Category: MIStar

MISTAR-Q: Supportive Training for (New) Teachers

Registration is open for Q ACADEMY: TEACHER EDITION (formerly Monarch)
Aug 26 through Dec 2, 2024
Registration fee: $0

Teachers are invited to participate in Q Academy: Teacher Edition, an asynchronous online course formerly known as Monarch. While this course is rebranded and reorganized, the learning activities remain the same as Monarch.

Working online at your own pace, you will complete activities designed to increase your skill and knowledge of MISTAR teacher apps including Class Attendance, Grade Book, Seating Chart, generating reports, and more. This course is especially beneficial for teachers new to MISTAR.

You may earn between 1.0 and 17.5 SCECHs, depending on which topics are completed by Dec 2, 2024. At least two topics must be completed to qualify for SCECHs and you may select which topics to complete:

Should I register for Q Academy if I previously participated in Monarch?
The activities are the same – if you completed Monarch, you completed all content in Q Academy. If you participated in Monarch but did not complete the course, you are welcome to register for Q Academy but your progress will not transfer from Monarch.

Please register only if you fully intend to participate as there is high demand for this course.

Are your MiStar Grades & Assignments Visible?

We have gotten a few reports from students and families that MiStar grades and assignments aren’t visible for certain classes. Perhaps your turned off visibility at the end of the semester or have new semester courses, please take a moment to check that you have the correct setting turned on. You will want to “Share Assignment Information With Those Permitted Access.”

mistar grade settings

Please submit a tech ticket if you have questions.

Action Required: MiStar Configure

Middle and high School teachers, please ensure that your MiStar Gradebook setup is complete. If just one teacher for a student has not completed this step, that student and their family will not be able to view any of their assignments for any classes in MiStar.

TO DO: Please go to your MISTAR grade book and locate the Configurations area. Make sure you don’t see red Xs or yield signs in the first three columns. If you do, go to the specific area to see what is missing in set up.

FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHERS: Also, make sure you are NOT having an incorrect term (for example Q1 instead of now Q2 or Semester 1) display for your students/families in your grade book. If you do, that will also cause students and families to not see any of their students’ assignments in Parent and Student Connect. From this reference sheet:

For more information about using MiStar, see this training guide.

Action Required: MiStar Configure

Middle and high School teachers, please ensure that your MiStar Gradebook setup is complete. If just one of a child’s teachers has not completed this step, students and families will not be able to view assignments in MiStar.

Go to the grade book and locate the Configurations area. Make sure you don’t see red Xs or yield signs in the first three columns. If you do, go to the specific area to see what is missing in set up.

For more information about using MiStar, see this training guide.

mistar

MISTAR-Q: FREE Online Training for Teachers

Registration is open for the next session of Monarch running Jan 23 through May 23, 2023

Teachers are invited to transform their use of MISTAR-Q by participating in Monarch, an asynchronous online learning experience.

You will complete activities to increase your knowledge of MISTAR-Q teacher apps including Class Attendance, Grade Book, Seating Chart, generating reports, and more. Monarch is especially beneficial for teachers new to MISTAR-Q.

Working online at your own pace, you will progress through four levels of activities and earn digital badges in recognition of your learning.

SCECHs are available. You may between 7 and 13 SCECHs, depending on how much of the course you complete. Only activities completed by May 23 will count towards SCECH hours. Hours will be submitted at the end of the course in May.

This course is free.

Please register only if you commit to participate as there is high demand for this course.

Register here – and watch for emails with details on how to get started.

Cannot remember your (Personal Identification Code) PIC number? Contact our HR Office or see the steps to perform a lookup online here.

Google Login in for MiStar Coming Soon!

Beginning on November 8, 2022 staff will have the option to log into their MiStar accounts by clicking and signing in with their district Google accounts. Since we now have two-factor authentication for Google account access, using this log in option will not trigger an emailed log in code that needs to be retrieved and entered.

Feel free to give this login option a try on November 8th when you are not in front of students to see how it operates. See the screenshot below for what it will look like. Clicking the Local Login link will render the familiar login option we have been using.

Please note, if and when you are going to be logging into MISTAR on a mobile device, you will either want to use the Local Login option to enter your familiar User Id/Name and password (what you had entered prior to November 8th) and retrieve/enter the emailed code OR choose to open MISTAR on the desktop site view so you can select the Sign in with Google option.

mistar

Trouble Syncing Canvas Grades to MiStar?

If you are running into errors with your grades passing from Canvas to MiStar, check out the resources below. First, you’ll want to make sure it is set up correctly. Most importantly, you want to check that your Assignment Groups match your MiStar Gradebook Categories.

Canvas

Metamorphosis – Free training for teachers and office staff in MISTAR-Q

The MISTAR consortium offers two self-paced training courses introducing new users to the tools commonly used by teachers and secretaries. Offered at no cost to MISTAR districts via the Alludo learning platform, the Monarch “game” is a great fit for teachers new to our district. Players complete a series of online lessons and submit evidence / screenshots in the Alludo app, tracking their progress. They can select from a variety of modules to best meet their learning needs with the MISTAR teacher tools. Staff can get started on this training at any time, and there are SCECH hours available to those who complete the training.

New this year is the Skipper “game” for those in office roles. There are several modules including Building Blocks, Enrollment and Scheduling as well as more modules coming during the school year.

To get started with either Monarch or Skipper, please submit a service request asking for the specific training course(s) desired so that we can set you up and send you a customized link.

MISTAR Release 3.9.1 Highlights

The latest release of our student information system (SIS) MISTAR includes the following updates:

Main Page Enrollment Widget: With this release, the procedure that is used to build the Main Page Enrollment Widget has been updated to include a count for ‘Other’ for students who are neither ‘M’ nor ‘F’. The new field is now visible in the Widget Editor.

In Student Profile, when the phone icon in the banner is clicked (1) and ‘Show Student Contacts’ detail is displayed:

The Contact PIN now displays in the detail shown (2)
It is now possible to choose to also include email addresses for the Student, Counselor, or Advisor when clicking an email link for a Contact. This setting will be remembered when navigating from one student to another (3).

The Student Pronoun field was added to the Roster tab–If a student has pronouns added to MISTAR they will appear in the student pronoun field in the Roster Tab.
Mass Email will now check and warn if the user is attaching a file too large to upload.

Parents and Guardians can now retrieve their PIN and reset their Password from the login page of Parent Connection:

Middle School Teachers: Transition from Quarter 1 to Quarter 2 in Canvas reflected by grading periods

As of November 10th, now that Quarter 1 grades have been turned in at the secondary level, Grading Periods will be in place in Canvas to reflect the closing of Q1 grades in MiStar. Students will have view-only access to first quarter course content and will be unable to submit work for assignments associated with the first quarter (Q1) since it is not the current grading period. While teachers can edit their previous term’s course content, they cannot make further adjustments in the feedback or grading of any non-current grading period submissions.

When grading periods are enabled, the due date of an assignment will determine the grading period within which the assignment will appear in the Gradebook. If no due date is set, the assignment defaults to the last (current) grading period available for the course. Therefore, if there is a quiz or assignment that a student must still complete from a past quarter, you might make a copy of that quiz/assignment, give it a due date in the current grading period, and assign it just to the few students that need it. In that case, grade passback to MiStar should be avoided and, should you want it reflected in MISTAR manually enter the grade for those students in the Q1 quiz or assignment instead (note, even if this is done, the student’s viewable-as-of November 12th report card, won’t reflect any change).

Importantly, while students will still find their definitive grades in MISTAR, this grade period demarcation will also result in a more accurate current grade average, as far as what Canvas reflects, since only the current marking period will be presented.

Please find quick overview directions and screenshots in this document.

Please also revisit this blog post from last November on how to extend access for students to a Canvas course past the term end date based on an interest in allowing students an additional time period to access course content or to interact with and submit coursework.

*Please note elementary and high school teachers — it is very conceivable that we will similarly update Canvas for courses that span grading periods too, in the coming weeks, to allow for term filtering.

Submit a ticket for more support.

Canvas