setting up your strategy topics

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Hiding National Topics You Don't Want To Use Right Now
• Adding New Topics
• Editing New Topics
• Removing Your Topics
• Reactivating Removed Topics

Follow these steps to determine which topics will appear in your strategy database.  These settings also reflect the topics that will appear in the strategy sharing and goal/challenge recording portions of your reflection logs.

1. On the left, in your Mission Control, click Learning Community.
   
   

2. On the right, click Manage topics.

   • On the Manage Strategy Topics page, you’ll see a list of all of the topics that already exist.
     
     National topics (such as Phonics and Behavior) are those that other programs using the Network tend to use. When your mentors report goals and challenge sunder these topics in their reflection logs, the Network can search for relevant strategies created by other mentors in the Network and America Learns team reporters, and then recommends those strategies to your mentors.
     
     When national topics are marked as “Visible”, mentors may record strategies, goals and challenge sunder those topics, and may access strategies under those topics.
     
     

   • Local topics are those you create for your program that do not already exist at the national level.  If you create a new local topic, we strongly recommend that you immediately add at least one strategy to your database for that topic so that your mentors do not feel stranded when they search your database or report a related goal or challenge under that topic. (Page 18 walks you through the strategy creation process.) 

Hiding National Topics You don't want to Use Right Now

• To hide a national topic (which will prevent your mentors from accessing related strategies),click the “Hide” link in the row of the topic you’d like hidden.
  
  

• To show a hidden topic,click the “Show” link.

Adding New Topics

1. To add a topic that doesn’t currently exist in the list, first confirm that you’ve created the heading that you intend to store the topic under.
   
   

2. Next, type the topic’s name in the empty text box at the bottom of the screen, select its appropriate heading in the drop-down menu, and select Add. 

Editing New Topics

• To edit the name or heading of a topic you added, type the edits you need to make and/or modify the drop-down menu with the headings and then click the Update All button at the top or bottom of the page.  

Removing Your Topics

• To remove (i.e., delete) a topic you added, simply click the relevant “Remove” link.  When you remove topics, all strategies, goals and challenges your mentors entered under that topic will immediately become inaccessible in your strategy and goal/challenge databases; however, that information will continue to be available in your reflection log data compilations. 

Reactivating Removed Topics

• You may re-activate are moved topic to your site at any time by typing the name at the bottom of the form and clicking Add. If you do this, be sure to spell it exactly the same way you did before in the textbox at the bottom of the page. 

  
  
  America Learns will review all topics your program adds to ensure that they are distinct from existing ones.  If your program adds a topic that is identical to or extraordinarily similar to an existing topic, and posts strategies under that new topic, America Learns staff will merge those topics into one to maintain consistency among strategies in the library.