UTIPS Solutions

Link: http://screencast.com/t/1aqoWcp8cUhw

You may be a little upset about the change, but the practice exams from the folders on the UTIPS login page are no longer available. This change has come because that although they were convenient, they contained EVERY question in a given objective for a subject and standard - whether that was 20 questions or 200. That is obviously WAY TOO MANY questions to expect your students to effectively work through in any one sitting.

You want a good and accurate measure of your student’s progress, don’t you?

The solution is to make your own tests that cover the exact standard & objective that you want, and has exactly the number of questions that is appropriate for the time that you have. Some of you may have forgotten how to do this very thing - even though every UTIPS training starts off with how to create your own tests.

If you need a little refresher, you can view this 5-minute video that will cover how to use the ‘Cookie Cutter’ to create exactly the test that you want in about 30 seconds. It will also show how to publish the test so that it is available to your students to take, and also how to get YOUR students to YOUR student page where they can find your newly created tests.

Link: http://screencast.com/t/JzXBZRpau3p7

This is a common issue that teachers have that sometimes does not get covered in a regular UTIPS training since the BIG advantage of using UTIPS is the “Reports” that come along with having your students take the tests online that will allow you do some great analysis of the questions that your students are getting right and getting wrong.

However, we realize that there is simply not enough computers in most schools for each teacher to have unlimited access for UTIPS tests, so making a paper version of the test is necessary.

Here’s a brief little video to show you how it’s done. The quick answer is that once you have selected your test from the list of tests on the left, instead of heading to the File menu, hover your mouse over the UTIPS Test menu and click on Print. This will create a printable version and an associated answer key for your use. Once you have created the printable version, now head to the File menu and select Print.

With the previous item update, we gained access to the items that align to the Utah 2007 Math Core for Elementary & Secondary schools. New questions have been written, and old questions have been realigned to the new core document.

To access these new items, you will need to perform one small extra step in the test creation process. Once you have created a new test with the name and options you need, you will be taken to the "Cookie Cutter" screen where you choose the Subject and Grade level that you are creating a test for. Once you have chosen Math and any grade level, a new option will appear - Core Document - beneath the Subject and Grade menus.

Click on this drop-down menu and select the option that includes the year 2007. This will open up access to all of the new and realigned items for your grade.

Here's a video to illustrate the instructions above.

Here are the new Science Performance Tasks Items:

• 7th PT It's Not All That It's Cracked Up to Be
• 7th PT Lord of the Dragons
• 7th PT To See or Not to See
• 8th PT Crime Lab Chemistry
• 8th PT Get Real, It's Just a Hamburger
• 8th PT Rocks
• 8th PT The Crusher
• ESS PT Sharing Biodiversity
• ESS PT Space Colony Survivor
• ESS PT Twist and Shout
• ESS PT Water Police
• Bio PT Classification
• Bio PT Move It!
• Bio PT Organ Entrails
• Bio PT What Bugs You?
• Bio PT What's Your Angle?
• Physics PT A force is a Force unless of course

And, here are the Science Pre-Test Instruction Sheets:

• 3rd Grade Science Pretest Instructions
• 4th Grade Science Pretest Instructions
• 5th Grade Science Pretest Instructions
• 5th Grade Science ILO 1 Instructions
• 6th Grade Science Pretest Instructions
• 7th Grade Science Pre-Knowledge Pretest Instructions
• 7th Grade Science Pretest Instructions
• 7th Grade Science ILO 1 Pretest Instructions
• 8th Grade Science Pretest Instructions
• Earth Systems Science Pre-Knowledge Pretest Instructions
• Earth Systems Science Pretest Instructions
• Biology Pre-Knowledge Pretest Instructions
• Biology Pretest Instructions
• Biology ILO 1 Instructions

The equation editor is a necessity for math teachers to write assessments. The editor in UTIPS has worked in the past, but with the update to EDesk 2, the equation editor is broken. It is on the list of items to address and fix, but what do you do in the meantime?

I have written up the steps to create equations in the new Microsoft Office 2007, but the process will work if you have any version of an equation editor on your computer. We will create an image for the equation in a sneaky way... by using a screen capture program that is free and very easy to use called Jing.

Read more »