Interactive Input Makes Idita-Read Easy

One of the questions I am most often asked by people interested in serving as Idita-Read Team Managers is, "So, how much time will this take me?" That's certainly a valid and valuable question with all of the tasks and expectations that all teachers — whether in the classroom or in the home — must tackle every day.

To give folks an idea of how quickly a Team Manager can handle the job, I've created a few video screencasts to demonstrate the basic tasks. For people who have served as Team Managers in previous years, I invite you to watch these screencasts as well, because our awesome tech team has made some improvements since the last race. These improvements have significantly streamlined the process and smoothed out a few troubling spots.

CREATING YOUR TEAM ROSTER

In this screencast, you'll see how to create a team roster, adding student mushers to each of your Idita-Read teams. For each student, you can include his or her first name and last name (or initial or a number, if you prefer). Also, for those Team Managers who want to give mushers "the power" for checking in at their own Base Camps to log mileage and share book reviews, you can input a unique username and password the student can use to login themselves (or with assistance).

Use the Idita-Read Bookmarks (PDF; 4 per page) to record musher logins and distribute when training day opens on Feburary 1 or when the race starts on March 6.

Managers can set up their team rosters at their convenience any time once they have signed up to participate.


NAVIGATING YOUR TEAM ROSTER

Once you've got your students signed up and ready to go, reviewing your each musher's progress is a snap. Navigating to each musher's Base Camp is also handy for when a Team Manager prefers to log team reading mileage and input book reviews themselves, rather than providing individual student logins.

Check out the screencast for an overview of Navigating Your Team Roster. As the video explains, Team Managers can print and pass out copies of the Reading Log Mileage Worksheet (PDF) — one of the Trail Tools included in our Race Kit. Have students use the worksheet to record their reading time. Then, managers can just collect those logs, sorted by team (if you manage more than one), and breeze through inputting their reading mileage into the Idita-Read tracking system.

For more insight into how Team Managers and/or student mushers log reading mileage and input book reviews, please see the other screencasts listed in our Race Kit's User Guide section "For Mushers".

In addition to these screencasts, you can also print out and review the one-page, printable Team Manager Guide (PDF).