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Students using the IQity study guides will receive not only test preparation tips, they also will gain the opportunity to improve their reading and writing. This outstanding resource is likely to go a long way toward meeting the needs of student who must pass the OGT.

Carol Dodson

Language Arts Specialist

Ohio Resource Center

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How To Choose a Virtual Learning Environment

More and more K-12 educators are deciding to offer online classes or incorporate an online element into their traditional classrooms. Having made that decision, how do you make the best decision when it comes to choosing a learning management system (LMS)? You don't need to be a computer expert to choose the best LMS for your situation. You do need to keep in mind why you're getting into online education in the first place and what you hope to accomplish for your students. No one needs to tell today's educators that cost matters, too. K-12 administrators that sign up to use the IQity Learning Management Suite find it is a comprehensive LMS designed specifically for K-12 education.

An LMS that Meets Supports Your Goals

There are many advantages to online education for K-12 students. They gain valuable technology skills. They can learn at their own pace, more quickly for gifted students or at a more deliberate pace for students with less mastery of the subject. These advantages are realized, however, only when you make the best decision when choosing your LMS.

The learning management system is the backbone of the online classroom. It's the software that lets students access their class content, review their lessons, take quizzes, talk to their teachers, and interact with other students in the virtual realm. Your LMS needs to be easy to use, so students can concentrate on their lessons rather than being distracted by software that's frustrating to navigate. Teachers too will appreciate your choice of the right LMS, not only because it will be intuitive to use, with little or no learning curve, but because it will save them time and give them more tools to help their students achieve.

The IQity Learning Management Suite meets these criteria because it is more than an LMS; it is a comprehensive platform to support your educational goals. For example, IQity comes with a webcasting tool that enables teachers to speak to the whole class in real time. With the electronic whiteboard, called LiveBoard, teachers can call on students to participate in class discussion just as if they were in a traditional classroom. Students can use LiveBoard to do group projects, building collaboration skills along with technology skills and content mastery.

Meeting State Standards in the Online Classroom

Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, schools face increased pressure to perform well on standardized tests. Your decision to offer online classes can help your students achieve that goal if it is backed up by the right decision when choosing an LMS. The key is incorporating quality content aligned with state standards into your online classrooms.

Finding and using quality content can be difficult with many learning management systems. There is a plethora of content providers, but few provide material aligned with state standards. Even when a teacher does find content she wishes to use, transferring it to her online classroom is a laborious process in most cases. Typically, the teacher will need to have the LMS open on her computer screen and separately open the source of the content. Then she will need to follow a back-and-forth process of copying parts of the content and moving them from one online window to the other.

IQity's LMS solves this problem by incorporating a fully integrated learning object repository, Reactor. All Reactor content has been reviewed by education experts to make certain it is standards-aligned. A teacher can search for content by keyword, subject, grade or state standard without ever leaving the IQity LMS environment. When she finds a lesson she wants to share with her students, she can simply "drag-and-drop" it into the online classroom.

Reactor supports your educational goals in three important ways. First, because all content is standards- aligned, you can be confident it will help meet your class objectives. Second, because of the variety of material in Reactor, teachers can find content to meet the needs of individual students. Many formats are available, including charts, maps, and exercises as well as videos, audio files, and virtual science labs. Third, because it is so easy to use Reactor content, teachers can customize lessons for those students who need either extra help or a more challenging assignment. For a child struggling with a science concept, perhaps a video or an interactive virtual lab exercise will help. The teacher can find and assign it in a matter of minutes.

The Best LMS at the Best Price

Every decision school administrators make these days necessarily takes cost into consideration. Fortunately, making the best decision when choosing an LMS is easy, because IQity's comprehensive LMS is free to K-12 schools and school districts. To see how IQity can simplify your decision, ask for an online demonstration led by one of our elearning experts.