Just a quick note about the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators conference in Seaside, OR. This is our 6th year of attending and although the attendance is down, it’s been rewarding to talk to the satisfied users and the new administrators discovering eCOVE for the first time. There seems to be less focus on ‘evaluation’ of teachers and more on helping teachers develope their skills. It very clear that the value of having objective observation data as a significant part of the process is high, not for the data itself but for the reflection and professional discussions that it produces.

There are now new ‘advanced’ Editions available. We’ve been working hard to develop new tools, toolsets, and complete Editions. Here’s a brief description of each of them:

General Edition. This is the new name for the ‘Advanced Edition’ that came out February, 2009. It has the same 40 tools but several additional features. The tools are useful for  wide variety of observation needs – regular classroom, special ed, etc. It is a free update for owners of the Advanced Edition, but you will need a replacement license key. We’ll be sending those soon, but email if you need it right away (or we miss you). Very often, our ‘contact person’ is in the business or tech support office and not the end user.

Special Education Edition. This is a set of 25 tools designed by a team of special education professionals. The tools are grouped by eligibility area (which can be changed) and deals with the full spectrum of disabilities. There is a 6 tool overlap with the General Edition, so most of the tools are brand new. There are additional tools available in the Build-Your-Own section. Search for ’special education’ for our recommendations.

Administrator Edition. This is a set of 25 tools focused on general classroom observation and is useful for building administrators, lead teachers, coaches as a way to provide data to the classroom teacher. There is a 19 tool overlap with the General Edition, so there are 6 new tools in this Edition. General Edition owners can add the 6 new tools in the website ‘Add-On Toolsets’ section. Also there are many additional tools available in the Build-Your-Own section.

Sheltered Instruction/ESL Edition. Another set of 25 tools useful to those observing classroom with second language students. These tools support the use of the Sheltered Observation Observation Protocol (SIOP) but is not limited to that use. These are a core set of tools to track best practices for teaching ESL (and other) students. Again, additional tools are available in the Build-Your-Own section – search for Sheltered Instruction.