TWICE News and Views

Quicklinks: Read Around the Planet website and CAPspace login.

Leftovers
We have tentative leads or “for sure” matches for all but a couple of the leftovers, however we still haven’t been able to enter and send emails for them. We are getting there and you should start getting the match information for your “leftovers” within the next few days. Thanks to everyone for their patience!

Viewing All Your Matches
The match information is online too, just hidden in odd spots. Look here:

• Login to CAPspace, go to My Projects, click on RAP. Click on the “eye” icon next to a match to view just one match pair.
• Or, next to the line “my user’s registrations” you’ll see a link that says “View All Matches”. However we know right now that not all of you can see this. Those of you who do, it lists ALL the matches for everyone. So you’ll have to use your browser’s “find” feature to find what you’re looking for.
• Or, go to Admin, My People, click Show Open Events. Click the “eye” next to a match to see the details for just that one match.

We realize very well that this is clunky and not what you need, especially for those of you who have registrations 2 or more levels below you. Please stay tuned. After we finish the leftovers, we intend to have our programmer work a bit more on how you view your matches. Maybe late next week we can have a way to view those a bit better.

RAP Angels
Some of you are what we might call RAP Angels! You make this project so much easier and encourage us! Here are a few examples:

• A few coordinators had two matches by mistake (either entered twice or didn’t/couldn’t delete) and their teachers are going to do their RAP sessions twice so as not to let the other class down. THANK YOU!
• Several of you have sent additional times, knowing that one or more of your requests were in the leftover pile. THANK YOU!
• Several of you have given us “extras” to help match with the leftovers or been willing to take a list of leftovers and find teachers for those matches. THANK YOU!
• Some of you have reported weird stuff with your matches and you have worked it out anyway. THANK YOU! The reporting helps us fix the programming for next year; knowing that you’re working it out helps us move forward on the leftovers. THANK YOU!

We sure appreciate all of you making this huge complicated project a success. Couldn’t do it without you!

Quicklinks: Read Around the Planet website and CAPspace login.

Now that the RAP matches are coming out, some of you are concerned about your match. So here’s the story.

We did our best!!! There were 1600 match requests, all from Canada and the United States. We could only work with the times and schools signed up. Now that they are matched, we can’t make any changes because we’re busy working on leftovers. It’s up to you now to make it a good experience.

Every year there are imperfect matches. There are leftovers too, and we are still working on those. Please don’t give up because in many cases we already have a match, just haven’t been able to get it out yet. Read more about leftovers here: what are leftovers? and Status on Matches.

Please please please, do your best to make it a good learning experience for everyone involved.  With everyone’s flexibility and positivity, this will be a great experience. We really really appreciate those of you who work so hard to make this a success!

Here are some suggestions of what to do during your session:

• RAP Interaction Ideas
• RAP Photo Gallery
• Involving All Students
• Teacher Packet
  
• I Have a RAP Partner, Now What?

If you have additional ideas and suggestions for the actual interaction, please comment. Thanks again for making this work!!

Quicklinks: Read Around the Planet website and CAPspace login.

January 28 afternoon update:  The matches should be out tonight or early morning Jan. 29. Please read below for additional details. The leftover matches will come out in trickles this week. Thx for your patience & support!!

We’re getting there! It’s pretty unlikely we’ll get the matches out today, but we’re getting really close.

Here are some things to expect:

• Some of the matches might be within your state/province because we couldn’t find a match outside of your state. It’s the best we could do!
• Language matches are most likely not going to be at the same age level. There were 80-ish language leftovers we had to match by hand. So please do your best to make those great experiences.
• Looks like you’ll get an email for every match/equipment you’re attached to. So make sure your spam filter isn’t going to catch all those emails! We’ll have a list in the system as well so you can login and get the list.
• For those of you coordinating several “My People” levels deep, you won’t be able to see the matches all the way down the tree at first. We hope to get that working in the next couple weeks.

Leftovers
We will have to release the matches this year without the leftovers being finished. So that means, if you don’t get a match email, we’re still working on it. We’ll do our best and don’t give up yet!!

Thanks for your patience, flexibility and support of this huge project!

If you want your Read Around the Planet connection to be more interactive this year, check out Roxanne Glaser’s blog post with a great set of ways to increase the interaction. Get the other class involved in your presentation. Break the traditional presentation model and do something different! Thanks, Roxanne, for sharing such a great list!

Quicklinks: Read Around the Planet website and CAPspace login.

Thank you everyone for your patience as we finish up the matching for Read Around the Planet. The last several days we’ve been dealing with some issues related to equipment, but those are now solved.

What are leftovers?
The next step is dealing with the 250-ish leftovers. Leftovers are the ones that we couldn’t find a perfect match for. Leftovers are caused by several factors:

• requests with only one time – over half of the requests listed only one time.
• odd numbers of requests
• languages are still hard to match because we don’t get enough registrations in this area
• middle and high school are usually hard to match because there are fewer registrations
• ISDN is getting harder and harder to match as fewer and fewer schools have ISDN
• late afternoon west coast times are hard to match because there are fewer requests at those times

Leftover strategies
We have several ways to work with leftovers and it just takes time. Hence the delay! Here are some of the things we do:

• Calling coordinators with lots of leftovers to see if additional times can be added to those requests
• Using late match requests to match with leftovers (we only take late requests from verified schools)
• Calling “tried & true” RAP coordinators to beg for help matching with leftovers
• Forcing some not-so-perfect matches together (grade levels or times not quite the same)
• Begging friends to bridge IP to ISDN to take care of the ISDN leftovers

How you can help

• Be patient!!!!
• Don’t change your mind on any sessions!
• Answer your phone & email if we need to contact you.
• If you have extra interested teachers and have already verified equipment, then send Sue or Janine an email with what you have – teacher name, email, phone, grade level, language, equipment to be used, times they can do. Then wait to hear from us. If we can use you to fill a match we will. If not, we’re sorry, but we can’t create more leftovers!

Matches Out on Monday, January 28
It seems likely that we’re not going to be done by the end of the day on Friday, January 25. So login or check your email Monday afternoon for the match results.

Thanks for your patience and support of this project!

Quicklinks: Read Around the Planet website and CAPspace login.

Registration Status
RAP Registration closed yesterday at midnight. We have a record number again at 1608 registrations. Last year was 1350, so it’s a very nice increase. That number will change a bit as we deal with the leftover pile in the next week.

Our international participation is different this year. We didn’t get any UK registrations due to some complications. However, we have LOTS of Alberta connections, and some new Saskatchewan FirstNations schools. We also have more west coast participation this year. No exact numbers at the moment.

Leftovers
Early next week we’ll have a good handle on the leftover pile. At a first glance though, we know already that we need a few more of these languages:

• Cree: 3
• American Sign Language: 2
• Hebrew: 1 (we have one lead for this)
• German, Beginning: 1
• Arabic: 1
• French, Beginning: 1

If you think you might have a class to help us with this, please email Sue or Janine with your availability. We’ll get back to you mid next week about it.

Cancelling
If you have to remove a registration, please do so by the end of the day Friday, Jan. 18. After that, PLEASE DON’T CANCEL. It’s really difficult to deal with. Find someone to fulfill your commitment to that time. We don’t need to know those switches, though. We can’t do anything about it. Just fix it locally.

We sure appreciate your support of this project. It’s not possible without everyone who does their part to support it!

Quicklinks: Read Around the Planet website and CAPspace login.

The registration for RAP closed accidentally between midnight EST and 8:45 EST this morning. It’s back up again.

Whew. Breathe.

It will close again tonight Jan. 16 at midnight EST.

After that, everything under My Projects, RAP, may disappear for a while as we’re doing the matches and dealing with leftovers. Don’t worry. Try not to email us. Stay tuned. Start checking the site again around Jan. 22-25. We aim to post the matches online and hopefully via email too by January 25.

Please also check your email and phone messages during Jan. 17 – 25 as we may have to contact you if any of your registrations are in what we affectionately call “the leftover pile”. We will do our best during this time to get a match for everyone!

Thanks for your patience and support of this project!

Quicklinks: Read Around the Planet website and CAPspace login.

The Read Around the Planet registration deadline is this Wednesday, January 16.  Here’s a status report and some reminders and things to check.

Reminders: Time Zones
The time zone is critical to a correct match. Please double check the time zone. You can see it in two places: My Projects, RAP, and the time zone is listed with the preferred equipment for the match.

Coordinators can also double check the time zones under Admin, My Equipment (that’s new as of today).

Double Check:
Double check your registration(s). We’ve been getting some emails saying, “Am I registered”? You’ll see your registrations listed under My Projects, RAP. Coordinators can see registrations several levels down under My People, Show Open Events.

Verification:
If you haven’t started the verification process, it is now too late. Please mark your calendars for next year. Verification opens by November. In the meantime, here are other ways to do this project on your own.

Status:
These are the numbers as of Monday morning, January 14.

• 864 endpoints & MCUs entered; only 51 left to verify. Most of that is finishing up today.
• 818 RAP registrations

We’re getting there! Thank you to everyone who makes this event a success!