Technology Tools

Dear Principals,

With Baltimore City Public Schools’ 2011-12 school year now well underway, we would like to extend our thanks to you and your school communities for helping get the year off to a great start. Exciting teaching and learning are going on in our classrooms, and we’re looking forward to a year of continued growth and achievement for our students and our schools.

At the district office, we are continuing to develop tools for your use as school leaders in supporting that teaching and learning—whether through the professional growth of your staff, effective communication with families or increased efficiency in administration. In keeping with that theme of efficiency, many of these tools are technology based. Together, they will allow you to better monitor and guide all the work going on in your school, and will enable sharing of information among your entire school community in a way that is timely, clear and consistent.

The primary technology-based tools available to school communities are listed and described briefly below. Some of these will be familiar to many of you, while others are new. Please make sure you are comfortable with all of them, and that your staff and families are able to access and use those that are intended for them. Online training is available for each of these tools. Please see the tool descriptions and training details provided below.

Technology Tool	Function	Training
Teachers Student Support System (TSS)	This site has links to online resources, document-sharing capacity and tools for building and taking online courses intended for teachers or students	On the front page of the TSS site is a section called TSS on Demand that shows the basic elements of TSS.
Professional Growth System	City Schools’ new online tool where teachers can find information and register fort professional learning opportunities	Please access Professional Growth System-Learner Training
Online Performance Management System	City Schools’ new online tool where teachers, principals and school leaders can complete the PBES observations and evaluations cycles. It is accessible to teachers through a menu option in Employee Self Service and to principals and school leaders through Manager Self Service.	Training for OPMS is located online in the Quick Links section of TSS (Blackboard Learn). http://www.bcpss.org/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp It is also accessible as a link from the home page of OPMS.
School DataLink	This is where teachers and school leaders can view student and school performance on standardized tests and other data points, create and grade in-class assessments and track student growth over time	Please see the DataLink Training Manual.
Student Management System (SMS)	This is the application for recording, managing and reporting on student attendance, schedules, disciplinary actions, demographic information and health data	SMS trainings appear on TSS, under the My Places tab. To validate that a person took the training and is ready to do the work requires that it be behind the login screen.
PowerTeacher Grade Book	Here, teachers can enter student results in accordance with the district’s revised grading policy, in a way that the information links directly to SMS	Please go to the PTG Help Documents for training materials.
Parent Portal	This tool allows parents to view their children’s grades, homework assignments and coursework, attendance and demographic and health information	Please view the video that City Schools uses to educate parents about the potential of Parent Portal, and how to use it.

These tools, along with additional information and resources, are linked through City Schools Inside at www.baltimorecityschools.org/cityschoolsinside. Please visit the site frequently and ask your staff to do the same. Then be sure to give us your feedback on the tools, and suggestions for further improvement and development. Our goal is to provide the support you need to lead your schools effectively, and the resources teachers need to improve learning for all our students.

Thank you for your commitment to, and all that you do for, our students.

Dr. Sonja Brookins Santelises Jerome Oberlton
Chief Academic Officer Chief Technology Officer