LeadScape is a collection of tools designed to support educators in general and school administrators in particular. Some people will just use the “Learning Resources” tools to collect and share information. All of these tools are available to the public for free without any registration requirement. However LeadScape is more then a collection of information it also contains “Tools for Change” which are tools that a school administrators can use privately or share with a select group of staff and collaborators. To access these tools you need to register as a user. The registration process happens in a few simple steps:

1. The user navigates to the registration page.
2. They search for and find their school in the database of all public schools.
3. They provide basic contact information and submit their registration.
4. At this point one of two things can happen:
   1. If the school has never used LeadScape before, our staff is notified of the request. Once the request is approved the user will be notified by email that their school's account has been setup. In most cases they will be setup as the initial “Group Leader” for the school. A school can have many leaders and among other tasks a leader is responsible for approving new members of the group and defining their roles. Should the need arise the leader can delegate their role to someone else either in-part or entirely.
   2. If the school is already using LeadScape then the current group leader will make the decision to approve the new user. One approved, the new user will be able to see most of the tools the school is using. As they become more active on the site the leader may choose to make them members to any of several tool specific teams, or perhaps even delegate leadership of the team to them.

Now that the you are registered as a user at a specific school it's important to understand the roles you might have within that school. We'll talk briefly about each of these roles next:

A registered user is a user who is logged into the LeadScape system with a username and password. They can manage their preferences, edit their public profile on the wiki and manage their personal “todo” list using the task tracker. The may also setup and use a calendaring tool and have personal in-box for receiving messages for the system and other users. Most users of the system are members of at least one school group. As a group member they get access to more tools.

In general, a group member can use the tools associated with that group. For example, you are probably a member of a “school group”. This gives you access to the school's tools. You can for example: contribute to the school's wiki; see various “data maps” of the school; and participate in the school's task tracker to see who is working on what and how it's going. Some tools have their own groups within the school. These “team groups” are responsible for working with those tools specifically and reporting back to the larger community. In later sections we'll talk about two of those groups in particular: the "SIF Team", and the "SIP Team". The “SIF Team” is responsible for managing the student data that informs the school maps. A “SIP Team” is responsible for drafting and editing a school improvement plan.

Every group needs a leader. Some groups need more then one. As the leader of a group you are responsible for managing the groups membership. This means you will be notified of an request to join the group and that you can invite new users to join LeadScape as part of the group or promote existing users into the group. You can also make other members co-leaders. Sometimes there is a need to have smaller teams within a larger group. For example, consider your school. The school group consists of its staff and perhaps some members from the community. Its leader is likely the principal and/or perhaps an administrator the principal has delegated to. Whenever these sorts of “sub-groups” or teams are needed the leaders of the large group will be able to create them. The creators of a group starts out as the leader and can ether stay the leader or delegate this role to another user. For example, a school may want to create a school improvement plan and needs to setup a team to do that. As the school's group leader you will be have that opportunity whenever you go to the school improvement plan tool. Initially you will be the leader of the new plan's team, and, unless you are running a whole school by yourself, you will likely want to invite someone else to share or even take over leadership. The same scenario is true for the student information database that drives the data maps. While we work directly with you're district to “sync” most of the data for the maps, some data is not yet available or managed in the district-wide database (for example discipline or RTI interventions). A “SIF Team” is needed to manage this data and as the school's leader you will be the setup as the initial team member and leader.

LeadScape staff work directly with the district's IT departments to “sync” most of the student data needed to generate the classroom maps. However, some data is not yet available or managed in the district-wide database (for example discipline or RTI interventions). SIF Team members can see and in most cases edit detailed data on each individual student's demographic, academic and disciple record. They may also be able to see and manage data on teachers, classrooms, class assignments, standardized assesments, etc. The leader of a SIF team, like the leader of any group, can manage the members of the team.

A SIP Team manages an individual school improvement plan. A school might have several plans over time and each plan will get their own team. The leader of a SIP team, like the leader of any group, can manage the members of the team. The members of the team will edit the plan and will be recognized as a contributor on the final document. Frequently they are also assigned tasks associated with each actionable item in the plan but there is no strict requirement that a task be assigned directly to a SIP team member.

Other groups currently exist and will be added to the LeadScape. They work in a similar fashion to the ones we just described. e.g. A District group is responsible for managing the school groups within the district and may see tools specific to the district the the school cannot see. A “Classroom” or “Teacher” group might be added to manage a single class of students. The most powerful group is the “Site Administrators” group. It's members are all LeadScape staff. They are responsible for managing the site as a whole and can see and configure any other groups membership. One important thing to note is that these users don't automatically get to see or edit your content just because they are an “administrator”. For example, a site administrator can NOT directly see your student data. As a site administrator, if I wanted to to that I would first need to add myself to your SIF group (and as the SIF Team Leader you would be immediately notified by email). The same goes for district users. In general, if a user does not show up as part of a tools team they have no access to it. Keep this in mind when working with LeadScape or district staff. They can't automatically see what you see and may have to join your teams to work with you.