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Physics Classroom is making strides to make our site accessible to everyone. Our site contains 6 navigation areas. The Primary, Secondary, and Page Level navigations have a screen reader version of their nav structure that allows using the left and right keys to navigate sibling navigation items, and up or down keys to navigate parent or child navigation items. The others can be navigated using tabs. The Primary Navigation handles the first 2 levels of site pages. The Secondary (which is not always available) handles the 3rd and 4th level of structure. The Page level navigation allows you to navigate the current page's headings quickly. The Header Navigation contains the Light/Dark Mode toggle, Search, Notifications and account login. The Breadcrumb Navigation contains the breadcrumb of the current page. If the current page has a breadcrumb, you can get to it by skipping to the content and tabbing in reverse (shift plus tab). The Footer Navigation contains links such as Privacy, Contact, about and terms. Some resources contain an Audio Player that can be activated by holding down the T key for 3 seconds, and then using K to pause and resume. While not every area of Physics Classroom is usable purely from keyboard and screen reader, we are committed to continue work on making this possible. If you have questions or need additional help, please use this link to contact us.

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What is Task Tracker

Task Tracker is a site-wide tool used to assign, modify, track and score the progress of students on various tasks found on our website. We initially introduced Task Tracker during the pandemic as a tool to track student progress on tasks found in our Concept Builder section. We expanded its use the following year by tracking student progress on Minds On, and later the CalcPad, Concept Checkers for Interactives (and some compatible Interactives themselves), and Science Reasoning Center.

How does it work?

Once a teacher purchases a Task Tracker Subscription, they (and any of their colleagues) create classes and add students to their class.  They then select from our over 800 interactive tasks to add to their class, assigning when the activities are visible, due (and even overdue/submittable late).  They can control the scoring, and requirements for the activities, even removing some of the question groups or questions from an activity.  In terms of CalcPad, they can even create their own problems and assignments.

Once this is done, students log in, see what activities are active, and can proceed to perform them.  Once complete, they will get scored and their progress / completion status will be displayed to them and the teacher.  The teacher can see all the student's activity on an assignment, and export scores individually or in bulk. 

Is This Free? What If I Don't Have an Account?

The Physics Classroom is a free website. And our over 800 activities are free. That will not change. You will still be able to use the interactives, Concept Builder, Minds On, CalcPad and Science Reasoning sections for free.  So the free stuff will remain free stuff and there will be even more free stuff as time goes on. While the free versions of these activities will provide on-screen scoring and validation of completion, it won't save student progress. Like it works now, if a student closes their browser in the middle of a skill-building activity, student progress will be lost ... unless they have a Task Tracker account.  Also, modifying the activities is not free, and requires Task Tracker.  Task Tracker accounts can be purchased at a low cost by teachers and schools on behalf of their students.  We also offer Homeschool programs for individual learning. 

Why Should a School Purchase Task Tracker if I Can Get This for Free?

That's a fair question and one that we encourage teachers and schools to think about. We want to emphasize that our activities are great tools without an account and we encourage those who don't subscribe to Task Tracker to take advantage of the free offering. So why Task Tracker? There are a number of features that a teacher with a Task Tracker subscription can take advantage of. 

  1. 1. Task Tracker has a built-in assignment board that will display student's assignments, due dates, current progress, and scoring rules.
  2. 2. Students in Task Tracker classes can log in, view their assignments and due dates, and click a link to begin completing their work. 
  3. 3. Teachers with Task Tracker accounts can easily preview the task. They can quickly see the array of questions to use in class as students engage in the activities.
  4. 4. As a Teacher is previewing a task, they might note a Question Group that they particularly do not like. That Question Group can be discarded from the task and their students will not have to answer it. 
    5. A teacher with a Task Tracker account can set scoring rules for every assignment, including partial credit scoring rules. 
  5. 6. Students who do not finish a task in class have their work saved*. That progress can be retrieved and the student can continue where they left off. That is not possible in the free version.
  6. 7. Teachers can view their students' progress on assigned tasks. They can see students' scores, the Question Groups that were completed and not completed, and times of completion.
  7. 8. Teachers can easily export the scoring, and in the near future we hope to have LMS integrations.
  8. 9. Each year, teachers can clone their previous year's tasks, making setup for the next year a breeze! 
  9. 10. If purchasing the Standard Tier, students get Ad-Free viewing

  10. We think the free version is pretty cool. But the reason a teacher would want a Task Tracker account has to do with awesome!

*Concept Builder and Science Reasoning only save on the Trophy currently.  The rest save on each question answered.

How Do I Purchase a Task Tracker Account?

Task Tracker accounts (along with our digital downloads) can be purchased at our Store.