Concentration Tracking
Inspired by Maria Montessori's research in work curves, you can easily record and visualize the concentration levels of your classroom in Transparent Classroom.
In this article you will learn about:
- Privacy (Parents will not see concentration data)
- Setup
- How to Track Concentration
- Marking Concentration
- Setting Concentration Intervals
- Use on Mobile Devices
- Viewing Work Curves
Parents Will Not See This Data
Worried about parents seeing data about their child's concentration and taking it the wrong way? Have no fear, this data is private and can only be viewed by teachers and admins.
Setup
As an admin, you will need to set up a classroom to track concentration. Go to [Admin] > [School Settings] > [Concentration]. Toggle "Track concentration events" to green for any classroom where you want to track concentration, then specify the interval at which you want to track concentration data. Make sure to [Save] once you've made your selections (bottom right corner).
Keep in mind that the Concentration tracking tool lives on the Daily Tracking page, so make sure that Daily Tracking is enabled for any classroom that wants to use Concentration (if you don't know how to do that take a look at this article: Daily Tracking)
Track Concentration
Get started by visiting [Activity] > [Daily Tracking] > [Concentration].
Marking Concentration of Children
Here you will see all the children in your classroom. You can choose multiple children, click the "Choose Concentration" button, and then mark their concentration. Your options lie on a spectrum of Disorder <---> Concentrated, so you can make a qualitative evaluation of their concentration level.
We visually indicate which children have already been recorded so you know to not mark them twice. We recommend doing all of the children in a single sitting, but we understand interruptions happen. Your progress is saved each step along the way; you can navigate to other parts of TC and return to this page and your work will still be there.
Concentration Interval
The concentration interval specifies how frequently you intend to collect concentration data about the children. It is reflected in graphs that we produce for you. A shorter interval improves the resolution of your data but also means observing the classroom more frequently. Feel free to experiment with different intervals to determine the one that best suits you.
When collecting data, a counter displays how much time you have left in the current concentration interval. Concentration intervals are split up on the hour, so if your interval is 15 minutes, then your concentration intervals would be 0:00-0:15, 0:15-0:30, 0:30-0:45, and 0:45-1:00.
Once you transition to a new concentration interval, we give you a blank slate to record a new set of concentration data for children.
Use on Mobile Devices
Okay with using technology in small ways in the classroom? This page is designed to display nicely on a phone or tablet.
Right now there is not a way to manually enter concentration values at the end of the day. If that's important to you, let us know by voting for it here.
Viewing Work Curves
We currently provide two ways to view concentration data – by child or by classroom.
By Child
Go to the child's page, then click [Daily Tracking] in the secondary navigation bar. Any concentration data collected for the child on that day will display in the graph.
By Classroom
Visit [Reports] > [Classroom Concentration / Normalization]. Here you can view the overall concentration of your classroom for the day. The graph shows the percentage of your classroom in each degree of concentration for a given interval of data collection.
Concentrated values are grouped toward the bottom, disordered values toward the top.
From this graph, you can get a broad sense of how your classroom's concentration/normalization fluctuates over time.
More to Come
Are you excited to track concentration and have burning desires for more graphs or other features? Feel free to offer your suggestion on our features forum. We keep regular track of this forum and often draw ideas for new features from it.
We would love to hear the ways you're using concentration tracking to inform yourself as a teacher or admin. Please email us and let us know what you enjoy the most.