You have entered scores for your students throughout the trimester. As you have entered your scores, you have even clicked the “Save” button periodically.



You also know that your work has been saved when the “Save” button is grayed out. (This is pictured above.)

In spite of all of this effort, there are no final grades showing up in your Web Gradebook. What do you do? Make the Final Grade column in the Web Gradebook wider than it currently is, and the information that you want to see will magically appear!



How do you do this?
1. Move your mouse over the right border of the column, the line that separates the final grades from the rest of the assignments going off to the right.


When you do this, the mouse will change from being a single, big arrow to being a small line with arrows coming out from it in both directions (right and left).



2. Now, click your mouse button and hold it down. Then, drag your mouse to the right. This will expand the width of your column.


As you do this, you will see your data appear in that column!

Another way to see your final grades (and all of a student’s final grades) is by going in to Quick Lookup for a particular student. You can do so in PowerTeacher (the regular web interface rather than the Gradebook specifically). From the PowerTeacher Start Page, just click on the backpack.



Now, click on the name of a student from the list that pops up on the left. Then, using the pulldown menu on the right, click on Quick Lookup. (This is also a great screen to have in front of you when speaking with a parent.)

Suggested categories for each Learner Quality are listed as the bulleted items within the category/Learner Quality. These were developed based on the work of the sixth grade teams at London. (Fall 2008)

Self-Directed Learner
- Homework completion
- Projects
- Prepared for class
- Responsibility for Own Learning*

Collaborative Worker
- Small group
- Large group*

Quality Producer
- Depth of thought
- Product Professionalism

Respectful Citizen
- One:One

• to peers**
• to adults**

- Group

• Small**
• Large**

Categories marked with an asterisk or two asterisks are categories that make sense and represent an important component of the Learner Quality but which we do not believe most of us are prepared to assess at this time. It is not recommended that teams create these categories as of yet, but it is recommended that as teams continue discussing student assessment, they consider these aspects of the Learner Qualities.

When I enter scores into an assignment in the PowerTeacher Web Gradebook, why doesn’t the grade change?



The grade does change--after you hit the Save button in the lower right corner of the Web Gradebook window. The final grade column is a calculation that is done at the server level, and due to how Java works as a platform for application development, this is only calculated when the data is stored (and sent back to the server). This occurs each time you hit “Save.”

So, don’t worry. What you are entering is going to change the students grade--just click “Save” to see the results...

The default categories that come in the PowerTeacher Web Gradebook are exactly what all of us think of when we think of categories--homework, projects, quizzes, tests. These categories can be used for all kinds of analysis, but the nature of the information that we receive back from the aforementioned categories is not that useful to us as teachers. (“Little Lisa is better at projects than she is at tests.”)

Switching to categories focused on instructional content/concepts and skills can yield much more powerful information for teachers when analyzed--information that can be used for guiding instruction. (“Little Lisa performs really well with summarizing, but she is still struggling with her ability to define and support point of view when reading.”)

So, I want to switch the categories? How do I do so? Even if you have already entered assignments, this can be done quickly.

3 Easy Steps

1. Create your new categories. (The steps for creating new categories are on page 24 in the manual. While technically correct, these steps were still written for our “types of work” categories rather than with “instructional” categories as a model.) You can get to the Categories dialog box by going to Tools > Categories in the menu bar.





2. Go in to your assignments window and change the pull-down on each assignment to best represent the Category in which they fit.



What do you do if an assignment does not fit? Well, if you have three or more assignments that are similar and do not fit, create a category for them that defines them based on the content/concepts or skills assessed. We do not recommend re-scoring assignments from early in the year. You may choose to uncheck the “Include in Final Grade” box for a particular assignment, or you may simply put the assignment in the category that best captures its focus.



Moving forward, this process will both:
- Be easier to categorize assessments as you administer and enter them
- Cause us to reflect on what we’re assessing and help us eliminate unnecessary assessments that are time consuming for teachers and of no additional benefits to students


3. Delete the old categories ASAP. Go back to the Categories dialog. Highlight one of the old “types of work” categories, and click the “-” button to delete it. When finished deleting, click the “Close” button.

In general, the Learner Qualities in the middle schools are just another area of assessment, like Math, Reading, or Science.

“Also, for LQs - one of the concerns has been that entering grades and LQs takes five times longer than it used to, especially due to the learner qualities being on separate pages...”

>>>It should actually be three to four times faster in the worst case scenario for our middle school teams. For our elementary schools, there is no difference in Learner Quality entry. (Though, in the elementary schools, we have added the ability to mark an “Area of Strength” in addition to an “Area of Concern.”

Focusing back on our middle schools, where we give actual grades in the Learner Qualities, in the case of really good Learner Quality assessment, where students have been given grades throughout the trimester, everything is done. If those grades have been being entered like other academic grades, such as math and reading assessments, all that these teams need to do at the end of the trimester is enter comments.

In cases where Learner Quality grades have not been collected throughout the trimester and where the teacher or team is going to identify that students overall final grade for each Learner Quality and then enter, the process of entering these grades should literally take less than five minutes to enter each LQ for an entire team (i.e., all of the kids)!


With the old method of having to choose pull-downs for each student for each Learner Quality, entering grades for each Learner Quality would take about 15-20 minutes for an entire team. Entering grades for all four Learner Qualities would take about an hour.


Since most students will, hopefully, earn a 3 in each Learner Quality, the teacher entering the Learner Qualities can use the Fill Scores feature (page 38 in the manual) to help him or her by filling a “3” for all of the students first. Then, he or she can go back and change the scores of the students that earned a 4, 2, or 1 to those grades.

This is just two steps...

1. Open the Fill Scores dialog under the Tools menu.




2. Then, select the following options and click “OK”.



In other words, this method of entry is 3 to 4 times as fast as the old pull-down method of entry.


Can you pull up one student and enter all LQs for that student and then go on to the next?

>>>No. Each LQ is a separate class assigned to a separate teacher. Separate classes are required to get separate grades on the report card. Separate teachers allows for ease of entry throughout the trimester. (Otherwise, if I was entering SDL grades, my teammate could not go in at the same time and enter QP grades. With separate teachers assigned to each gradebook, we can do so...)

Here are responses to some recent questions that are quite timely right now...

“I understand that the default categories will be with us forever if we don't get rid of them now....However, if we don't delete those, will they just cause extra clutter but won't truly hurt anything?”

>>>Yes, extra clutter is exactly what they will be. "Visual clutter/confusion" is what I've called them in every school. Of course, having these categories in our category list will make us more likely to use those categories (the old, traditional, default ones) because they are comfortable. As we’ve discussed, though, they do not provide us with any additional significant information that we can use to guide instruction and to do analysis of students' work. Rather, switching over to meaningful instructional categories, does provide us with a very, very powerful tool for realizing:
- District 21’s Professional Learning Community Goals
- Each school’s School Improvement Plan Goals
- What needs to change in our curriculum/Power Standards and with the instruction of our curriculum
- Response to Intervention
- ELL Restructuring
- Refined and improved assessment and instruction practices
- Differentiation for students that is targeted and effected
- Higher levels of learning for students and job satisfaction for teachers!


“Also, if a team adds or renames a category (to a power standard, skill, unit like VTM, etc.) and then needs to change it down the line because it is no longer applicable - power standards change, topics change, etc. - will those categories now be permanent and not able to be deleted like the defaults?”

>>>As of right now, once grades are stored, the existing categories are locked in, but new categories can be added at any time. I would say that this is very likely to happen given everyone’s recognition on November 4th of the need for ongoing changes to the Power Standards. Additionally, this will always be the case since we should, each year, create some categories in response to the needs of our students that year. (Those categories may not be needed the following year.)

A related response is, “How are we going to change the Power Standards without using them?” I'm assuming that Pearson will have to fix this in PowerSchool at some point. I'm already doing the once-a-month requests for fixing this through PowerSource, our Support portal. Others have also requested the ability to delete categories that have stored grades. If they don't fix it, we’ve got some other ideas for how we can handle this technically.

These directions are Mac-specific. Some differences for the PC are noted in italics.

Setting up Thin Client in Full Screen mode:

1. Full screen > You have to quit out of Remote Desktop Connection for these actions to take full effect, so go ahead and quit now.
2. Re-launch Remote Desktop Connection but do not connect to the remote computer yet.
3. In the menu bar at the upper left of the screen, go to RDC > Preferences. On the PC, click the Options button in the RDC Connect dialog box.
4. In Preferences, go to Displays. In Options, go to Displays.
5. Select Full Screen in the pull-down menu in that dialog.
6. Next time, you connect, you will go into full screen.

Notes:

• While in Full Screen, you CAN still see your Mac’s dock and menu bar by dragging your mouse all the way to that part of the screen and holding it there. The dock/menu bar will pop out after a moment’s pause.
• Also, to toggle between Thin Client and some software on your Mac, like Firefox or Safari, go ahead and use the key command, “command” + “H”. This hides most Mac programs. They are still open, but they are running in the background. Go back to it by clicking on the icon, the RDC icon in this case, on the dock. In full screen on the PC, you will see a little bar at the top of the screen that features a minimize (_), maximize, and close (X) buttons. To go back to other elements (applications, documents, etc.) of your local PC, just minimize RDC from that bar at the top of the screen.

“Can you sort assignments so that all the categories are grouped together?”



Categories is a filter at the top of the scoresheet tab. Go ahead and select the category you want and you will just see that category. While you cannot sort the assignments per se, this does allow you to examine one category at a time. As we have discussed in round 2 of the PowerTeacher Web Gradebook professional development sessions, this is a great, great way (and one of two really easy, meaningful ways) to analyze student performance within that particular Concept/Content/Skill. Once selected, you will only see that category. To go back to viewing all of the assignments, under that Category pull-down, choose ALL.

To see this in action, participate in the Categories lesson (Lesson 4) in the PowerTeacher Web Gradebook course in SchoolTown.net.

So, you have sat down at one of the shiny new iMacs to log on to use PowerTeacher and the PowerTeacher Web Gradebook. You type in your user name and password, click submit, and--Boom! A new page pops up in your Browser that says, “Bad Request.”

While we are, and have been for months, investigating this issue with Apple, Mozilla, and PowerSchool, here is the quick fix thanks to Kevin at Poe:



Hit the refresh button, and you will be sent straight to your PowerSchool start page!