Accelerated Reader and us....

We have installed the new AR program. At the onset, it appears to be working well and student access is relatively easy. There were a few concerns aka problems that we encountered.

>User name and passwords were changed and once we went online with the program, we had issues with reteaching students what their new usernames and passwords were. You may want to figure out what you are using ahead of time and let Advantage Learning know what you prefer. If all else fails, go back into the system and reset them to what was originally used.

>I noticed database history issues with students names being entered with the middle initial causing a student to have 2 AR accounts. The problem here is which account is the student using and "nightmare look" were there tests on both accounts. I tried cleaning that up prior to sending AR our database.

>The task at hand now is how to mark all of our books with some of the collection out in circulation. MarcMagician isn't ready to use their AR checking service. That means we do the automated system in Follett by hand. Do we go to the shelf and pull books, match them, mark them, and mark my card catalog marc record? Do we run a shelflist and use it to adjust the marc record then go to the shelf and find the books? Mark the book after that for circulation issues? This is huge and I'm not sure how to do it with the least amount of issues.

>Be aware as well that some of the levels and points have changed from when we initially marked our books. Another issue is version - especially on the nonfiction books. Match that up because old versions of books on a newer test doesn't work well. The same can be said for unabridged and abridged books. They aren't the same nor will the tests be.

I am glad that we moved ahead and have this version. I just don't see an easy way to mark our collection other than one book at a time, one marc record at a time.

Book Monger