1. An Introduction to Abre Class

The Abre Class App provides teachers and students with a simplified learning management system (LMS). Teachers, admins, students, and families can easily stay on the same page.

The Class App fully integrates with your Student Information System and other Abre Apps such as Assessments and Curriculum. Teachers can create full-featured activities, including lessons, assignments, and presentations. Activities, grades, and feedback are viewable by students and their families.

A Note About Playbooks

This playbook is adaptable. We work with many customers. There are many commonalities between customers. But there are also customized components. You can customize the elements of this playbook to fit your need.

With that said, our playbooks are geared towards simplicity. Simplicity is a foundational value to us at Abre.

Our playbooks are also geared to take into consideration all stakeholders. This helps reinforce the simplicity.

Every Playbook Comes with a Project Plan

When you get an Abre Playbook, you also get a corresponding project plan. The project plan tracks who does what and what due dates exist. In help assure fidelity to the playbook.

Why Abre Class?

Schools have many choices when it comes to picking an LMS. From Google Classroom, to Schoology, to Canvas and Moodle – the space is quite crowded.

However, all those LMSs tend to be siloed. They are an application (albeit a large application) that doesn’t typically play nice with other programs in the school. Abre is the anti-silo. Abre Class is open to integrating with many sources, be they external sources or internal.

We’ve also found in our product research that stakeholders desire simple solutions. Abre Class is designed to be simple so teachers and students can stay focused on learning.

Quick Note about Student Information System (SIS) Integration

In order for your classes to appear, you need to have classes in your Student Information System! If you’re not rostered to a class, or if a student is not rostered to a class, you will not see the classes.

Teachers do have the ability to add co-teachers (more on that in a bit), so if you coteach a class but aren’t technically rostered in the SIS, you can still gain access.

Please note that SIS integration may not be in real time. Syncs sometimes happen at night. What that means is new students may not be in the class immediately.

The Structure of this Playbook

Playbooks feature Milestones. Think of Milestones as major segments of a project plan. You may sometimes be able to skip Milestones based on your Abre setup and use case.

Throughout this playbook we will feature Best Practices for using the Class App. Teaching can be highly personalized, and this app (more than any other app) can be very adaptive.

Who is Using this Playbook

Playbooks are typically used by the lead Abre contact of a school or district. Essentially, the project lead.

With Abre Class, that usually means an administrator (perhaps the Director of Instruction).

IMPORTANT

Most of the milestones in this playbook describe actions taken by TEACHERS, not by administrators. We don’t usually share playbooks and project plans with teachers. Rather, we create Learn Courses that teach teachers how to accomplish the milestones described in a playbook.

Because most of these milestones apply to teachers, you may want to change the order of them and start with the Professional Development Milestone.

Basic Vocabulary and Structure

The Abre Class App features a number of classes. These classes are synced to rostered classes from the SIS.

Classes are grouped by:

• My classes (the classes you have rostered to you)
• Shared classes (classes you coteach)
• All Classes (for administrators – the ability to find any class in the school)

Each class consists of:

1. Announcements (for communication)
2. Activities (an “activity” a student completes)
3. People (people in the class)
4. Settings

Activities are sometimes compared to assignments. They work the same way. Activities do not require a grade.