Innovation at work



It is always important to applaud the efforts of our team members. Effective teams build each other up, celebrate success, and support during setbacks. We would like to take this opportunity to recognize and applaud a success of one of our valued team members.

Amy Cole has been with edtec central since 2008. She is the Assessment and Achievement Coordinator for all school sites, overseeing all assessment efforts, data gathering, and training. Her ability to successfully complete her tasks while offering top notch support to both staff and students makes her an invaluable member of our team.

At Capstone Academy, the school uses the NWEA MAP assessment to track student growth in core subjects. Amy stays current in her research and knowledge of the MAP program, and is active in the online blog community for NWEA called the SPARK community. Just last month, Amy entered a contest on the blog community to share an idea that she formed and implemented at the school to increase student achievement on the MAP assessment. Prior to the testing in late January, the students participated in a vocabulary bee. Students were assigned vocabulary lists to study, based on their MAP score for Math, Reading and Language. Each class had a different set of words and each student was really competing against themselves. After 5 rounds of competition, the student with the most words correctly defined was the winner. Amy submitted a description of the activity as well as a copy of the activity itself. She received an email that declared her the winner of the contest! As one of five first place prize winners, Amy will receive a $200 gift card to purchase supplies for classroom needs. Amy intends to use the money to purchase rewards and certificates to recognize student achievement for the Spring MAP assessment.

We are very proud of Amy's hard work and dedication to student achievement. Congratulations, Amy!

You can read the email Amy received from the SPARK team below:

"Dear Amy,

Thank you so much for your contribution of the “Vocabulary Bee Template” resource to our recent contest in SPARK! I love delivering good news and am excited to be writing to tell you that you are one of our five 1^st place winners! Congratulations!

Thank you so much for being an active member of the SPARK Community. We hope to be able to offer more incentives like this in the future to keep growing the value of the community. And I always welcome ideas and input from members.

We will be getting your prize to you in the next few weeks – a $200 gift card to help with classroom needs. (Yay!)

Thank you again for participating and Congratulations!

Jennifer
SPARK Community Manager"

- Karen