The Education Planner in the WOIS Portfolio is now the High School and Beyond Plan.  This section now has more options! 

In the High School and Beyond Details, students can record their Career Path, Program of Study, up to three Post-High School Plans with specifics for those plans, and up to three Career Goals.  This section can be used by iteself, or combined with the planned coursework for a student's educational career.

In the Terms and Classes section, students can create their course plan for their educational career.  Just as before, this section can be revisited often for updates to coursework, grades, credits, etc.

Four reports provide flexibility to meet everyone's needs.  They are:

Current Details Report:  shows High School & Beyond Plan details for the highest grade for which they have been entered.

Classes Report: shows terms and classes for all years.

Summary Report: combines the information from the Current Details and Classes Reports (most recent details and terms and classes for all years)

Full Report: shows all information - High School & Beyond Plan details, terms, and classes - for all years entered.

Portfolio Administrators:  Remember you can customize the list of classes to match the classes offered at your school, customize your pathways and programs of study, and generate High School and Beyond reports for a group of students through the Portfolio Administration.  To generate reports, simply choose the students you wish to generate reports for, then click Generate Reports at the bottom of your student list.  Choose the report you wish to generate -- then click and let the system do the work for you!

Remember, there are now eight FREE Portfolio training workshops in February and March, all around the state, that can help you learn how to use the Portfolio High School and Beyond Plan and other great features available in the WOIS Portfolio system.  Register today!

Thank you to a number of WOIS sites that helped to shape this improved High School and Beyond Plan section, including Central Kitsap High School, Anacortes High School, Sehome High School, and Shadle Park High School.

WOIS/The Career Information System is Washington State's most comprehensive career and educational planning resource and is used in over 900 sites in the state of Washington.  WOIS has provided career assessment tools, detailed information about occupations, educational programs, and postsecondary institutions, along with supporting activities and resources, for more than 35 years.  WOIS provides complete, accurate and up-to-date information for Washington State and NOW also provides national wage, outlook, and college information.  As a non-profit organization, our goal is to provide these resources, and related training and technical support, at the lowest cost possible, to the institutions and organizations in Washington State. 

Because WOIS moved to a new database structure to integrate National Colleges with our Educational Program and School sections, our old School Compare tool was taken out of our program for a few months. 

But now it's back -- and even better than before!

You can still access School Compare from the Assessment menu on the left-side menu, and the Schools menu.

Now your students and clients can also compare schools they have saved in the School Research section of their WOIS Portfolio!

And, your students and clients can save schools to the School Research section of their WOIS Portfolio, after they have done a School Compare.

Try it out!  You will love it!

If you have questions or ever need a training or demonstration, contact tami@wois.org or call 1-800-700-WOIS.

WOIS/The Career Information System is Washington State's most comprehensive career and educational planning resource and is used in over 900 sites in the state of Washington.  WOIS has provided career assessment tools, detailed information about occupations, educational programs, and postsecondary institutions, along with supporting activities and resources, for more than 35 years.  WOIS provides complete, accurate and up-to-date information for Washington State and NOW also provides national wage, outlook, and college information.  As a non-profit organization, our goal is to provide these resources, and related training and technical support, at the lowest cost possible, to the institutions and organizations in Washington State. 

Do you have customized links in your WOIS portfolio system?  If so, there is a new way to organize those links!  You can now create headings for groups of links (for example College Planning Links, or Financial Aid Links) and organize the appropriate links under each special heading.   Headings can also be added to your Culminating Project links in the Culminating Project section.

AND you can choose whether you want your links to continue at the top of the student Portfolio Main Menu, OR if you want your links to be in a separate box on the right side of the Portfolio Main Menu.

Try it -- you will love it!  If you look at the options (click on Links in your Portfolio Administration), read the instructions, and still need more help, call us at 1-800-700-WOIS.

We've also added a column on the Detail View Report in the Portfolio Administration that allows you to see the total number of volunteer hours each student has added to the Work and Community Experience section of their Portfolio.  If your school requires that students have a certain number of hours -- this allows you to see at a glance if the students are reaching their required community service hours.

Thank you to Puyallup School District and South Bend School District for these great ideas!

Hold on to your hats!  There's more to come in the next few months!

Now WOIS Portfolio administrators can Query the Post-High School Plans and Occupational Goals for students who have entered these details in the Education Planner section of the WOIS Portfolio.

This can be useful if you have a career speaker (let's say a Physical Therapist) coming to the school and you want to know which students have indicated Physical Therapist as an Occupational Goal.

It may also come in handy when you have a college (maybe Washington State University) visiting.  You can query the portfolios and get a list of the students who have indicated WSU as a college of interest.

After the query identifies the students who have indicated the selection, the administrator can send a note to each student (via the portfolio) to let them know the visitor will be at the school.

The query only works on entries in the Education Planner section of the WOIS Portfolio.

Each section of the Electronic Portfolio has a report associated with it that can be used to print the contents of that section - Assessments and Tests, Career Research, etc. Now, Portfolio administrators and group managers can print batches of reports from the administrative side of the Portfolios. Just select the Portfolios you want to print reports for from any Portfolio "List" page, like the Student List or Detail View, click "Generate reports" at the bottom of the page, and choose the report to generate.

The WOIS Electronic Portfolio has been added as an option for middle schools and junior highs using Career Explorer. Students can save their Career Explorer assessment results, save links to the occupations they explore, and start building their electronic portfolio with student activities, results from other tests, resumes, essays, educational plans – everything that is available in the high school version of the WOIS Electronic Portfolio. Then the Electronic Portfolio can seamlessly follow the student to the high school.

The cost to add the WOIS Electronic Portfolio to your Career Explorer subscription is only $230 for this year. If you are not currently a Career Explorer subscriber, and want Career Explorer and the Electronic Portfolio, the cost is $405 for this year.

To order Career Explorer and/or the WOIS Electronic Portfolio, e-mail Tami Palmer, call 1-800-700-WOIS, or send your purchase order to WOIS, 1415 Harrison Avenue NW, Suite 201, Olympia, WA 98502.

We've recently added a component to the Electronic Portfolio for creating and storing Student Learning Plans (SLP) in students' portfolios. Based on sample formats from OSPI, you can enter test scores, areas requiring improvement, and responsibilities for improvement for all parties involved - the basic requirements for an SLP. When viewing a student's portfolio administratively, the Student Learning Plan section lets you enter or edit details of the student's Plan. Student can view, but cannot change, their SLP. Also, for schools that have a specific format for their plans, a file upload function is available to upload an SLP in whatever format is appropriate - Word document, PDF file, etc.

We've added new functionality to the Culminating Projects section of the Electronic Portfolio. Now administrators and group managers can leave feedback for students about the files they've uploaded for their culminating projects. You may also document approval status for project components. When logged in administratively to review student's portfolios, there is now a checkbox on the list of files for recording whether that file/component meets standards (is approved), as well as a text field to leave feedback that student will see (but not be able to change) when they go into that section. We've also replaced the "number of files" columns for each project component with a "component approved" column on the Culminating Project Files report in Portfolio Administration.

As always, feel free to give us a call at 1-800-700-WOIS or mail tami@wois.org if you have any questions about the new features.

Portfolio Transfer: To accompany the Automatic Grade Transfer feature we added recently, you can now transfer multiple portfolios to another WOIS site that has the Electronic Portfolio product by selecting them from any administrative list/report page and clicking Transfer to another site at the bottom of the page. This way, if most of the students from your middle school will go to High School A, but some will go to High Schools B or C, you can set the automatic transfer for High School A and, before the automatic transfer happens in August, manually select the students who will be going to High Schools B and C and transfer them yourselves now.

Template Portfolios: Some WOIS sites have asked for the ability to have required classes show up in the Education Planner. You now have the ability to create a template portfolio. Here you can put in the required classes for each grade level, or pre-load anything else into the portfolio. After creating the template portfolio, set it as a template in the Settings section of the Portfolio Administration. To set the portfolio template, type the User ID of the portfolio into the settings. Whatever you put into the template portfolio will then be copied into all student portfolios created after you set up the template portfolio.