The whole of the EdShed interface is being changed and updated to improve educators’ (or sheducators’) experience of EdShed. This has started with our leading product, Spelling Shed. Spelling Shed has had a huge new update, which is now on a preview release, that not only looks different but also gives educators a whole new wealth of information to improve learning and results in their classroom.
Not Just a Pretty Look
When you log in to Spelling Shed and select the new user hub, you will notice an instant fresher look. This has carefully been designed to make it clear for busy educators to easily navigate. From a first-glance view, you can easily see your leagues, assignments, challenges and hive games.
You’ll notice that the toolbars at the top are easy to navigate, as is each page when you click into each tab. You will notice that the scheme pages have a simpler view, the word lists are easier to navigate, whole scheme resources are easily accessed and the data…well, that deserves a whole section of this blog post!
Created with Educators
Spelling Shed’s current interface has been developed organically based on user requests for new features and functionality. The result of this has been that features and functionalities have been bolted on; therefore, the interface became less consistent than originally planned. Updating this gave us an opportunity to completely rebuild the interface, taking a considered approach to improve the current functionality and add some missing features like better data views…we’re very excited about this part!
When creating the new interface, it was important to get it right for all types of educators; therefore, as well as getting feedback from educators within the EdShed team, we also worked with educators from a variety of schools, including Spelling Shed Showcase Schools and Feedback Schools. Educators from these schools had early access to the new user hub prior to the summer holidays and were asked to provide feedback. The feedback was collated with feedback from our many educators with the EdShed team to create a design that would work for every teacher, school and Spelling Shed admin user.
Data, Data and More Data!
Spelling Shed’s new hub is packed with more data than ever before. It has been designed to make viewing and analysing data simpler than ever.
There are four new data pages for tracking group performance in Spelling Shed. These are all under the data tab.
- Overview – a top-level view of compliance and attainment
- Competency Tracker – a granular view of attainment for individual pupils
- History – weekly data for gameplay type and misspelled words
- Mastery Zone – a dedicated view of group and individual mastery zone level and progress.
In order for the data to be most effective, we recommend setting a default stage for your group; otherwise, the data pages will attempt to infer one. You can set this using the Group Settings modal in the top right corner of the data pages, as shown in the image below.
Key
All data relating to attainment uses the following key:
- Green – Pupil achieved 70% or more
- Orange – Pupil achieved 50-70%
- Red – Pupil achieved 50% or less
- Grey – Pupil has made no attempts or there is insufficient data for an objective
Overview
The Overview page gives a top-level group view for Spelling Shed. You can view data from recent assignments, assessments, weekly spelling competence, grammar competence and average termly scheme attainment. All charts and statistics are interactive, so you can click on them to find detailed dialogues for specific data points.
Competency Tracker
The new Competency Tracker allows you to easily track and view each pupil’s progress. It gathers Spelling Shed data (baseline and end of term assessments, tests and gameplay) in one place to help you measure pupil attainment.
The pupils in your group are displayed against each stage objective and colour-coded pips detail the attainment of each pupil for each objective.
You can view a full breakdown of the data by clicking on the attainment pips. There is also a percentage attainment for each pupil.
You can easily customise your view of the Competency Tracker to suit your needs. This includes switching your view between objectives and pupils, sorting the rows in a way that works for you, using the search input to filter data and changing the assessment period.
The Competency Tracker data can be downloaded as a spreadsheet with one datatype per sheet, which is handy for pupil progress meetings and parents’ evenings.
History
The History page displays weekly game data. Here, you can view game usage and words spelled data. The game usage statistics and chart are interactive. You can click on them to open detailed dialogues for specific data points.
You will also notice that the pupil play statistics are interactive and at the click of a button, you can see which pupils have used Mastery Zone and Grammar Arcade in the last seven days.
The Words Spelled table shows the spelling attempts for all pupils in the group. Misspelled words with the spelling attempts are shown in a red block. You can easily create a list of misspelled words by clicking on the checkbox and then clicking ‘Create List’. This can then be assigned to pupils. Selected words can also be added to the Mastery Zone focus words queue for all pupils in the group. Queued focus words will become active as current focus words are mastered.
Mastery Zone
The Mastery Zone data page is a dedicated view for groups’ Mastery Zone data. You can easily view group Mastery Zone level, Weekly Mastery Zone Improvement and Individual Mastery Zone Level data.
The tables and graphs are interactive so you can easily monitor individual and group attainment and progress.
Click here to read the full guidance document.
What’s to Come?
There are lots of exciting new features and functionality coming your way in the new EdShed hub. The best way to transition to the new hub is to release the system in phases so improvements can be made in a collaborative way. As you and other fellow educators, schools and trusts are the ones who will be using it, it is important that you can have your say. Releasing as previews allows for this.
EdShed has many products and there will be new interfaces for all of them. The current system will remain in place until the new hub is complete.
Everything in the new hub will first be released as a preview. The roadmap to release is as follows:
- Spelling Shed
- QuizShed
- MathShed
- Literacy Shed
- Phonics Shed
This will be interspaced with the relevant pupil pages first, followed by tools, then organisation admin and subscription management.
Have Your Say
We want you to have your say and it couldn’t be easier! At the top of each page in the NEW EdShed hub, there is a yellow ‘Give Feedback’ button. Here you can select your feedback type and let us know what you think.
What Does the EdShed Team Say?
