TMSDS….Not Fully Loaded?

Okay – so TEA creates this site that allows Math and Science teachers to create diagnostic assessments for their students. The site also aggregates the data from the TEKS aligned assessments. It sounds all cool and techie/curriculumi…which gives me warm fuzzies. However….and you had to know there would be a however…it does NOT play well will IE7 AND the scripts return application errors a lot.

All of this is understandable considering they just launched the site, but explain that to some tired, harried teachers who had to give up their planning to meet with me a mere week before the end of the six weeks, the grade submission deadline, and our first checkpoint test of the year. Yeah – I was roadkill. Sigh.

I really do see the value in the site – it has some great features – when they work. The aggregation of the data, especially the built in ability to compare assessments, lends itself to self-evaluation and helps the teacher really SEE where the kids are missing the concepts. The skills resources included (by TEKS and even broken down to specific objectives) are a great way to reinforce those weak skills and provide assistance for teacher, parent, and student.

There doesn’t seem to be a ton of content for some of the sciences (High School IPC for example), but I’m sure they’ll remedy that with enough data dumped into the system. I just hope they get it done in enough time for it to be useful this year.

I hope TEA is able to correct the technical issues so that using TMSDS doesn’t become a nightmare (ask me about STaR Chart – ugh). In it’s behalf, Firefox seemed to cure most woes – but not the application errors when I tried to create assessments. Sigh.

Here’s me….hoping they get it worked out! If you’re going to be using TMSDS (Texas Schools) then here’s my training pdf to help you out! Please leave my credit in the footer if possible.

TMSDS Support Document