How to create a district reading challenge

The Basics

• On your school district's Beanstack site, you can create and publish reading challenges for all the schools in your district from one place.
• Find the district challenge creator on your district site by navigating to Challenges and selecting Create a Challenge.
• Select the type of challenge you'd like to run, and then either pick a challenge template or start from scratch. Check out the types of challenges available and browse our creation guides. 
• Walk through each tab to adjust your challenge settings, add your badges, set completion requirements, and—if applicable—add reading list titlesor a bingo card. 

Testing and Publishing Your District Challenge

Before you get started, it's important to know that district challenges cannot be edited after publishing to schools. Thoroughly review your challenge in your administrative interface and publish for testing before publishing to schools. 

First, test:

1. While your challenge is in Draft mode, review it by selecting the eye icon in your challenge dashboard; edit it by selecting the pencil icon.
2. To publish for testing, make sure "Publish to schools" is OFF, change the dropdown in the top right from Draft to Published, and Save. Your challenge will now appear in the Demo Challenges tab of your Manage Challenges page.
3. Navigate to the reader experience to view, enroll, and participate in your challenge. 
4. When you're satisfied with your challenge, duplicate it using the "plus" icon and continue following the steps below.

Then, publish to school sites:

1. Be sure to remove "Copy of" from your challenge's title!
2. In the Challenge Publishing & Enrollment section, select which school(s) you want to send the challenge to, and if you want their eligible students to be automatically enrolled. 
3. Change the dropdown in the top right from Draft to Published and Save. Review the information in the confirmation message and publish your challenge.

School Media Specialist Editing Abilities

School media specialists can make the following types of edits to district challenges for their individual schools:

• Add rewards and/or tickets to badges
• In a reading list challenge, delete title and add links to a titles
• Edit the start and end date, age/grade availability, challenge description, and challenge banner
• Delete the challenge

School media specialists cannot make the following types of edits to district challenges for their individual schools: 

• School Media Specialists cannot edit existing badges 
• School Media Specialists cannot add additional badges, including activity or review badge

Restrictions on District Reading Challenges

• Rewards: Rewards and drawings cannot be added to challenges at the district level (though media specialists can add rewards to these challenges once they are published on individual school sites).

• Start and end dates are required.

• Log types: Ensure your district challenge's log type matches the log types activated on individual school sites.

• Additionally, the following functionality is not available for district challenges:

  • Fundraisers

  • Certificates

  • Staff only

  • Badge date restrictions