Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Here's some of the new features for PowerTeacher coming in the Fall

Teachers,

PowerSchool is being upgraded during the summer to PowerTeacher 1.6. At a meeting in early May, one of the Pearson representatives shared with a user group some of the changes. Here are some things you may find interesting:

*You will be able to copy Multiple assignments into any class - at present you had to do them one at a time.

*Standards can also be entered in the gradebook and can now be seen by parents in the Quick Lookup (standards for grades 1-4 are the "Behaves appropriately, completes tasks on time, etc.) For kindergarten this means that parents will be able to see the measurements on line.

*The comment field will now have a 4000 character limit. Keep in mind though that our report cards will not accomodate that amount to be printed in the comment boxes.

As I learn more I will be more than happy to share :)

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Not enough space on Report Cards for comments?

Teachers,

The report cards we use in PowerSchool are set up in the same format as the hand written report cards. Just as the former paper copies, the space allotted for each quarter for comments is limited. Some teachers would like to take advantage of the ability to write more in depth for each child and would like more space. This seems to be more of a problem for middle level grades than lower grades since the student has many more teachers. More space on the report card is not possible, however, there is another avenue you can take.

Teacher comments can be entered through the "backpack." Although these comments do not appear on the report card it allows the teacher to write more verbiage than to share space with other teachers for the limited space on the report card. The report card comment can then read, "Please log onto your child's account and view the comments above your child's grades for (name of the subject) class."

Friday, March 27, 2009

Getting ready to Verify grades for Report Cards

Teachers,

The third marking period is upon us. Your school office will let you know the cut off date for adding grades for this marking period. Remember, if you are entering grades after Friday, March 27th you must make sure you use a date of March 27th or before in order for the grades to calculate in the third marking period.

Kindergarten grades and grades 1-8 checks and pluses are found in PowerTeacher, through the backpack in the homeroom section only (grades 1-4, subject level for grades 5-8.)

Grades must be VERIFIED to the school office prior to closing date. You can use either the Progress report in PowerTeacher under Reports, or the Final grade and verification report in Power Teacher. Either way, make sure that the grades are correct - changing them later is difficult and can not be done at the school level.

Questions? E-mail me.

Monday, March 09, 2009

Important!! Upgrade will occur on March 31st

Teachers,

An important upgrade is set for Tuesday, March 31st at 3 pm. This upgrade will fix a few issues that are important in all areas of PowerSchool. The ones that affect you the most are: Marking period dates are recorded correctly, the gradebook will now launch with JAVA version 6, and parents will now be able to SEE the checkmarks, late and missing icons!

PowerSchool should be down no more than a few hours. Please make sure you are not logged on and working in the program at this time or you will lose any information that was not saved correctly.

Thank you for your cooperation,
Adele

Monday, March 02, 2009

A Podcast on Completing Report Cards

I'm rerunning a podcast I did over a year ago on how to get ready for report cards. Click on the play button to listen.


reportcard.mp3

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Reminder - Clear out Progress Report comments before Report Card printing

Teachers,

Now that the 3rd marking period comments have been sent in Progress Reports, you will probably want to clear them out prior to the printing of report cards. Most of the time those comments will no longer apply. In the beginning of this school year you needed to go into each child's quarter grade and open the comment and delete it. Since we had the upgrade in December there is an easier way to mass delete comments for all the children. Open up Fill Final Grades by right clicking on the quarter final grade for any student in the class with a comment (little blue "c".) Once you have Fill Final Grades open,first click in "replace all", then click on the "Manual Override" box and last at the bottom click in "Comment." Delete the comment in the box and click "Ok." All comments will be deleted and you will see the little red "i" in the grade column. This just shows that an override took place. You are then able to use the Score Inspector to add any new comments needed for 3rd marking period or any marking period of the school year.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

***My 100th Post!*** And, 3rd quarter Progress Reports are now available

Happy 100th Post!!!

Too bad I didn't have the forethought to have it coincide last week with 100 days of school! Anyway, for those of you who use the Progress Reports to send mid quarter reminders to parents, the 3rd quarter data is now available. To run the reports, click on the little printer icon on the right side of your screen in PowerTeacher (in Homeroom only) and then choose the report from the menu (it will have some version of Progress Report in the title.) The report will be created for all of the children in the homeroom, however you can print it for all or chose individual reports. This report contains up to date information so as the gradebook changes running this report again will change.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

New Info Regarding JAVA updates

Teachers,

Pearson has sent a notice regarding updates for JAVA. Since some teachers have been experiencing an issue lately, please read the following and see if it pertains to you:

"An issue has been discovered with the recent release of Java 1.6.0_12, which prevents PowerTeacher 1.5 from launching on Windows clients. Teacher workstations should not be updated to this version of Java until this issue has been addressed. If a workstation has already been updated, reverting to Java 1.6.0_11 will restore PowerTeacher 1.5 functionality."

Adele

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

If you override the Final Quarter Grade

Teachers,

This is an issue especially with those teachers who teach specialized subjects - if you override the quarter grade you MUST give a corresponding number to validate the grade for printing on the report card. For instance, if you override the grade using the Score Inspector and give a student a VG, you must insert a numerical value as well or the system counts the grade as "0" and will not print the letter since it has a value of zero.

Schools need to have all grades verified prior to storing grades for printing. Please follow the above directive to ensure your grades are saved and printed correctly. This will save valuable time and paper for the school office.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

End of Second Marking Period is January 23rd

Teachers,

The end of the marking period is here. Please remember, if you are adding assignments and grades during the weekend for the second marking period, you MUST date the assignment either January 23rd or before. Anything dated January 24th or beyond will count as 3rd marking period. Also note, you will not be able to see attendance for the quarter in your attendance view. If you need for any reason the absent or late dates for the 2nd marking period you can click on the child's Quick Lookup and click on the year totals for the the dates.

For reminders of pluses and checks and comments - see previous blog entries around November.

Keep warm!
Adele

Thursday, January 15, 2009

URGENT - A Necessary Upgrade for January 15-16, 2009

Teachers,

We apologize for the short notice, but PowerSchool will not be available from just after midnight tonight, January 15th until midday tomorrow, January 16th. You will NOT BE ABLE TO TAKE ATTENDANCE OR INPUT GRADES AT THAT TIME. Once the system is back up in the afternoon you will be informed and you can then take attendance.

Thank you for your patience, this upgrade will help all teachers who use category weighing.

Adele

Friday, January 09, 2009

Kindergarten teachers - your report cards are standards based

Teachers,

The elementary teachers who use the pluses and "x's" for behavioral and academic standing use them for an "as needed" basis. For the kindergarten teachers, the whole report card uses standards and is created in the same place.

Kindergarten teachers complete their report cards from the "backpack" in PowerTeacher. Click on the "backpack" from homeroom and choose a child's name on the left side. In the upper right hand corner, click on the choice arrow and choose "Final Grade Entry Standards." Complete all standards for quarter 2 and click submit on the bottom of the screen. Standard grades do not go through the storing process that other grades do which means the kindergarten teacher can change standards as necessary.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

New Features of the PowerTeacher Grade Book Part II

Teachers,

With 2009 we have upgraded to the new 1.5 PowerTeacher Gradebook. It still uses Java, however, again, do NOT upgrade to the latest version 6, the program still only works with JAVA 5 - up to version 17. If you have any problems with the JAVA please e-mail me and we will see how to work through it.

Here are some pictures of the changes - no new training is necessary. This is the last 3 of 7, the December 30th post has the first 4:

You'll notice now when you "right click" on the quarter or final grade you not only have the option of using "Score Inspector" but you also have the option to use the "Fill Scores" feature. This would be most helpful for specialized teachers.



In this next picture,it's my favorite new feature - Spell Check! Notice as I typed a word wrong the red line appears below it to show me a misspelling. I right click on the word and the program gives me correct spelling options to choose from similar to any word processing program.



In the final picture in this blog entry, notice the new look of the "Fill Scores" option. You can now choose more than one type of entry - "Late" as well as a score. There is a separate tab for comments that are from the diocese in the "canned comments" section.



More information in 2009!

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Here's what's new in the new Gradebook! Part I

Happy New Year Teachers!

With 2009 we have upgraded to the new 1.5 PowerTeacher Gradebook. It still uses Java, however, again, do NOT upgrade to the latest version 6, the program still only works with JAVA 5 - up to version 17. If you have any problems with the JAVA please e-mail me and we will see how to work through it.

Here are some pictures of the changes - no new training is necessary. This is the first 4 of 7:



In this picture you can now see your "Categories" in the lower left hand side of your gradebook. You can also still reach the Category box using Tools-Categories. This makes it easier to see the categories for each class while you are creating assignments. This will help eliminate category weighing issues when the teacher uses the categories correctly.



In the second picture you can see two other new views. On the upper left you can see the quarter is listed as "Quarter in progress." Toward the right hand side you are able to view assignments by the assignment or final grade. The assignment view allows you to see the grade for the assignment while the final grade view allows the user to see the points earned versus the points possible.



You will notice in this third picture that the "Class Info" button is replaced by a "Class Content" button. The Class Content tab allows the user to type in information for the parents regarding the class description the same as the prior application. The addition has three buttons above the description box - Class Info, School Content and My Content. My Content allows you to add links to websites that are for you, the teacher to keep. These links stay with you EVERY YEAR NO MATTER WHICH CLASSES YOU TEACH. It is a great way to keep links to send to families or help with your lessons.

This fourth picture shares the information you can fill in for your Content Folder. School Content is a way for the school or diocese to place links and websites to use, however you can not add or delete them.



Part II will be posted tomorrow.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Scheduled Maintenance for December 16th

Teachers,

Holiday blessings to you all! In anticipation of the new upgrades to PowerTeacher, we have scheduled a maintenance upgrade for December 26 -29th. If the upgrade is assisted by Pearson, we will experience short intermittent downtimes. If you can not log onto the system during that time, please try back later. Any changes that occur from the upgrade will be posted here.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Adele

Monday, December 15, 2008

Reminder on how to put comments on the Progress Report

Teachers,

To put comments for Progress Reports or report cards, you MUST enter them through your gradebook - the comments you enter through the "backpack" in PowerTeacher DO NOT go in either of these places. Grades K-4 MUST put comments in homeroom for them to print, Grades 5-8 can put comments in by subject. This includes specials. Specials for Grades K-4 who have comments must submit them to the homeroom teacher.

To enter a comment, open you gradebook. Make sure that the quarter showing is the one you in which you want the comment to appear. Then right click on the quarter grade and the only choice you should have is Score Inspector. (Click on the image to see it bigger. To go back to this page, click the back arrow on the top of your screen.)



Once the Score Inspector is open, you can choose to hand write your own comments or choose comments from the comment bank. You can use the arrows next to the child's name to move from child to child. There is no save button, the comments automatically save. You will see a small blue "C" once you close the Score Inspector. If you want to change the comment you simple have to follow the directions above again and make the changes.

Repeating directions for using the Progress Report - Quarter 2

Teachers,

I have created a progress report that can be used at anytime and puts all grades and comments on one piece of paper for each child. Here's how you use it:

First, it can only be used by the homeroom teacher. Also, you can click on each of my pictures in this post to make them larger. Once you view them you can click the "back arrow" on your screen to go back to the directions and blog.

Click on the picture of the printer from PowerTeacher.


Then choose the report that has "Progress Report" in its name.



Once the Report Queue screen appears, you will see the word "running" on the right hand side. This means you need to click on the blue word "refresh" on the page until the word running turns into the word "completed."





Once you click on the word "completed" it will open up in a .pdf file (you need Adobe to do this, its free.) Then you can print the reports you want to send. It prints the whole class in the pdf file, however, you can choose to print some students from the Print screen.

Monday, November 24, 2008

News regarding PowerTeacher 1.5 - to be released sometime in December

Teachers,

I spoke during the summer of an upgrade to PowerTeacher that would be available around the holiday time. The release is set to happen in mid December and here is what I have found so far that it will contain:

* The ability to import scores

*A "final grades mode" button for you to let the office know your grades are ready to be published to the report cards

*A "mouse over" for comments, which means if you put your mouse over the area where you added a comment you will be able to see the comment without needing to click and reopen Score Inspector

*The Categories box has now been moved to the same place as the other icons on top of the page so you will no longer have to go to "Tools" to open create categories

What is NOT in the upgrade is a Seating Chart, something that was mentioned originally. There is a seating chart program that I can obtain from another company so I will look into it after the upgrade.

I will keep you informed as I receive information.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Adele

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Good News! Checks and Plus marks can be input by the subject teachers

Thank you to Donna Haggerty of St. Augustine of Canterbury School for providing me data to help with a puzzling question: can we input our own check and plus marks?

In the past it could only be done by the homeroom teacher, however, one of the latest upgrades must have made it available to all teachers for the middle school grades. In order to input checks and plus marks go into PowerTeacher, click on the "backpack" and then choose one of the children. On the right side, click on the arrow and choose "Final Grade Entry (Standards). Input check and plus marks under Q1 by using the drop down arrows under your subject heading.

Adele

Monday, November 03, 2008

Faqs regarding preparation for Report Cards

Teachers,

The following must be done before report cards can be printed:

1) Input all assignment grades that are part of the first marking period(date should be no later than November 7th.)

2) Checks and plus signs need to be completed (see previous blog entry dated November 2nd.)

3) Comments need to be added to the quarter grade (see blog entry from September 29th.) Comments should be used sparingly - if you need to write more than one or two comments, set up a conference with the parent. Remember, anything you have in writing can be interpreted many ways by the viewer. Some things are better said than read.

4) If any grades require adjustment for any reason (quarter final grades) they can only be done by the score inspector (this information is also on this blog - 2 posts down.)

Once all of the above steps are done you need to let your principal, the office staff, or PowerSchool administrator know. Once all teachers, including special subject teachers have completed these steps in the required deadline announced at the school, report cards can then be printed.

Report cards look exactly like the ones you've been writing on in previous years. They can not be created for you to view and then make adjustments. Once the grades are stored changing them is a time consuming process. Please follow the above information for a successful report card printing.