Tech Updates

Using BAIP District Tools: The Basics (Administrators only)
Today's Tech Update is for those individuals who set up and manage BAIP in the local school districts. All superintendents have access to these tools along with any other individuals they've identified as "authorized persons". If you're not such an authorized person in your district, you won't be able to sign into the district tools website, but you still can benefit from reading this article. By the end of this article all BAIP users will have a better idea of what kinds of problems districts can fix at the local level using these tools.

Find the District Tools Website
Perhaps the easiest way to get to the district tools website is to simply go to the main BAIP site (http://baip.elearndesign.org/) and click the the BAIP District Tools logo on the right side of the page:

Tabs
After you sign into the BAIP District Tools, you'll notice a set of tabs that run along the top of the page. Each tab represents a kind of administrative task you can do in BAIP. It might be helpful to think of the tabs as as an ordered list where tasks on the left need to be completed before tasks on the right can be properly used. Let's look at the tabs in order below.

Add Contacts

We'll look at the "Add Contacts" tab first because it determines who gets to use all the other tabs. "Add Contacts" is a powerful tab that allows districts to determine who has access to the BAIP District Tools themselves. Districts should always have the superintendent and main Contact roles filled (1 person can do both roles). As many or as few (including zero) Authorized Persons can also be added. Its recommended that this contact list be revisited periodically

Add Buildings

This tab typically gets used least of all. That's because a district's buildings, once set, change infrequently. Still, as buildings come and go in your district, you can use this tab to keep BAIP up to date. Notice that the "Add Buildings" tab comes before (to the left) of the "Add Teachers" tab. That's because when teachers are added to BAIP they are always attached to a school building. You have to add the buildings before you can add the teachers!

Add Teachers

Each district is responsible for managing its own teacher lists and this is the tab where that managing gets done. After the initial task of adding teachers is done, this tab can be used to edit your information that may change about your teachers. That includes deleting teachers that leave the district, adding teachers that come midyear, and updating things like teacher last names that might have changed as a result of marriage, for example.

Add Students

You do NOT have to add students into BAIP (but sometimes you'll need to). What? Let us explain. Unlike your teachers, students are already entered into BAIP. This is done in order to allow data to travel with students as they move between districts. When administrators or teachers set out to add attach these preexisting students to classes, they'll be told that some students don't exist. That's an indication that either a student id was mistyped, or that student has not propagated from KSDE into BAIP. If you're sure your state id number is correct, then you can use this tab to manually add the missing student.

Add Classes

Classes is where buildings, teacher, and students all come together. In order for teachers to assign BAIP tutorials to students, classes need to be built. Each individual teacher has a tool in their private account that allows them to build classes, or classes can be built using this tab at the district level. If you see classes already built under this tab, that might be because your teachers have already added some classes themselves.

Now you have a basic understanding of how the BAIP District Tools can be used to administer BAIP in your district.

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