Thank you to everyone who answered my questions about Renaissance Place. I
now have a clear understanding of what it entails. Here are the responses:
What is the purpose of Ren Place?
Ren Place allows users to access AR quizzes from any place that has Internet
connection. It allows teachers and administrators access to on-demand
reports.
Does it involve the ordering of quizzes?
Yes, You still have to order quizzes. However, you don't have to upload
them. Whoever you buy the quizzes from will do that for you.
If the one school is using Ren Place, will that affect the other school?
No. AR is a stand-alone program. RenPlace is online.
The names for students will be entered by RenLearn upon receipt of the
current database.
For instance, if you have K-9 and you just want grades 2-5 entered into Ren
Place, the data professionals on the other end will accommodate your needs.
I have been told that the two schools will house quizzes on different
servers. However, all the books are shelved TOGETHER in the one media
center.
Is this a nightmare waiting to happen, or am I worrying unnecessarily?
You are worrying unnecessarily. Since one school is stand alone and one is
online, it should only affect the method in which users access quizzes. The
way your books are shelved has nothing to do with the quizzes. However, you
may wish to separate your Easy AR by levels i.e. (0-1.9) (2.0-2.9)
(3.0-3.9). This is how I have my books organized. Then I have Fiction
books for grades 3+ in a separate section. This is my 3rd year in the media
center. So, I'm gradually introducing changes. Let me explain why 3rd
grade are in both sections. Some 3rd grade books are really thin and have
"E" on the spine while some are thicker and have "F" on the spine. I just
went with the flow of the way the previous media specialist arranged the
books. I explain the differences to my 3rd graders and so far, I haven't
had a problem.
My Fiction books in grades 3-5 are not separated by level, only
alphabetically. I have my non-fiction AR books on a separate shelf for
grades 3-5. I have added so many nonfiction for levels 0.9-2.9 that I am
debating having a separate area for non-fiction Easy AR. I have found that
some students in 1st and 2nd grade love nonfiction and immediately seek them
out.
Personally, I love Ren Place. It may take a while to learn the system, but
there is a manual that can be downloaded. I printed mine front and back.
As a matter fact, I printed two Admin manuals (one for me and one for my
principal), and a Teacher's Manual for each teacher. Inside the teacher
manuals, I placed a list of their students with their user names and
passwords. I also typed the address for renlearn on little strips that were
either taped on the computers or under the keyboards for quick reference.
With Ren Place, students can access reports also.
The only con about RenPlace is the way the reports are delivered. They are
downloaded onto the desktop as a pdf document using a series of numbers.
The students and teachers must be taught to delete their report immediately
if they don't want everyone knowing their business. The reports can crowd
the desktop quickly. You just have to remember -- view and delete.
I do save my quarterly reports in a folder on my desktop so that I'll have a
reference if there are any questions.
This year, my principal and I discussed paying about $1000 extra to have
"Enterprise" added. See, Ren Learn has changed the way they do business.
The original version cost .99 per student plus a set-up fee to access the
quizzes that you own. In the Enterprise edition, it will cost about $4 per
student to access ALL 100,000 quizzes. I know that I won't need $100,000
quizzes, but we have so many books that have AR quizzes that we have not
purchased. This will give my students motivation to browse the "other"
shelves and not just the AR shelves. I am hoping that the students will
help me weed out the AR books and separate them from the others. Students
will also be able to access quizzes on magazine and encyclopedia articles as
well! Not only will students have access to all AR quizzes, they will also
have access to Literacy Skills Quizzes (which I like better) that usually
cost $6 each! That's not all, they will have access to Vocabulary quizzes.
Can you imagine the potential! This will also help EC teachers remediate
for the special ed students. The Literacy Skills quizzes are more
challenging than the AR quizzes. They are not simply recall, they are
question stems that students will see on their standardized tests. Literacy
Skills will be more challenging for gifted students as well.
Last year, I spent over $1200 for quizzes alone. So, having more services
is worth $1000. When I discussed the possibilities with my teachers and
principals, they were excited about the range. They could decide if
students need to take AR or Literacy Skills depending upon their ability.
Oh, one more thing. Teachers can require students to take an AR test on a
specific book and retrieve a report for that one partcicular book to see how
all students scored.
You can also compare student growth with the reports. I had to play around
with them, but I really like the fact that I could print my reports at home
and not have to go to school on a weekend to print my reports without
interruption.,
I asked my sales rep if something happened and we could not continue the
Enterprise and have to return to just using the "Service" (regular) edition,
would we lose our quizzes? He said that we will own our quizzes forever, it
should not pose a problem.
Everything is generated from the website they set up for you - they will
give you the address to log onto - you add or subtract students from the
website after you log on - I have an administrator ID as well as my own ID
because my principal wants me monitoring everything - I've never had AR any
other way, so I really don't have anything to compare it to.
Here's what I've experienced so far....
>> <What is the purpose of Ren Place?> Ren Place is an online place where
>> all of your quizzes, student quiz records, etc. are held. Now your
>> students' reading records follow them forever...hehe.....from one teacher
>> to another, one grade to the next, etc.
>> <Does it involve the ordering of quizzes?> No....you will still order
>> your quizzes from Renaissance learning (renlearn.com). You will then
>> upload your quizzes to Ren Place instead of just loading them onto
>> stand-alone computers or onto your school server.
>> <If the one school is using Ren Place, will that affect the other
>> school?> That's a licensing question that you will have to get from Ren
>> Place. I would imagine that you would need to purchase enough "spaces"
>> for students at both schools. The 2 principals need to get together &
>> figure that out, along with some help from customer service @ Ren Place.
>> <I have been told that the two schools will house quizzes on different
>> servers. However, all the books are shelved TOGETHER in the one media
>> center. Is this a nightmare waiting to happen, or am I worrying
>> unnecessarily?> You are probably going to only have problems with your
>> "upper classmen" at the elementary school and the jr. high kiddos reading
>> lower level books. Early elem. levels probably won't get mixed up. The
>> best thing to do is to convince the principal @ the jr. high to jump on
>> the bandwagon to make things easier.
>> You are going to find that using Ren Place is almost the same as your old
>> AR. A few things are different....not necessarily better or worse. I
>> think the best part of it is that the student records are stored online
>> so if they transfer into a different teacher's class or when they move
>> from 7th grade to 8th, their reading record follows them.
Renaissance Place (the way we have it at my school) is an AR hosted website
that is assigned to your school. You have to order the quizzes that you
want (unless you pay the extra money and have access to all the quizzes that
AR has available) and they put them on your website that anyone from your
school can access with a user name and password that you as librarian (or
whoever has that responsibility) gives them. I is a bit complicated in the
beginning to get set up, but then unless you have interent access gliches it
works pretty well. We've been using it for two years - AR has training
available either on site or online - I would suggest having your staff get
the training - your Ren Place rep can give you that info.
Renaissance does make the "all of our quizzes" option available for a fee,
of course. I think it is something like $7 per student or $12 per student,
annually. It wasn't feasible, so I just forgot the amount when it was
mentioned. Our district has used AR for more than 15 years, and all schools
have 100's or 1000's of quizzes already. It just made sense to continue
that option. The district pays an annual subscription fee from "central"
money to use RenPlace, but each school pays for their own quizzes.
It's all on the web-server. I had thought this server was in Wisconsin, but
now I'm not completely sure. We used to have servers at each school, and
that was a big problem. Now I know there is only one main server, and it is
accessed through the Internet. I also know there is a double-redundant
backup system. I just don't have to worry about data at all anymore.
Students access the Internet to get to AR now. Ren Place is an umbrella
program, and all of our Ren products are there. We don't have separate
databases anymore. AR, STAR and STAR EL are the products we use, and each
school has access to all three. Librarians administer onsite, but it
doesn't take much work. I can see all of our students for reporting, and I
also see each student who is entered into any or all databases. Teachers
can only see those students for whom they are the Reading teacher, and the
teacher can run all necessary class reports.
Our district is migrating to web-based products overall, and we love it.
The district uses student accounting software for attendance, grades and
records. The libraries use Destiny, the Follett web-based product, and now
we all have RenPlace. We have used these for a few years now, and the main
worry has just never come to pass. Everyone worried about "What will we do
when the Internet (network) is down?" Well, it just doesn't happen. We
work 30-40 hours instructionally, at school each week and I would guess that
during the last two years our network has been down less than 5 hours of
instructional time. Really, we just don't have hardly any down time, and
when there is a problem it has been fixed quickly. I think that must be
less than 1% of our time as a "down time" experience. I really like using
web-based stuff.
It' takes a while to learn all of this, so keep asking questions and gather
plenty of input before a final decision.
Right. Nothing is on our server. They maintain it all. We've never had any
problem with anything crashing. Everything works as it should everyday.
It's very seldom that there's not an AR test. That's why it is so difficult
to find 20 tests. I finally got smart and went to the new tests sections on
the AR Quiz Store and ordered tests that I didn't have books for just to get
the one test I wanted. Eventually those new tests will be downloaded to us.
I just speeded up the process because a kid read a book and needed the test.
Tests that I order are in the system within 24 hours.
Yes, Ren Place holds, keeps and prints any report you'd like.
I mark the books with an AR sticker. I put the information AR level, points,
etc. on the inside cover of each book. Our books are arranged in Dewey
order.
RenPlace is the web-based version of AR, and it is good. We are using it in
our large school district and we have made many district-wide decisions
about its use. It has been agreed that for now only 2 of our 5 JHs will use
RenPlace and all 21 elem schools will use it.
You still manage an AR style program, however the data can be combined
between any and all schools when you want to report it that way. Each
school still purchases quizzes, and the quiz database is separate according
to those quizzes owned by that school. When a student moves within the
district their record and info just rolls over to the new school, so that
makes it much easier.
I like it because is it web-based and I don't worry about our school server
or crashing data anymore. I don't have to run Data Dr ever again!! I'm not
sure how "worth it" is would be for a small district or just your elem
school.
I am a K-5 librarian with 500 (approx) students. Our school district has
used Ren Place for 2 years. We were an AR school before that.
*What is the purpose of Ren Place? *
For us, Ren Place has provided AR online. This makes it easier on
the techs to monitor some aspects of the program, or not monitor it, as
we are a "hosted" school and our server is actually run by Ren Place and
exists in their domain. Our school district student record keeping
system links with the Ren Place system and every evening the information
for students new, moved, or leaving the district is sent to Ren Place.
This means I no longer enter and remove students. Ren Place also
provides a way for our school district to place AR, Star Reader, Early
Star Literacy, AR Math, Star Math, Standards Master and a couple of
other programs on the same login screen for our students.
*Does it involve the ordering of quizzes? *
We still order quizzes either from Renaissance Learning or from a
jobber, but the information for us is sent to Ren Place to be loaded.
Ren Place per se does not involve the ordering of quizzes.
*If the one school is using Ren Place, will that affect the other school? *
We have one school in the district that does not use AR. Our use of
AR and our school's quizzes have not been affected by the fact that
other schools in the district are using AR.
I* have been told that the two schools will house quizzes on different
servers. However, all the books are shelved TOGETHER in the one media
center. *
Our quizzes have remained our quizzes. This does mean that
potentially 10 schools might have to order the same quiz, because our
quizzes are not combined. There is the possibility for a school or
school district to pay for every quiz for every school in the district,
but that was too expensive for our school district.
*Is this a nightmare waiting to happen, or am I worrying unnecessarily?*
Ren Place has worked for our school district, but I would be cautious.
Renaissance Place collects and displays all the test data derived from
products such as AR and Accel. Math for all participating students. It is
not a "quiz" program in and of itself - merely aggregates the data.
I have used Ren Place at my school for two years. We love it! We are a
school of about 150 students, so everything I tell you is related to a small
school's use.
There are several variations to this service. We ordered the one where we
pay a fee and then are able to use any of the over 90,000 quizzes. The kids
take the test on the AR website. Because AR is adding quizzes daily, there
are some quizzes which are listed on the AR Store that have not yet been
loaded onto our website. We have to order those quizzes--it's free--but we
have to order them in batches of 20. I find this is the only inconvenient
part of the whole deal. I would like to be able to order only one quiz at a
time.
The best part of this is that you get to keep the site license you may
already have. I was glad because I wasn't sure how Ren Place would work out
and I wanted the flexibility of going back to the site license if Ren Place
was a dud. It is not a dud. It is fantastic and the best part is that our
Tech Department does not have anything to do with any of it. Ren Learn
updates our files and so far everything has gone so very well.
I don't think there is any problem with one school using Ren Place and the
other not using it, although I can't see why all schools don't have this for
their students.
Let me know if I can answer any other questions. I know this seems
confusing, but it really is the best thing we've done at our school since I
came there in 1988!
Louise Jones
Media Specialist
Hardee Jr. High
Wauchula, Fl
dljones55@earthlink.net
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