Tech Updates

The Ins & Outs Of Using Parent Activities
As you may have heard, BAIP now offers parent activities.  Some logical questions follow:  What are parent activities?  Where do I go to see them?  How do I get them to my parents?  In the following article we’ll answer these questions and more.

View A Parent Activity
After you sign into BAIP (http://baip.elearndesign.org/), go to the content side of BAIP (click on the “My Content” tab).  Click to the appropriate curriculum area and grade level using the buttons on the left side of the page, then navigate to the desired indicator.  Under the “View” heading there are clickable buttons that allow you to view various kinds of BAIP content (Fig. 1).

Fig 1. Resource View Buttons

In the past, lesson and tutorial resources have been available for viewing. For many indicators, there will also be a parent activity. Simply click the button by that parent activity to view its contents. This is the same parent activity your parents will see when you assign it to them.

Making A Parent Activity Available To Parents
Referring again to Fig. 1, if you click on the "assign indicator" link under the "Assign" heading, now in addition to being able to assign tutorials to your students, you can also assign parent activity to parents.

You aren't really assigning parent activities to parents as much as you're assigning them to your classes. Since your classes have students and these students will have parents attached to them(described down below), when you assign parent activities to your classes, the parents of your students will suddenly be able to see these parent activities in their own parent accounts.

This assignment process works just like the tutorial assignment process for your students. In the same way students have private accounts and only see the tutorials you assign them, parents will also have private accounts (described below) and will only see the parent activities you assign them. This parent activity assignment mechanism will allow parents to know what their students are working on in class without having to wade through parent activities that aren't applicable to them.

So what is a BAIP parent account? Who sets that account up? How do parents find it?

Getting Parents To The BAIP Parent Website
In order for your parents to access and use the BAIP parent activities you've made available for them, they must be given the following website URL:
http://baip.elearndesign.org/parents

Notice this is simply the main BAIP url with "/parents" added to the end.

Creating A BAIP Parent Account:
Parents of students will have their own private accounts on the BAIP Parent website. In this way they'll be able to see only those parent activities that pertain to them and their students.

Step 1) Parents Set Up Their Own Account
When parents go to the BAIP Parent URL (listed above) they will see a sign in box along with a few links (Fig. 2).

Fig 2. Link To Creating A Parent Account

On their first visit to the BAIP Parent site parents won't have a password, so they'll need to click "Create new account" to set up their private parent account.

Notice that any number of parents or parental type figures can create BAIP Parents accounts. Students with separated parents, grandparents, or significant friends of the family can each have accounts where applicable.

Its important to notice that creating a private BAIP Parent account by itself doesn't give anyone access to private student data. In the next step we'll see that a student (or a student's teacher) must reveal that student's BAIP username and password to the parental account holder in order for parents to see activities relating to that student in their account.

Step 2) Adding Students To A Parent Account
When a parent first signs into their newly created parent account they'll quickly see that their are no students attached to their account.To see the parent activities that have been assigned to them and their students, they'll need to add students to their accounts.

To do this, parents will click the "Add Students" tool on the left side of the page (Fig. 3).

Fig 3. Newly Signed In Parent Account

Fig 4. Adding A Student To A Parent Account

Fig 5. View of Populated Parent Account

Now we know how to view parent activities, assign them to classes so they're made available for parents, and help parents set up their private BAIP Parent accounts so they can actually see the parent activities. In future BAIP bulletins we'll go into more detail on how parents can manage their BAIP Parent accounts.

Thanks!
Thanks for using BAIP and helping us make BAIP better.  Please feel free to contact me with your questions and comments. Have a fantastic day!

Dan Spurgin
BAIP Technical Assistance
spurgin@ku.edu
785-864-1039