, select which students you would like to see the announcement. ALL STUDENTS are all the students in your class. You can also select from your list of student groups, if you have created any student groups.

   6. Click SAVE when you are finished entering the details of your announcement.

5. After you click save, the ATTACHMENTS section will be visible.  Attachments are not required, but if you would like to add one please do the following.

   1. Choose the TYPE of attachment you are adding: CURRICULUM RESOURCE, FILE, WEB LINK or GOOGLE DRIVE. Adding a CURRICULUM RESOURCE allows you to choose an attachment that has already been added to the course, unit or topic level in which your class is assigned to. This was done as part of creating the class, when you tied it to one or more courses. Adding a FILE allows you to search your computer for a file to add as an attachment, i.e. a Word document or PowerPoint. Adding a WEB LINK allows to you enter in a web address to add as an attachment, such as a YouTube video. Adding a file from GOOGLE DRIVE allows you to browse your Google Drive items, just like browsing your computer, and link them as an attachment.

   2. If you are adding a CURRICULUM RESOURCE or FILE, click SELECT to choose the type of file you will be adding. If you are adding a WEB LINK, type in the name of the web address to link out to.

   3. Enter in the DISPLAY NAME for the attachment.

   4. Optionally, you can add in a DESCRIPTION for the attachment.

   5. Click ADD ATTACHMENT when you are finished with the details of your attachment.

The attachment will now be visible under the ATTACHMENTS heading.

How to Delete an Announcement

Announcements will display for students until the End Date that was entered on the announcement. If you wish to delete the announcement before the end date, because perhaps it was created in error, please use the following steps:

1. Click on ANNOUNCEMENTS under the CLASSROOM menu item.

2. Find the announcement you wish to delete and click on the red X in the delete column.

3. A message will appear asking if you are certain you would like to delete the announcement. If you decide not to delete the announcement, click CANCEL. If you would like to delete the announcement, click OK.

4. A message in green will appear stating your announcement has been successfully deleted.

Student View of Announcements

1. When a student logs on to the Student Portal, they will see the current announcements for their class on the Home screen.

2. To see the details of the announcement, they can click on VIEW DETAILS or click on the title of the announcement.

3. The announcement will be visible for the student until the end date the teacher has set for the announcement.

Creating an Event

Events in Embarc allow a teacher to post events within their classroom for the entire class or for a subset of the class to see. The events show up on the student calendar and can be linked to files, web links, curriculum resources, or Google Drive items.

1. Click on the CLASSROOM menu item in the navigation bar on the left side of the screen.

2. There are two approaches to adding an event.

   1. One option is to add it from the navigation bar on the left side of the screen by clicking on the EVENT tab.

   2. The other option is to choose the class or extracurricular activity you want to add an event for on the left side of the screen by clicking on it, and then select EVENT from the CLASS OPTIONS listed at the top of the page.

3. To add a new event, click ADD EVENT.

4. First, you must select a CLASS in which the announcement is going to take place. If you have not already created a class, please see the document under the HELP & TRAINING menu item titled HOW TO: ADD A CLASS.

   1. Fill in the EVENT NAME.

   2. Fill in the DESCRIPTION of the event.

   3. Check the THIS IS A HIGH PRIORITY checkbox, if you wish for the student to be advised that the event is a high priority to review.

   4. Enter the LOCATION of the event.

   5. Select the dates you wish for this event to be seen by students in the START DATE and END DATE fields. If you choose not to have an end date, the event will display until you choose to end it.

   6. In the VISIBLE TO section, select which students you would like to see the event. ALL STUDENTS are all the students in your class. You can also select from your list of student groups, if you have created any student groups.

   7. Click SAVE when you are finished entering the details of your event.

5. After you click save, the ATTACHMENTS section will be visible.  Attachments are not required, but if you would like to add one please do the following.

   1. Choose the TYPE of attachment you are adding: CURRICULUM RESOURCE, FILE, WEB LINK or GOOGLE DRIVE. Adding a CURRICULUM RESOURCE allows you to choose an attachment that has already been added to the course, unit or topic level in which your class is assigned to. This was done as part of creating the class, when you tied it to one or more courses. Adding a FILE allows you to search your computer for a file to add as an attachment, i.e. a Word document or Powerpoint. Adding a WEB LINK allows to you enter in a web address to add as an attachment, such as a YouTube video. Adding a file from GOOGLE DRIVE allows you to browse your Google Drive items, just like browsing your computer, and link them as an attachment. (*please note, if your class is set up as an extra-curricular activity, you will not be able to add a curriculum resource type of attachment, as the extra-curricular activity does not need to be tied to a course).

   2. If you are adding a CURRICULUM RESOURCE or FILE, click SELECT to choose the type of file you will be adding. If you are adding a WEB LINK, type in the name of the web address to link out to.

   3. Enter in the DISPLAY NAME for the attachment.

   4. Optionally, you can add in a DESCRIPTION for the attachment.

   5. Click ADD ATTACHMENT when you are finished with the details of your attachment.

The attachment will now be visible under the ATTACHMENTS heading.

How to Delete an Event

Events will display for students until the End Date that was entered on the event. If you wish to delete the event before the end date, because perhaps it was created in error, please use the following steps:

1. Click on EVENTS under the CLASSROOM menu item.

2. Find the event you wish to delete and click on the red X in the delete column.

3. A message will appear asking if you are certain you would like to delete the event. If you decide not to delete the event, click CANCEL. If you would like to delete the event, click OK

4. A message will appear in green stating your event has been successfully deleted.

Student View of Events

1. When a student logs on to the Student Portal, they will see the current events for their class on the Home screen.

2. To see the details of the event, the student can click on the title of the event.

3. The event will be visible for the student until the end date the teacher has set for the event.

Adding a Class

Classes are the basis for many things in Embarc. Classes are needed to use the curriculum details page, to create lesson plans and to post assignments. If you are an elementary teacher, or you have the same students all day long, create one class. If you are a high school teacher, or have different students throughout the day, you will probably want to create a class for each set of students or each course. This is because you will want to publish assignments and create lesson plans for each separate group of students.

1. Click on CLASSES under the CLASSROOM menu item on the left hand navigation. Or click on ADD A CLASS...

2. Once on the Classes page, click ADD CLASS.

3. Enter the name of your class in the CLASS NAME textbox.

4. If you are going to be publishing assignments with your class in the CLASS INTRODUCTION/OVERVIEW/GREETING textbox enter any information you would like your students to see each time they view the assignments.

5. Click SAVE when you are finished.

6. Once you save your class, additional fields show up that are optional for you to fill in.

7. Choose the PRIMARY COURSES COVERED BY THIS CLASS to tie your class to a course(s). Once you have chosen your course(s), click SAVE COURSES.

   1. If you are an elementary teacher or someone who has the same group of students the whole day, you will most likely have multiple courses for your class.

   2. If you are a high school teacher or someone who teaches distinct courses to different groups of students throughout the day, you will probably only have one course for each class.

   3. If you are only teaching one course per class, it still may be helpful to include other courses that students in your class may be taking. This will allow you to look for cross-­‐ curricular learning opportunities if you are using the Curriculum Portal. If you are a math teacher, but you include the science courses in the Curriculum Portal, you will be able to see the calendar for the science class and see what they are covering in that class, as well as in your class.

8. After you click SAVE COURSES, you can choose the PROJECTION SCHEDULE as well as the color code for your course, if you will be using the Curriculum Portal. The projection schedule tells Embarc how many days a week this course occurs for this class and is used when combining your curriculum and district calendars to give you a projected pacing for the class. You can skip this step if you will not be using Class Projections or the Curriculum Portal

9. You can also add a Document and/or Link to your Class:

   1. Choose the TYPE of attachment you are adding: CURRICULUM RESOURCE, FILE, WEB LINK, GOOGLE DRIVE. Adding a CURRICULUM RESOURCE allows you to choose an attachment that has already been added to the course, unit or topic level to which your class is assigned. Adding a FILE allows you to search your computer for a file to add as an attachment, i.e. a Word document or PowerPoint. Adding a WEB LINK allows to you enter in a web address to add as an attachment, such as a YouTube video. Adding a file from GOOGLE DRIVE allows you to browse your Google Drive items, just like browsing your computer, and link them as an attachment.

   2. If you are adding a CURRICULUM RESOURCE or FILE, click SELECT to choose the type of file you will be adding. If you are adding a WEB LINK, type in the name of the web address to link out to.

   3. Enter in the DISPLAY NAME for the attachment.

   4. Optionally, you can add in a DESCRIPTION for the attachment.

   5. When you are finished, click ADD ATTACHMENT.

10. If you have a co-teacher who will also be teaching this class and will want access to the class, select your co-teacher by clicking ADD TEACHER.

11. If you are going to be creating lesson plans with your class, choose the appropriate lesson plan template in the LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE dropdown.

12. Click SAVE when you are finished.

You have now successfully created a class. From this point you can create lesson plans, publish assignments, or begin using the Curriculum Portal. For additional help see the training documents HOW TO-­‐ Add an Assignment, HOW TO-­‐ Create a Lesson Plan, and HOW TO-­‐ Set-­‐up the Curriculum Portal.

Creating an Assignment

Assignments in Embarc are bi-directional, can be scored, include attachments, link to discussions, and display in the Student Portal. Once an assignment is created, teachers are shown summary type information to allow them to monitor student progress.

1. Click on the CLASSROOM menu item in the navigation bar on the left side of the screen.

2. There are two approaches to adding an assignment.