Adam Bilsky
Updated :
Overview
We're really glad you're here! This article will get you started on Foundry basics. We'll start with a quick site tour, go over some terms you'll see a lot in Foundry, and explain what you will generally do in Foundry each day.
Each part of the software will have a more detailed article (and most will have a video as well) to help you get used to the function, answer some common questions, and get help if you're stuck.
Contents
Roles: Advisor, Student, Coach, Parent
Learning Experiences: Receiving and Creating
Completing and Submitting Work
Manage Your Personal Learning Plan
Site Tour
Watch the video or read the sections below for a quick tour of your Foundry site. Remember, every school or organization in Foundry is unique, so there may be things shown in this video that aren't a part of your site, and vice versa. But the general look and feel is the same for every Foundry site.
Skip below the video to read the content (with images).
Info Bar
At the very top of every page is the black “Info” bar, where (above, from left to right) you'll see your school/site name, the Foundry messages button (the Foundry icon), notifications (bell), messages (envelope), Quick Actions Menu, Knowledge Base (Help), and profile manager (your name).
- Foundry Messages are used by the Foundry staff to inform you of updates, maintenance, and (though rare), site issues like outages or slowdowns.
- Notifications are alerts about when your advisors do something to a learning experience, such as assigning, approving, editing, or canceling it.
- Messages are direct communications from your advisors or fellow students.
- Quick Actions allows you to take very common actions, like creating a new experience, adding components to an experience, generating reports and transcripts, search the experience Warehouse for new project ideas, and other options.
- The Help button allows you to search this Knowledge Base for assistance with Foundry features and FAQ's.
- The Profile Manager allows you to change your password.
Nav Bar
The Nav bar (Blue for students) is below the Info Bar, and is made up of five main sections, or tabs (from left): Work To Do, Personal Learning Plan, Experiences, Performance, and Portfolio.
Next are the Calendar and Resources tabs, and a 'How To' button that will open a quick help video for whichever tab you are currently viewing. The name of the current tab you're on will always be highlighted, as with the Work To Do page above.
Work To Do
The Work To Do tab (or WTD, for short) is like your main work inbox. It's an interactive table that updates as you submit work to your advisor and they 'check' it in.
It will list all your individual learning experiences that aren't yet complete and any pieces of work attached to them that need either you or your advisor to review.
When you first login to Foundry, the WTD will probably be empty - until your advisor assigns a learning experience or your advisor approves one you requested.
Personal Learning Plan (PLP)
The Personal Learning Plan (or PLP) is like a your Foundry profile page.
It can contain a photo you upload, your personal statement, and individual academic, personal, and social goals. You can always add to and change these.
The PLP also shows your overall completion progress and links to your active learning experiences.
Depending on your school, there may be other boxes and features that show other information, like test scores, Lexile levels, or current performance in other learning programs, like ALEKS Math, No Red Ink, Rosetta Stone, etc.
Experiences
The Experiences tab holds all your learning experiences, in every stage of development- including your completed and canceled ones.
You can filter by date, status, or name, and sort by name status, or by any of the components of the experiences (learning logs, journals, evidence, tasks).
You can open any experience listed here to see the plan and any evaluation marks and comments your advisors have left.
Performance
The Performance tab shows in many graphic ways how much work you have completed and how well you have completed it.
You'll use this page to see how many learning targets or competencies you've completed - and at what level.
You can also see credits you've earned, and your advisors' comments on the experiences as a whole.
Portfolio
The Portfolio is a like a digital collection of all your work. Think of it like a filing cabinet for all the logs, journals, evidence and tasks you've completed, rather than a scrapbook.
Calendar
The Calendar page can be used by Advisors and Students to set important deadlines, meetings, etc.
Resources
The Resources tab will contain any resources your school expects you to use over and over again - not just for a single experience.
Examples might include login links to other software platforms, such as No Red Ink or Khan Academy, writing style manuals, your school or district homepage, etc.
Login Questions
Where Do I Access Foundry?
You can login to Foundry from any device connected to the internet.
It is a web-based application, which means you don't have to download anything to your device to use it. All you need is your Foundry site address, username, and your password.
What Is My Foundry Site Address?
All Foundry sites start with your school or organization's 'DNS' - which is like a web nickname - and end with projectfoundry.net.
Our demonstration school, Apple Valley Academy, uses AVA as its nickname, so the full site address is ava.projectfoundry.net. That's all you need to type into your web browser to launch Foundry. You'll see this screen:
Enter your username and password, click Log in, and you'll land on the Work To Do Page.
What If I Forget My Password?
Your organization's Foundry Admin will probably be responsible for creating student usernames. If you forget your password, just contact your Advisor or your Foundry Admin for a reminder.
Many organizations use email addresses as usernames. This is not required, but it's good practice. If your username is a valid email address*, you will see this message if you enter it in the username field:
If you check the 'Forgot Password' box, Foundry will send you a password reset email to that address.
*note: While Adam does work for Foundry and is the director of all things 'help,' this is not a real e-mail address. Do not send help requests to that address.
Foundry Basics
Roles
What do we mean by 'roles?' There are 5 types of 'roles' in Foundry, and every user has one or more roles assigned to them.
Which role(s) you have depend on what you do in your school. Since you are most likely a student, you will have only the Student role. If your organization is not a school, but you are the one doing the learning, or being trained, you will have the Student role.
Skip to Learning Experiences >
Other roles are Admin, Advisor, Coach, and Parent.
Admin users set up and maintain your organization's Foundry site. They add and manage users, learning targets, and scales, create and assign learning plans, and manage the forms used for learning experiences.
Basically, they work behind the scenes to make sure the Foundry tools you use are the right ones for your school. If you forget your Foundry password, reach out to your Foundry Admin!
Advisor users are responsible for guiding learning, assigning and approving learning experiences, and evaluating work.
If your organization is a school, they are generally your teachers, but your school may use the words 'coaches', 'advisors,' 'guides,' 'mentors,' 'trainers,' or other terms.
Parent users have access to Foundry to see their family members' work. When your parents or guardians log in to Foundry, they will see your current learning experiences and your progress on evaluated work.
Coach users are a part of some organizations when students work with community members outside of a school.
This doesn't mean your school's basketball coach. It could be a tutor, or a staff at a community service organization where students volunteer. Some schools enable this type of coach to view or comment student work to give feedback.
Learning Experiences
What do we mean by 'Learning Experience?' A learning experience is a specific plan created by an Advisor or Student to explore information and develop a specific skill or skills.
Learning comes in all kinds of shapes and flavors! A learning experience might be a 15-minute lesson, a 2-week project, or a year-long course - and these are just examples.
Many schools who have been using Foundry for a while teach students to design their own learning experiences, based on what they most want to learn.
Depending on your organization and your learning plan, you will use different types of planning forms to build experiences. The forms will hold things like guiding questions, resources, directions and tasks, the expected end product, and more.
Whatever you plan, the usual practice for Advisors and Students is to add one or more learning targets to an experience to show what students will learn.
Learning Targets
A 'Learning Target' in Foundry is a specific learning goal designed by your school (or organization). Your school may use words like competencies, standards, goals, or something else, but they mean the same thing in Foundry.
You may be very familiar with targets if you have ever learned in a school building and your teacher posts targets on the board or at the top of an assignment.
They could be in a 'content' area like Math or Language Arts, or they could be a different kind of skill, like Group Work or Communication. Each individual learning target is also part of a target group, and each target group is part of a larger subject.
An example would be:
Subject: Math > Group: Arithmetic > Target: "I can find the greatest common factor between two numbers."
These are designed by your Admin users in Foundry, and they are usually part of a Learning Plan assigned to you.
Learning targets are added to experiences so Advisors evaluate your progress. When you show mastery of a learning target - like using correct grammar in a sentence, citing a source in a paper, or solving a type of math equation - your Advisor marks those targets 'complete.' This moves you closer to completing your learning plan.
Learning Plans
A 'Learning Plan' is a group of learning targets selected by your school to show your progress at a larger scale. You might have a learning plan for '6th grade,' 'Graduation,' or 'Math Backpack 1,' depending on how your school or organization works.
If your school uses Learning Plans, completing your learning experiences and mastering your learning targets means you are on your way to completing your learning plan.
You can see your learning plan progress on the Performance Page.
Scales
Scales are the way your school or organization measures your performance on learning targets. Foundry Admin users create and manage these scales, and your Advisor will use these scales to mark your performance on learning targets.
You may be used to seeing scale marks on your progress reports or report cards. Letter grades like A, B, and C are a type of scale. Some schools use a number system, like 1-5. Others use words or phrases, like 'approaching,' 'meeting' or 'exceeding' expectations.
Scales can be used for learning targets and for letter grades, if your organization uses them.
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Quick Review: Learning Targets: What do I have to do? Learning Plans: How much do I have to do? Scales: How well do I have to do it? or really, How does what I do get measured? |
What Do I Do In Foundry?
Receive and Create Learning Experiences
Whether you or your Advisor create your learning experiences, most of your job in Foundry is to follow the plan for each experience and turn in the work assigned.
The learning experience might be made up of smaller assignments, like writing journals, recording time you spent on practicing a skill, or uploading your evidence of learning. Learning targets or competencies you are expected to master are generally attached to them.
You will see your active learning experiences listed on your Work To Do page, and all your learning experiences (including the ones you've completed) on the Experiences page.
You will get a notification when an experience changes 'status' - when you are assigned a new one, if you created one and your Advisor approved it etc.
Complete and Submit Work
Sometimes your work on a learning experience is broken into smaller parts - like journals or learning logs. As you complete these parts, your Advisor will see them on their Work To Do page and can leave comments.
When you are ready for a learning experience to be reviewed, you will 'Submit' it to your Advisor, who will evaluate it.
Read this article for more about Submitting Work.
Track Your Progress
As your Advisors evaluate your work in learning experiences, you can always see your progress on the Performance page.
You can see all the learning plans you are working on, all your learning targets, and all the marks you've earned on those targets.
You will also see a pie chart and bar graphs that show how far along you are in a learning plan, and you will see a table that shows how often you earn each 'mark' (or grade).
Read this article for more about the Performance Page.
Communicate With Advisors and Students
Foundry gives users two different ways to communicate with each other.
You can send messages to the other students in your group or on a learning experience. Or, you, your Advisors, and your fellow students can leave comments on learning experiences, journals, learning logs, and evidence.
Messages are stored in your mailbox at the top of your Foundry screen. Comments are tracked on your Work To Do page with colored dots for each item that receives a comment.
The main difference between them is that comments always live directly in the work items. Messages can be associated with a learning experience, but aren't attached to a particular part of the plan.
Manage Your Personal Learning Plan (PLP)
Your Personal Learning Plan is a bit like your Foundry Profile. It's a hub for your overall goals and progress. You can add your custom photo and personal statement, as well as other goals outside your Learning Plan. You'll see a list of your currently active learning experiences, your progress towards completing your learning plan, and other information, depending on how your school sets up PLP pages.
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