1. IS
  2. Buzz K–5
  3. Buzz K–5
  4. Buzz resources

Buzz Glossary

Educators can use this page to learn the terms and terminology used within the Buzz system.

  • Activities: The Activities tool displays the Course Home pages for the selected course. Teachers can use this view to access what their students are seeing.
  • Activity Editor: Course authors use the Activity Editor to create and revise activity content and configurations.
  • Activity Stream: The Activity Stream appears on the Home page as well as on the Course home pages for students. This will show students their activity history, starting from the most recent. Users can click each entry to open the activity, badge or announcement list.
  • Activity Types: In the Editor of a course, users can add new activities, edit existing ones and other configurations to the following:
      • Assessment
      • Assignment
      • Blog
      • Custom Activity
      • Discussion
      • Emended Code
      • File Attachment
      • Google Drive Document
      • Journal
      • Peer Assessment
      • Practice Questions
      • Project
      • Rich-Text Activity
      • RSS Feed
      • Survey
      • Website Link
      • Wiki
      • YouTube Video
  • Announcements: Announcements are messages that can be sent to all members of one or more courses. They appear on the Home and Course Home pages above the To-Do list in the Communications tool. ************
  • Assessment/Assignment – Activity Types:
      • Assessment: Assessments are gradable, question-based activities that use questions you create and/or link from question banks. Each question can be aligned with specific objectives in the course, and student performance on objectives can be used to make formative or remediation assessments. Students are required to complete assessments according to conditions set by the course author and submit all answers at once. Assessments are automatically graded and can be password protected.
      • Assignment: Assignments are gradable activities that you create using a rich text editor. Students complete assignment activities in their own time and are expected to indicate completion according to conditions set by the course author (e.g., attach a file to a dropbox, enter findings in a text box). Assignments can also be set up to accompany non-digital submissions.
      • Custom Activity: Custom Activities allow you to embed SCORM activities, display external web sites, or create gradable activities using styles and scripts that aren't available with Buzz authoring tools. Because it provides greater customization options, these are best suited for advanced users.
      • Discussion: Discussions allow you to create a learning activity in which students can respond to a prompt and interact with other students as part of focused conversation threads. All course members can add to and access the thread unless it is organized by groups, in which case each student can access only their group's threads. ***
      • Embed Code: Embed Code to create an activity using HTML; most often, these are HTML snippets provided by other sites. By default, this item is not gradable; you can make it gradable using the activity editor.
      • File Attachment: Quickly upload a document for student. By default, this item is not gradable: you can make it gradable using the activity editor.
      • Flashcards: Flashcards are non-gradable activities designed to allow learners to review content and help them commit it to memory.
        Authors can add text or an image to each side of each card. Learners see the front of the card, and try to remember, imagine, guess, etc, what's on the other side. Flashcard activities are marked complete when a learner has flipped all of the cards in the activity.
      • Google Drive Document: Use a Google Drive Document as an activity. Your Google Drive must be configured for use. By default, this item is not gradable; can be made gradable within the editor of the activity.
      • Journal: Journals are assigned writhing exercises that only the authoring student, the teacher and he student’s parent or other observer can access.
      • Peer Assessment: Peer Assessments allow the students to evaluate their peers’ performance using a rubric you provide.
      • Practice Questions: Practice Questions are gradable, question-based activities that use questions you create and/or link question banks. This activity is similar to assessments, but, unlike assessments, students can submit, review, and retake each question at a time. For instant feedback, this activity should only contain automatically graded questions.
      • Project: Projects allow you to quickly and easily create robust and organized project activities. You can automatically include a Discussion, Blog, Wiki, and/or Journal, as well as add additional components.
      • Rich-Text Activity: This activity type is best suited for delivering information. It allows course authors to create activities using a rich text editor. By default, this item is not gradable; you can make it gradable using the activity editor.
      • Website Link: Link to websites for students. By default, this item is not gradable but can be made gradable in the activity editor.
      • YouTube Video: Embed a YouTube video for students. By default, this item is not gradable but can be made gradable in the activity editor.
  • Badges: Badges can be awarded to recognize and encourage students. Buzz allows for two types of badges:
      • Automatic badges are configured to be automatically awarded to students by Buzz when they complete an activity, unit, or course.
      • Teacher-assigned badges are configured to be assigned by teachers to reward a specific achievement or behavior. Teachers can choose from badges in specific categories (e.g., leadership, scholarship, service, etc.) and provide personalized comments and/or evidence, so students know why they're being recognized.
  • Calendar: The Calendar displays due date notifications that are color-coded by course. Users can select a date or view to see activities listed on the left.
  • Clipboard: Teachers can use the Clipboard to quickly provide personalized attention to individuals and groups of students. It is always available in the toolbar for ease of use, and teachers can assign activities and award badges.
  • Comma-Separated Values (CSV) Files: CSV files are editable by spreadsheet applications like KSpread, OpenOffice Calc and Microsoft Excel. Buzz reports are generated as CSV files. You must also use CSV or tab-delimited values text (.txt) files when downloading reports generated in Buzz.
  • Contextual Help: Buzz provides contextual help, meaning that, when you click on the Help button, Buzz directs you to information based on the page you are on.
  • Course Chooser: The Course Chooser is a dropdown menu next to the Main Menu that includes all courses a user has access to. Users can open it and jump to another course at any time.
  • Course Home: Course Home pages are the Activity tool’s landing pages. They display course announcements, the To-Do List, the course activities, course links, and, for students, it displays current sore and the Activity Stream.
  • Course Links: Course Links are provided by course authors using the Editor. These links are significant to students' understanding and performance in a course, and students can access them by opening the Course Links dropdown in the toolbar on Course Home pages.
  • Curve: Buzz allows you to apply a grade curve to an assignment by specifying a max score that is lower than the default, and scaling the student grades to that value. This improves scores for all students that are displayed.
  • Digital Library: Course authors can access content from various online resources from the Digital Library. These can include other courses within their district or organization as well as open sources like OpenEd and Khan Academy.
  • Domain: A Domain houses courses, users, enrollments and the data associated with each. Administrators manage this data and configures the domain settings.
  • Editor: Course authors can plan, build and manage course content using the Editor.
  • Enrollments: An enrollment is a user’s associated with a course.
  • Feedback Indicators: Icon that indicates that a teacher has provided feedback for an activity. It appears anywhere teacher and students see an activity score displayed, and give users access to the feedback. Teachers can turn off feedback indicators off on their Performance > Gradesscreen by clicking Options in the toolbar.
  • For Me: The For Me report displays all activities a student has created or chosen, as well as activities the teacher has created specifically for the student.
  • Formative Assessment: Formative Assessments evaluate student performance in relationship to objectives that are aligned to the assessment questions. If students perform well enough to demonstrate mastery of any objectives, Buzz allows them to skip activities meant to teach those objectives.
  • Grade Weights: Teachers assign a number value to every gradable activity representing its weight in the grade book. This number defines how much impact each activity’s grade has on the final grade relative to other activities in the category and/or course; relativity is determined by comparing each assigned weight value.
    When using Multi-Outcome Scoring, you can also assign weight to outcomes to determine how much impact each outcome has on the grade.
  • Gradebook Settings: Content authors encounter this section when editing an activity and can complete the fields to specify due dates and scoring details.
  • Grading Schemes: Grading schemes are criteria-based models for measuring performance. When creating a grading scheme, course authors define things like which activities are graded and which aren't, how much they are worth, how much their worth is weighted compared to other activities and activity types, what constitutes a passing grade, and in what way grades are communicated (e.g., letter grades, percentages, GPAs, etc.,).Teachers and course authors create a default grading scheme when they build a course and they can create alternative class-wide grading schemes using the Final Grades screen.
  • Group Prefix: A Group Prefix is the common identifier applies to all groups in a Group Set to show they’re pare of the same Group Set.
  • Group Set: A teacher can group the same class in carious ways; each different grouping is a Group Set.
  • Home: Home is Buzz’s landing page and staring point for navigating the app. It displays current announcements for all courses, the To-Do list for all courses, and Course Cards.
  • Links: The Link tool lists resources that are important to a course.
  • Main Menu: The Main Menu is on the far left of the toolbar. With it, users can navigate between Buzz’s tools.
  • Mastery: Teachers can review the Mastery list in the Performance tool. There, each objective that is linked to one or more course activity is listed along with an indication of how well the class seems to be mastering it.
  • Mastery Reports: Teachers and Administrators can run Mastery Reports. They are generated as spreadsheets that provide a high-level perspective on student performance in relationship to educational standards.
  • Metadata: Content Authors encounter this section when editing an activity and can complete the fields to provide additional information about the activity.
  • Multi-Outcome Scoring: The Multi-Objective Scoring gradebook allows course authors to create multiple desired outcomes for students, align them to activities with varied weights, and track performance against them.
  • Objective Map: An Objective Map is a group of defined correlations between Objectives in different Objective Sets (a collection of objectives that belong together).
    If a course needs to align activities with objectives from different sets, you can create an objective map to show which objectives should be correlated between those sets. For example, if Objective 1 from Objective Set 1 covers simliar criteria as Objective 2 from Objectives Set 2, and you need students to meet both, you would correlate those objectives. This is most frequently done to align state standards with a national standard.
  • Objective Mastery: Students can access the Objective Master screen from the Performance tool. It displays course objectives, which activities they are aligned with, and the student's progress in mastering each objective (in percentages).
  • Objective Mastery Threshold: The objective mastery threshold is the percentage of points a student has to earn on an objective-aligned activity to show mastery of that objective. If an objective is aligned with multiple activities, Buzz uses the average.
  • Objective Set: A grouped collection of relate Objectives. Objective Sets are defined at the Domain level.
  • Objectives: Course authors create Course Objectives by creating activities based on educational Standards and showing/describing how the activities meet those standards
  • Override Complete: The Override Complete button is available when grading. If a teacher has designed an activity require students to successfully complete it before they can continue to other activities, the teacher can use Override Complete to remove the requirement, allowing the student to move on.
  • Peer Help: When activated, peer help allows students to see which of their classmates have completed an assignment, so they can engage them for help. Students access this information by clicking a Peer Help button in the toolbar of the Activities tool; the icon only appears when the feature is enabled by the admin and an activity has been completed by at least one student.
  • People: The People tool gives teachers at-a-glance access to various student data points in one simple table. They can use it to track student progress, create and manage groups, and more.
  • Performance: The Performance tool enables users to track student progress in many areas.
  • Proxy: A user with the appropriate permissions can sign into another user’s Buzz account; when doing this they are considered that user’s proxy.
  • Remediation Assessments: Remediation assessments are given to evaluate student performance on material they should have learned, and give them the opportunity to return to material they haven't mastered. When students fail to demonstrate mastery of aligned objectives on the remediation assessment, Buzz automatically identifies activities meant to teach to those objectives and suggest that students return to review them.
  • Rubric: A scoring guide used to indicate activity expectations, possible performance outcomes, and scores associated with them.
  • Scoring Outcomes: When the Multi-Outcome Scoring gradebook is set up, a course author is able to align activities with various scoring outcomes by which they can assess student performance.
  • Self Assessment: The Self Assessment feature allows students to evaluate their personal understanding, interest, and effort in a course using a simple four-point scale for each. Teachers can easily access these assessments and use them to guide intervention and personalized attention.
  • Self-Assigned Tasks: When enabled, students can assign themselves tasks; they are called "self-assigned" in the For Me section of Performance. Creating and completing self-assigned tasks helps students manage their time and direct their own learning path.
  • Sidebar Navigation: Course authors build courses using a vertical folder structure. This structure appears as the sidebar navigation in in the Activities tool and on Course Home pages. In User Settings, users can choose to use a full-view version of it with expandable/collapsible folders or to use a simplified view that shows only the contents of the currently selected folder.
  • Standards: Educational Standards describe what students should know and be able to do at a specific stage of their education. Within Buzz, they are managed at the district or organizational level, and teachers use them to build activities and learning objectives.
  • Student Reports: Teachers and admins can run Student Reports. They are generated as spreadsheets that provide a high-level perspective on individual student performance.
  • Tab-Delimited Values Text Files: Tab-delimited values files are text files (.txt) formatted to store data in tables. When importing course, user, and enrollments data into Buzz, you must tab-delimited or comma-separated values (CSV) files.
  • To-Do List: For students, the To-Do List displays all past-due dates coming up within seven days. For teachers, it displays student submissions in need of attention.
  • User Menu: The User Menu is on the far right of the toolbar. With it, users can manage their account and themes, learn more about Buzz and logout.
  • Variables: Replacement variables allow course authors to personalize content for students, randomize assessment content, and easily keep parts of a course updated.
  • Visibility and Completion: Content authors encounter this section when editing an activity and can complete the fields to specify when and where students can find the activity and how to complete it.
  • What If Calculator: The What If Calculator lets users project possible grade outcomes based on hypothetical scores on activities.

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