ELD Department News
Special Edition: ACCESS 2.0 Updates
ACCESS 2.0 Important Reminders and Helpful Hints
As we continue to open windows for ACCESS 2.0, please read the following important reminders.
- Each school is assigned to a smaller testing window and specific server. It is critical that you administer ACCESS 2.0 in your assigned windows. The 150 tester limit for WIDA Insight is not a recommended limit - 150 testers is the true and actual limit. If you assess students outside your window, you risk crashing the server for all students completing ACCESS 2.0 at the time. Please do not risk this; be considerate to your fellow colleagues and their students. You may find your assigned window here. **See the tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet for your feeder school. Each feeder has a server.
- If you experience difficulties during a testing session while students are completing ACCESS 2.0, call IT at 70001.
- If you need help with ACCESS 2.0, or are experiencing difficulties and students are not completing a testing session, we are asking that you submit a Help Desk Ticket. You may do this by emailing testhelp@dcsdk12.org or submit your request through IC - Help Desk.
- If you receive new, potential ELs, you must first administer the W-APT. If the student is eligible for services, you are responsible for entering the student into WIDA-AMS and assigning them all testing sessions. Scan your paperwork to Christina Levesque and Remy Rummel. Then . . . It is required that you contact Bradley Bowers (after the student's data is entered into IC) for the demographic information. You will enter this information into WIDA-AMS or you will bubble it on the paper booklets.
- If you are suddenly unable to log-in to WIDA-AMS, you may need to clear your browsing data and your cookies.
Message from IT
We are seeing the least amount of connection failures with Chromebooks. The ChromeOS platform is also the easiest to manage in terms of making the Access ELL 2.0 test available to students throughout the District.
Although Apple OS X and Windows are still supported operating systems for ELL testing, test responses on computers with either OS appear to have a greater rate of error than their Chromebook counterparts.
Although Apple OS X and Windows are still supported operating systems for ELL testing, test responses on computers with either OS appear to have a greater rate of error than their Chromebook counterparts.
Lesson of the Week - Please don't crash the server!
Some of you may have been on the brink of frustration on Monday and Tuesday, and we have discovered why. At two points in time, over 200 students were testing at one time. "How did this happen?" you might be asking. A number of Test Administrators (TAs) were either testing students outside their assessment window, or they created sessions that exceeded the maximum number allowed in the session. This created a big problem that truly impacted many students and TAs across the district. Our lesson this week: don't be a server crasher! Please give all students the chance to complete ACCESS 2.0 successfully.