Teacher, Red Clay Educators Association President and ex-blogger Mike Matthews put a post up on Facebook after fighting with the Smarter Balanced Assessment “proctor” system throughout the day. In response, many teachers complained about the issues as well today.
Apparently, you can only get to the training system through Firefox, something the Delaware Department of Education told Matthews today after emails and tweets to them. But that didn’t stop the problems.
Teachers of Delaware: Do you have any horror stories to tell about your attempts to get certified to proctor the Smarter Balanced Assessment via the PDMS system? Please share your stories here or private message me.
And the teachers responded!
I tried to do it yesterday and couldn’t get it to open
I’ve tried multiple times and keep getting a message that says too many on the system – try again later…
doesn’t bode for when when thousands of kids are accessing the test simultaneously.
Tried at home. I could register but not complete the course. Will try tomorrow at school. (uhm, no you won’t. You won’t have school tomorrow. Calling it now, snowmageddon on the way!)
I just tried as well. This. Is. Not. Working. I’ve sent an email to the District test coordinator and I put Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) on blast on Twitter. LOL
Have to wait 24 hours before viewing. Pain in the butt to find the assessments (at top of pp headings) and the paperwork admin wants is on page 5 bottom PDF. Took me three hours!!!
I am registered but was not able to access from home, though I have been able to access from home on PDMS for other courses.
I registered Friday. Tried today. No luck.
I wonder how this is going to work when everyone in the state is taking this! (that’s actually the part I can’t wait to hear about. I’m so glad my son won’t be taking part in this horrorfest since I OPTED HIM OUT!!!! DELAWARE PARENTS, DO NOT LET YOUR CHILD TAKE THIS TEST! If they can ever get it running! This should be fun. Not for the teachers, but for the kids!)
I took it on Friday- at first it said there were too many users, but then it let me in. After the first presentation, I thought I was done, but there were 2 more. Took me the whole afternoon session of PD. Luckily, I put it on the smart board and was able to work.
Too many sections, especially for coordinators; interims training not good for “regular” assessment so you have to take double the training; separate sections for ELL, disabilities, & general accommodations- why can’t this all be in a single training???
My fave part: We’re suddenly “experts” after sitting through this ONE TIME. *sigh*
I have been trying at home since Friday = nightmarish! Weird errors, NO presentation, NO pdfs, I can only print the final “scary” completion sheets. So many pop-ups! I definitely have latest Adobe. I am using Chrome. With distaste, I opened it in Explorer – and also became too frustrated. I call myself slightly computer savvy and came to the conclusion that the “course” is crazy. I was going to try after school one day this week. grrrrrr
I’ve had trouble with PDMS at home before (on my Mac)- always works better for me at school!
Wonder what they’d say if I taught my kids this way: “Here, read this PowerPoint. Instant mastery!”
Registering wasn’t bad. Accessing the training was and still is a nightmare
This was the point where I chimed in!
Why are you all complaining about this? This is a good thing! Maybe the whole system will explode and all the SBA files will disappear. It’s a good omen I say! I think I’m going to write an article about this!
Please do. Include this, Kevin: Why can’t DoE do appropriate UAT to ensure that their (expletive deleted) training programs work on something other than Firefox?! They are a mess.
I tried on Firefox and it did not work on that either
All teachers should boycott this certification. (and the test and Common Core)
I figured if I’m going to write about this I should know what UAT and PDMS stand for!
Can anyone tell me what UAT and PDMS stand for?
UAT means user acceptance testing. In other words, testing all their systems and programming (ie PDMS) to ensure it can be used by all browsers and all operating systems. Clearly, this training on PDMS (Professional Development Management System) did not go through any UAT. PDMS is the system teachers use to receive certain professional development courses.
Can we also vent about the fact that the district provided zero training, as far as I know, for the student training link or administration of SB???
Oh, is that what the DOE gave all that money to Amplify for? (that was me, I’ll admit it!)
That’s right. That’s our honorable DOE. I hope all these teachers working on this today get a floater or two for working on a holiday! If the Smarter Balanced system is causing THIS many problems and it hasn’t even started yet, I’m going to predict chaos and mayhem when this thing rolls out. It’s a shame schools don’t have free wi-fi. Parents could sit outside the school during the test and hog up all the bandwidth watching Netflix!
The Season Of Myths 