While instruction and assessment should continue through the last day of school, the reality of sending report cards home with students on June 7th, the final day of school, requires that we “close our gradebooks” prior to the last day of the trimester at the end of the school year.

Beginning with Trimester 3 of the 2009-2010 school year, students in grades 3-5 will receive their report card, which includes Academic Grades, Learner Qualities, and Comments, and a separate Power Standards Summary Report. Students in grades 6-8 will receive both documents beginning at the end of the 2010-2011 school year. While the parent/student documents have changed, teacher entry in the PowerTeacher Gradebook has not changed at this time! (Though, Power Standards data collection may look very different next year with this summer’s major PowerSchool upgrade!)

For more information on how to use the PowerTeacher Gradebook, please visit the CCSD21 PowerSchool Support Site. (You will be prompted for your Active Directory username and password to enter this site.) Specifically, elementary teachers will want to review the Elementary School Report Card Learner Quality, Comments, and Power Standards Entry document if you have questions about this process.

For the close of the 2009-2010 school year, the final grade timeline for Grades 3-8 looks like:

May 27, 2010--9 AM
All grades (Academic, LQ, Power Standard) and comments must be entered and completed in the PowerTeacher Web Gradebook by teachers throughout District 21. Then, Technology Office staff members will store grades district-wide, and following that, school secretaries will print verification sheets and distribute those to teachers.

June 2, 2010--9 AM
Teachers will have finished reviewing Academic Grades, Learner Qualities, Power Standards, and Comments. Any corrections that need to be made are made by the teacher or team directly in to the PowerTeacher Web Gradebook by the 9 AM deadline on June 2nd. At this point, Technology Office staff members will store grades district-wide, once again, and following that, school secretaries will begin printing report cards in an order determined by the Technology Office. Report card printing will continue through June 3rd.

June 7, 2010
All students leave school (and the 2009-2010 school year!) with their Trimester 3 Report Card and Power Standards Summary Report.

Tags: Report Cards, PowerSchool, PowerTeacher, Web Gradebook, Grades

Throughout our professional development with the Web Gradebook, we have learned that we can re-size column width and the size of sub-windows within the main window by clicking on the borders between columns or sections of the Gradebook and dragging.

Did you know that you can also make more space by eliminating the icons on the buttons at the top of the screen?



By shrinking the size of these tabs, you will be able to see the names of more students listed below.

Simply click the eject icon (below) in the upper left corner of the button/tab bar.



It will eliminate the icons, and you will see just the names of the tabs giving you more vertical space within the screen!



In order to view the icons once again, just click the (now upside-down) eject button again!

By the middle of the trimester, there are lots of assessments that have collected in your Scoresheet in the PowerTeacher Web Gradebook. When you add a new assessment at this point, it is placed in chronological order--typically all the way over to the right side of the screen if it is the newest assessment.

One very easy tip that can help “clean up” your Scoresheet screen while you enter is to use the “Reporting Term” filter pull-down menu near the top of the Web Gradebook window.

Simply, click on the pull-down menu and select “This Week.”



Now, only assignments with Due Dates from “this week” will actually appear. Unless it is the end of the week and your teammates have entered a lot of assessments this week, you should see very little there. This will result in the assignment column appearing next to or near the Final Grade and Student Name columns.

When you’re done, you can simply change it back to the trimester (i.e., T2) in order to view the assignments from throughout the trimester.

When working with lists on a computer, including in PowerSchool and the PowerTeacher Web Gradebook, you may want to select multiple items from that list at one time. If so, there are two ways to do so that will typically work.


Selecting multiple items in a row

Click on the first item that you want to select, such as Algebra below.


Then, go down to the last item in the column that you want selected. Hold down the shift key, and while holding down the shift key, click.


Voila! All of the items that you want selected are now highlighted.


Selecting multiple items that do not appear consecutively

This time, click first on any item that you want to select. (It does not matter where it falls in the order of the list.)


Now, if you are using a Mac, hold down the command (apple) key to the left or right of the spacebar. If you are using a Windows or Linux computer, hold down the control key.

While holding down either the command (Mac) or control (Windows/Linux) key, click on the other items you want selected.


Voila! Now, just the items you want selected are selected.

This little trick works in lots of different software and on lots of websites, so take advantage of it.

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.

“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!

Tonight, we are proudly launching the debut of our first comprehensive online course. As I have mentioned publicly and personally to 3rd through 8th grade teachers, future online courses will likely look slightly different as this one as approximately 450 students enrolled, including all 3rd through 8th grade teachers, administrators, Learning Coaches, and iTech teachers. The number of students makes personal feedback from and contact with the teacher difficult to guarantee. Nevertheless, we hope that this is a great resource for supporting our effors with instruction, assessment, and the Web Gradebook as well as for learning about online courses for professional development.

This course is completely voluntary. Some important tips:

1. The online course is available all of the time.

2. Lessons and Tasks can be read and watched over and over again by teachers.

3. For this class, Lessons and Tasks can be completed in any order. Task 1 within a Lesson is not a prerequisite for Task 2. This allows teachers to cherry pick in order to meet his/her needs.

For our online courseware, we have evaluated a variety of products. We have set-up our very own Moodle server, but for now, we are moving forward with a local education technology start-up called SchoolTown.net. We have been working closely with SchoolTown’s leadership team since last spring, and they have made significant changes to their product as a result of our conversations and suggestions—right up through today. We look forward to continuing to shape this product through our experiences. (More information about SchoolTown, written by us, follows below.)

Again, we encourage you to take advantage of this course! Thank you for your great work in ensuring that our instruction is most effective to meet the needs of our students!!!

---

SchoolTown.net is a new web-based service for schools and other groups to use. They are a local company, and despite its "start-up" status, they are developing significant connections within the educational community nation-wide.

Since they are a local company, we've been lucky enough to be working with SchoolTown.net since the spring of 2008. During that time, they have been very open to the feedback that we have provided, and they have continually made significant modifications to the structure of their products as well as to its features. We look forward to continuing to grow together in this area.

Originally conceived as a tool focused on student needs, we have also articulated how modifications to SchoolTown.net can serve us very well as a tool for online professional development. It is here that we begin our work with SchoolTown.net. From there, in the future, we look forward to also tackling the challenges of implementing SchoolTown.net as a tool that is used with students and parents.

Today, I received an e-mail from a fifth grade team, preparing for their upcoming conferences. Here it is below:

Mid-terms went home some time ago now and my conferences are not until next week. (Too big of a lag, mid-terms no longer a true picture of progress.)

Is there a way to print all of a student's core grades on one report? (As of now, I can only print a student's math on one page, reading on another and so on.) That's a tremendous waste of paper. We spent a chunk of time trying it to to figure it out without getting anywhere. Any ideas?


I responded:

You want to run the Student Multi-Section Report. It will give you everything for all of the student's classes. (FYI--I know that your school’s music teacher has entered some assignments. Those will appear, too.) This report is none too pretty to look at, and it will be confusing for some parents. At this time, there is no way for us to modify this report, though there will be for next year.

While this will print a multi-page report for each student, if you simply go in the Math class, and run this report for all of the kids, you should only have two minutes of work while the computer and the printer do all of the worker as you do other things!

(When they're done printing, you will probably need to staple them, and you may want to sort them by homeroom--or whatever groups you are meeting with for conferences.)

Are you missing a student in your Web Gradebook? Is a student in the Web Gradebook who should not be? Is a student in one gradebook, (e.g., mathematics) but not in another gradebook (e.g., reading), if so, read on!

First, remember that not all students are enrolled in all of the same classes depending on their English language proficiency. Students who are classified as Tier A or B based on their reading, writing, listening, and speaking proficiencies in English and are enrolled in a Bilingual program (Spanish, Russian, or Polish) are enrolled in L1 Reading & Language Arts and ESL Reading & Language Arts in place of Reading and Writing/Language Arts. Students who are in a Bilingual program and are classified as Tier C or ESL program students are enrolled in ESL Reading & Language Arts in place of Reading and Writing/Language Arts. Of course, all students are enrolled in Math, Science, Social Science, and the Learner Qualities.

If, after determining that a student really should or should not be on your list, you are certain that the student should or should not appear on your list, then you need to speak with the individuals in your school office. In an elementary school, speak with the principal or secretary. In the middle schools, you should speak with your principal, assistant principal, or dean. All of these individuals with administrative access to PowerSchool can re-schedule the student correctly. As soon as they have performed these scheduling functions, the students will appear or disappear from your gradebook or gradebooks.

You can use the Web Gradebook on a Mac, a PC (Windows), or even on a Linux computer. You simply need the following:

- A web browser (Firefox, Safari, Opera, Flock, Internet Explorer, etc.)
- Java 1.5 or higher*
- An active Internet connection

*To have Java 1.5 requires that you have:
- A Mac running OS 10.4 (Tiger) or 10.5 (Leopard)
- A PC running Windows XP or Vista
- An up-to-date distribution of Linux

(I have run the Web Gradebook on all three of these operating systems this year.)


So, how do you know if you have a computer that meets these requirements?

On a Mac, go to the Apple symbol in the upper left corner of the screen. Click on it and go to “About this Mac”.



The Operating System is listed in the About this Mac dialog box (see the rectangle in the picture below).




On a PC (Windows), go to “System” under the “Control Panel”.



In the System dialog box, the operating system version is listed right near the top (see the rectangle below).




So, which computers at school can I use?

Each school has a lab that is complete with 30 Mac Minis, which look like those below.



All of our schools have iMacs like those pictured below (though the new iMacs are a glossy aluminum (silver) color.



In addition, in the elementary schools, there are about 10 iBook G4 laptop computers that can be used with the Web Gradebook. In the middle schools, the PCs in the Tech Lab can also be used if the correct version of Java is loaded on to to them (like those below).




So, now you can go access the Web Gradebook!

Let’s say that you’ve been using your home computer regularly to access PowerTeacher with no problems. Then, all of a sudden, you try logging in to PowerTeacher one day, and you cannot connect. What happened?

First, check to make sure your Internet connection didn’t drop off, particularly if you are using a wireless connection. If you are still connected (i.e., you can visit other websites in your web browser.), then this was not likely the problem. In this case, you may need to clear your Java cache. (For example, a recent update to Java caused problems with the PowerTeacher Web Gradebook. These problems were resolved with a patch that was loaded on to our servers. Nevertheless, for some users, they may need to empty their Java cache and then rebuild it by launching PowerTeacher.

From Pearson, the makers of PowerSchool and PowerTeacher, here are directions for clearing your Java Cache, if you should need to do so.

How to Clear the Java Cache
Windows

• On the client workstation, exit PowerTeacher Gradebook.
• Navigate to Control Panel > Java. The Java Control Panel appears.
• Select the General tab.
• Click Settings under the Temporary Internet Files section. The Temporary Files Settings dialog appears.
• Click Delete Files. The Delete Temporary Files dialog appears.
• Select both checkboxes, and click OK.
• Close the Java Control Panel.
• Launch PowerTeacher Gradebook.

Mac

• On the client workstation, exit PowerTeacher Gradebook.
• Navigate to Applications > Utilities > Java.
• Open Java Web Start.app. The Java Application Cache Viewer appears.
• Select the User tab.
• In the Application column, select all PowerTeacher Gradebook listings.
• Click Remove Selected Application.
• Close the Java Application Cache Viewer.
• Launch PowerTeacher Gradebook.

If you do not quit out of the Web Gradebook correctly, you and/or your teammates will see the dialog box upon your next login that asks if you want to “Terminate Other Users Session”. To avoid this, please quit correctly. Here’s how...

STEP 1
When you are done with your Web Gradebook session, go to PowerTeacher Gradebook in the menu bar at the top of the screen. Then, go to “Quit PowerTeacher Gradebook.”

STEP 2
Then, after the Gradebook quits, click the “Logout” button in PowerTeacher.

Finally, quit of your web browser (i.e., Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer).

So, you and your teammates have already taken the step to begin implementing student groups in your PowerTeacher Web Gradebooks? That’s great, but then, you find that you misplaced a student in the wrong group. How do you fix this?

1. Launch the PowerTeacher Web Gradebook.

2. Go to the “Students” tab.

3. On the left column in the Student Groups section, click on the triangles next to the groups to expand the groups so you can see the names of all of the kids in the groups.

4. Now, click on the name of the student that you want to move. You will see the name highlight. While still holding the mouse button down, drag the student’s name over the name of the group TO which you want to move that student. When you move it, you will see a blue rectangle outline the new group when the name moves over it. Let go of the mouse button.

5. The student’s name will now be moved. Congratulations!

Do you have a Mac running OS 10.4 at home? If so, do you feel like the PowerTeacher Web Gradebook is running slow?

Our friends and colleagues in nearby Prospect Heights School District 23 have discovered that performance is significantly improved if you have completed all of the OS 10.4 system updates to OS 10.4.11. These updates are free and come directly from Apple over the Internet.

If you have not installed these system updates, simply click on the Apple icon in the upper left corner of your screen and click on Software Update.

Then, the Software Update will contact Apple’s servers and determine what software updates are needed.



You can select the updates that you want to install, and click “Install”.

One of the coolest features currently included in the PowerTeacher Web Gradebook is the ability to eliminate an assignment/assessment or an entire category from the Final Grade of all of the students’ grades. Some people have asked, “Can I exempt just one student’s grade from his or her final grade?”

Of course. That’s easy. (You actually could do this in PowerGrade, too, but in the Web Gradebook, you can also include the student’s score on the assessment in the Gradebook, and you can still exempt it.)

1. Enter the assignment so that it IS included in the final grade of all students who receive a score on the assignment. (Make sure that the “Include in Final Grade” checkbox is checked on the Assignment Creation screen.)

2. Enter scores for all of the students, including the student whose score you do not want to include in his or her final grade.

3. Right-click on the score that you want to exempt from the student’s final grade. A new window pops up from the cell that contains the score.

4. Choose “Exempt” from the menu that appears by clicking on it.

5. After you have selected it, the number will become gray and italicized. It does not impact that student’s final grade.

Have you clicked in the backpack to get more information about a student, such as a phone number, historical grades, or to look at Quick Lookup? We hope so as there is a great deal of information available there to use by teachers.

Sometimes, though, you may stumble upon a screen that appears in your browser that says, “Not Found Error 404”.

This screen typically appears after you click the Backpack and then click on the name of an individual student. You should not receive this screen at all, but if you do, here’s how you can fix it.

1. Click on the Personalize tab on the left navigation menu in PowerTeacher.

2. In Personalize, click on “Default Student Screen”.

3. In there, re-set your default student screen, and click “Submit”.

4. After you have submitted this new default student screen, you can re-choose your preferred default student screen, and click “Submit” (again).

5. Now, you should not receive the error message!

If you’ve entered an assignment and received an error, you may:
-Not have entered information in the required fields
-Or... You may have entered more than 15 characters in the abbreviation field--particularly, if you let PowerTeacher auto-fill the abbreviation for you.

If the assignment abbreviation is more than 15 characters, you will get an error. The abbreviation field auto-fills the name of your assignment, so you must be sure to shorten the name, if necessary. (See below.)

As the hours count down until we begin to print the new intermediate report cards, one of the consistent questions that has arisen among teachers is, "What prints from PowerGrade and PowerSchool as a student's academic grade on the report card?" The answer is that the letter grade from the letter grade scale is what prints. Percentages do not print. This traditional "90, 80, 70, 60" scale is depicted in another post with an indication of the pluses and minuses that also exist in the scale. For Learner Qualities in the elementary schools, the "X" will simply appear when a teacher wants to express a specific concern. Comments will appear as they are entered. Also, the absence and tardy information does appear on the front page of the report card. This information is drawn from that which is entered on a daily basis in PowerSchool Teacher.

This note is specifically directed at 3rd through 5th grade teachers who have intended to put comments on the report cards in Spanish. For those doing comments in Russian and Polish, unfortunately, we will be using the Microsoft Word version of the page 4 Comments page that was e-mailed to you. If you have questions or need another copy, please e-mail Jason Klein.

For weeks/months, we have been working to ensure that we can successfully create and distribute report cards, including comments, in Spanish, Russian, and Polish. During this time, we have developed a number of creative solutions, and we are proud to say that we are in the final moments of successfully being the first known PowerSchool School District to produce report cards in four languages according to both PowerSchool and Phoenix Learning Systems.

What has proven to be “trickiest,” though, are the comments. We believe that the following steps will allow comments to work without becoming garbled with other symbols as the accents and punctuation in Spanish are “foreign” to PowerSchool’s programming and can corrupt—looking like a bunch of “mumbo jumbo” (the technical term!).

These steps must be followed exactly and in order.

1. Write your comments in Microsoft Word. Our Mac OS X computers do have an International window that can allow the computer to be set to Russian, Polish, or Spanish to make typing slightly easier. (We are in the process of buying keyboard stickers for Russian and Polish for students and teachers to use in the future when writing in those languages on the computer.) Using Microsoft Word has the added benefit of the fact that you can save your comments. If something problematic and unanticipated comes up, you will be able to print those comments and distribute them or re-copy and paste them into PowerSchool Teacher!

2. Copy and paste your comments in to the appropriate comment space in PowerSchool Teacher. Check to be sure that all of the characters look appropriate there before clicking “submit”. If they are not, please fix them at this time.

3. Check your work for both the Learner Qualities and Comments for this particular student. You will not be able to verify again later unlike people making comments in English.

4. Click “submit”.


***At this point, when we run the report card, the comments come out “just fine.”***

WARNING--If you go back to PowerSchool Teacher and look at your comments again, they will be corrupted. For example, “É” may come out instead as the symbol for the Euro or for Forte in a musical composition. Once you re-submit, those symbols will now be what prints!

For a general discussion of comments, please see this entry!

Throughout the school year, in every setting possible, we have listed many sources for help with PowerGrade and PowerSchool. These include:

-The Manual (purple) and Elementary Addendum Manual (Yellow)
-District 21 PowerSchool Support Site
-The Modern Pen
-For PowerGrade, AtomicLearning.com

In addition, though, PowerSchool AND PowerGrade have some support built right in! Have you ever noticed the question mark in the upper right-hand corner of the window?

If you click on that question mark, you will get some general information. Often times, this information is not as helpful for teachers as the materials that we have created from scratch that specifically explain our "situation" in District 21. Nevertheless, if you have a question, this is another source that may provide your answer in either PowerSchool or PowerGrade!

If you have decided to wait to enter academic grades in PowerGrade until Thanksgiving weekend, you may be in for a big surprise that will unnecessarily scare you! Read this to avoid just such a scare.

Back when it was warm and everyone was optimistic about the potential of the Bears (and the Cubs!), we set the Preferences in PowerGrade to only view assignments from this current trimester. We entered the last day of the trimester as November 20th. Any assignments entered after that point will not be visible (but will actually be in PowerGrade). So, obviously, if you are entering your "one assignment" for the trimester on Thanksgiving morning (November 22nd), it will not show up unless you change the Preference setting.

Resetting the visible assignments window
With one of your classes open, go to File > Preferences.





Now, in the Preferences window, click on the "Display" tab.





In the bottom half of this window, the date range appears that we entered during your initial PowerGrade workshop. Notice that the last day of visible assignments is November 20th. You can change this by just clicking in that date box and changing the date (see below).



Click "OK"!


***Now, the important part--Dating your assignment in the "Assignments" window!
For your assignment to count in your first trimester grade, it must have been assigned during first trimester! To ensure that this is the case, please be certain to date your assignment in the "Assignments" window, so it falls NO LATER THAN the last day of the trimester. (In the case of first tri of the 2007-2008 school year, the assignment must be dated on or before November 20, 2007!)

A district-wide timeline has been developed for the entry of grades, the verification of grades, and the printing of report cards for all three trimesters. This has been, or is being, distributed in schools. Click here to view the 2007-2008 School District 21 Grade Entry Timeline.

Some reminders about the verification process...

• Academic grades will be verified on paper, using sheets that the secretaries will print the morning of November 26th.
• Learner Quality marks and Comments will be verified by teachers going back to the PowerSchool Teacher screen in which they originally entered those.
• If there are changes that need to be made to an Academic grade, Learner Quality mark, and/or Comment, the teacher will make those changes in PowerGrade or PowerSchool by 9 AM on November 28th.

If you are a middle school teacher, stop reading. Report card comments are being handled differently in grades 3 through 5 than in grades 6 through 8!

For our intermediate grade level teachers, all of the information related to comments is contained within the yellow addendum manuals that should have been distributed in the past week. Here, we summarize that information as well as provide some additional tips:

Special Area Teachers
Special area teachers do not have a dedicated location for comments on the report card. If you are a special area teacher, and you have a comment that you would like included on the report card, please pass that along to the student's homeroom teacher. We are encouraging you to pass it along electronically, so the homeroom teacher can simply copy and paste it in PowerSchool. The homeroom teachers will need to have these comments entered by 9 AM on November 26th, the Monday that students and teachers return from Thanksgiving Break, so please provide this information to homeroom teachers well in advance of Thanksgiving weekend.

General Comments
The top section of comments on page four of the intermediate report cards is reserved for general comments about the student throughout the day. This will be entered by the homeroom teacher, though the content of these comments may come from the core academic team or a special area teacher. While most web browsers now have spell-check capability, we are encouraging you to write your comments in a word processing document. They can be revised and edited in that document. Then, simply copy and paste them from the word processing document to PowerSchool Teacher. The amount of space available has been tested in this defined in terms of words and characters in the yellow addendum to the PowerSchool/PowerGrade manual.

Special Services Comments
At the bottom of page four of the report card, there is a smaller section for special services comments. These will either need to be entered by the homeroom teacher (and should then be passed along electronically--see above!) or, if the special education teacher, speech pathologist, or GATE teacher inputs these comments, this individual will need to know the teacher's user name and password in PowerSchool in order to access this field.

Yes. There is a quick way to fill in the same score for all students in PowerGrade. This is particularly useful, for example, when you have assessed students using a rubric, and most students have earned a "3". There is a "Fill" feature that can save you time. This is described on page 19 in the purple PowerGrade Manual. Check it out!

Nothing. If you have entered one or more grades in PowerGrade, the final trimester grade is what will be placed on the report card.

Remember, PowerGrade talks to PowerSchool. Your data is sent from PowerGrade to PowerSchool. Within PowerSchool, the Report Card template will pull all of the necessary data to fill the fields--student name, attendance information, academic grades, Learner Quality marks, Power Standard marks (2nd & 3rd Trimester), and comments.

So, you want to print the main "spreadsheet" screen from PowerGrade to see all of your students and all of their grades in a particular assessment area, or class, such as Math, Science, or Physical Education. In most pieces of software, this is really, really easy to do. You simply go to File > Print (see below).

Regular File Menu with Print

Of course, in PowerGrade, if you look under the File menu, there is NO "Print" command! So, what do you do?

PowerGrade wants (and expects) you to run a report. If you would like to do that, but do not know how, please review "Reports" within the Advanced section of the purple PowerGrade Manual that was distributed at the start of the 2007-2008 school year. More information on creating Reports in PowerGrade can also be found at AtomicLearning.com.

Depending on how many assignments you have (and whether they go off the screen on the right), you can also take a picture of the screen and then print that. (This is how I take pictures of the screens that appear in instructions and manuals.) "So, how do I take a picture of the screen?" you ask.

Hold down the "shift" key. Hold down the "apple" (also known as the "command" and also known as the "") key. Now, while holding those two keys down, hit the "4" key.

Keyboard View
Hold down the dark gray keys--Only hold down one shift key and one apple/command () key!

Once you have done that, the pointer/cursor on your screen will change in to a crosshair. You can move it to the upper left corner of the window, drag it, and when you let go, your picture gets taken. It will place an icon of this picture on your desktop that ends with the extension ".png".

Double click on this icon, and the image will open in Apple's built-in Preview software. Now, print.

***Once this has printed, please do not forget to trash this icon and empty the trash! You do not want to leave student data on your computer's desktop for anyone to open and look at!***

As you may know, we are preparing for the launch of our PowerTeacher Pilot. PowerTeacher will carry us into the future as PowerSchool's new portal for teacher entry into the PowerSchool system.

PowerTeacher is web-based, meaning that it can be used throughout our school buildings, at the library, and at home on up-to-date web browsers on a Mac, a Windows-based machine, or even a computer running Linux!

PowerTeacher is not simply PowerGrade moved from the hard drive to the Internet. PowerGrade has its origins in software that was originally created in 1982, before a number of current District 21 teachers were born and before computers, DVD players, digital video recorders, and mp3 players filled our homes. During the past quarter century, new research into the human brain, the development of language, and the processes of learning have led to advancements in the classroom, too.

PowerTeacher seizes on such such changes. PowerTeacher is software designed for the world in which District 21 students and teachers live. It allows for the entry of individual assessments from exit slips to quizzes that you may want to analyze and utilize but not include in the child's trimester grade. PowerTeacher can do this. It has far more student grouping capability than does PowerGrade, and because it is web-based, it facilitates collaboration among team members--even if they are not all in the same room at the same time.

While there will be a limited number of slots as "pilots" available for PowerTeacher's pilot this year, there is no time like now to begin reading about the potential it holds for classroom instruction and the management of other important elements of teaching. Click here to begin learning more!

Thanks to the hard work of our field engineers, Jay, Rob, and Sami, PowerGrade has now been installed on classroom computers in third through eighth grade classrooms. Obviously, a classroom may have been inadvertently missed here or there. If your classroom was missed, please go ahed and call the Help Desk (847.934.8100--Press 2) and a ticket will be issued. A field engineer will be out to install PowerGrade as soon as possible. In the meantime, PowerGrade is also located in your Mac Mini computer labs as well as on the LMC computers and, in some buildings, on a number of laptops, too! Now, with greater access to PowerGrade, take advantage of using it. To support you, after school classes/work sessions are coming up at the start of next week!

People who have used electronic gradebooks in the past, remember the beginning of the year tedium of typing in all of the names of the students. PowerGrade and PowerSchool work together to change that. Now, when the secretary or school administrator enrolls a new student student in to your class, the student is automatically added the next time you open PowerGrade! A message even opens telling you who the new student is that is joining your class. Likewise, when a student leaves the school (or, for whatever reason, the class), PowerGrade will remove that student from your class roster, but it will also tell you beforehand that Johnny or María has left your classroom.

If a new student is in your classroom, but he or she has not appeared on your flashdrive (since the student began in class, not since the last time you looked at your flashdrive, which may have been before the student started in your classroom), then, you should check with your secretary to make sure that the student was “scheduled” for the class. If the secretary says, “Yes,” and the student still does not show up, a flashdrive update should take care of it. This almost never happens. Once kids are scheduled, they pop in to the class immediately. The PowerGrade/PowerSchool Teacher user cannot change who appears in the class list. This happens at the Administrative level. IF the child is scheduled but not appearing in PowerGrade, "rebuilding from the server" should solve the problem.

Some special area and exploratory teachers have questioned what they ought to do if they do not see the correct classes under the classes menu on their flashdrive.

First, this is one of the reasons that part of everyone's "homework" following the first round of training at the start of the year was to open all of their classes. Teachers were to check to make sure that both the classes and students were there. If not, in the middle schools, this should be reported to the assistant principal. In the elementary schools, this should be reported to the school secretary. In either case, if these individuals need help problem solving how to add the class or student, they can contact Sue or Jason. Teachers are not able to add or delete students from PowerGrade. PowerGrade receives this information from the PowerSchool server, which is adjusted on the administrative side by the secretaries (elementary school) or administrators (middle school).

If an administrator or secretary (or you!) looks at the student schedule and everything is there with the correct courses and techers at the correct times, then you can update your flashdrive by "rebuilding the data from the server". All third through fifth grade core teachers have needed to complete this process. It is only a couple of steps and very easy for even the novice computer user. Visit the following Modern Pen entry to learn how to do perform this task that just may solve your problem.

Finally, if your problem persists, please contact your iTech teacher or Sue or Jason. Remember, not only will a member of this group need your flashdrive, but they will need the password, too.

*********VERY IMPORTANT REMINDER*********
If you are a 3rd through 5th grade core academic teacher and you have not "updated your flashdrive" to reflect changes that were made to courses and the schedules of our English Language Learners at the end of September, you must go through that process. Links to these directions are here:

- Directions for "updating" the flashdrives of Core Academic Teachers in Grades 3-5 (PDF) (10.04.2007)
- Updating Your Flashdrive Video Tutorial (Quicktime Video) (10.04.2007)

Finally, if you have additional, specific questions about using PowerGrade or PowerSchool, please e-mail Jason Klein. We will answer those questions and post the answers here. Then, check back frequently to see the answers to the questions that others have asked!

If you have not been using PowerGrade throughout the trimester, you will still need to enter one assignment in PowerGrade in order to give a grade. If no assignments have been entered in PowerGrade, nothing will appear on the report card--no academic grade! By entering one assignment, whatever grade is given on that assignment is the grade that will be the "average" and the final grade, which is what PowerSchool will print on the Report Card.

To enter an assignment, you need to have created a "Category" for each class. For elementary special area teachers, this means all of your classes. For elementary school core academic teachers, this includes the following classes: Reading, Writing, English as a Second Language Reading and Language Arts, L1 (Spanish, Russian, or Polish) Reading and Language Arts, Science, and Social Science. For middle school exploratory teachers, all of your classes need a category. For middle school teams, it varies by school based on how scheduling took place in your school.

To create a "Category," at the top of the screen go to the word "Windows" in the menu and go down to "Categories" (the fourth option down). We recommend naming this Category, which will last all year meaning you only need to do this task once, "Total Points". Then, click "Accept". Now, you can click the red dot in the upper left corner of the window to close this window. (This information is in the first section of the purple manual.)

Then, you need to create an "Assignment" to give grades. Click on the "Assignment/Composition Book" in the upper left corner of PowerGrade. If you are only entering one assignment for the entire trimester, we recommend calling it, "Final Assignment Tri 1". Type this in for assignment name. Then, in the points possible, type "100". Click the "Accept" button. Then, click the "Close" button in the lower right corner of the window.

Now, the assignment pops up in the main "spreadsheet-style" window. Click in the assignment's column in the row of the first student and enter his/her score using a NUMBER. (Do not enter letters!!!) So, with 100 total points, available, you can enter 95 for an "A" and 85 for a "B". There are pluses and minuses in the grade scale. If you would like to use those, please do so.

Use these numbers for entry for a single, "whole trimester" assignment:

A+ ~ 99
A ~ 95
A- ~ 91
B+ ~ 89
B ~ 85
B- ~ 81
C+ ~ 79
C ~ 75
C- ~ 71
D+ ~ 69
D ~ 65
D- ~ 61
F ~ 55

This process must be repeated for each class.

This system allows you the flexibility to decide that you want to use PowerGrade regularly come Second Trimester. You are set and ready to enter assignments after Thanksgiving, and you will not need to hand-calculate your grades! (Of course, when differentiating and giving students different assignments adding up to different totals over the course of the trimester, the computer can save a boatload of cumbersome and tedious work that is a distraction from focusing on instruction.)

This week, teachers will be receiving an addendum to the original purple PowerGrade & PowerSchool Teacher manual. There are two versions of this addendum. One is for elementary school (3-5) core teachers, and the other is for elementary school special area teachers. Additionally, two videos are posted on the School District 21 PowerSchool Support Site. All of these documents are password protected because even though the Learner Qualities and Comments have been "made up," the students are real. If you do not know the User Name and Password required to enter the School District 21 PowerSchool Support Site, then please check with your school's iTech teacher. (After learning the site's password, please go ahead and write it down somewhere safe, but handy!) Click the links below to access the materials or video tutorials directly. (You will be prompted for the password the first time you click one of these links during a particular session.)

Video Tutorials
- Learner Quality & Comment Entry in PS Teacher--Elementary Core Teachers (Quicktime)
- Learner Quality Entry in PS Teacher--Elementary Specials Teachers (Quicktime)

Addendums to the Manual (Yellow Books)
- PowerSchool Teacher for Report Cards--Elementary Core Teachers (PDF)
- PowerSchool Teacher for Report Cards--Elementary Specials Teachers (PDF)

***Also, please remember that whenever you log in to PowerSchool, help is just a click away. As you can see below, there is a link at the bottom of the sign-in page that says, "District Help Resources." Click on that and you will be prompted for the site's user name and password, and then, the School District 21 PowerSchool Support Site will open in a new window.

Just a few reminders, as we near Report Card time in grades 3 through 8 with PowerGrade and PowerSchool...

PowerSchool
PowerSchool is web-based. (We prefer you use Firefox--Download it from the link at the bottom of the page at home if you'd like.) You can access it from up-to-date web browsers anywhere with an Internet connection; Paris, Moscow, Johannesburg, Hong Kong--It doesn't matter. All you need is to remember your User Name and Password. You use PowerSchool to:
-Complete attendance (elementary schools)
-Look up demographic information (ie, parent names, phone numbers, etc.)
-Enter Learner Qualities for Report Cards
-Enter Comments for Report Cards

PowerGrade
PowerGrade is an application that resides on actual computers. We use the Mac OS X version of PowerGrade, and it is on computers in all of our schools. Likewise, if you have a relatively new Mac, you can download PowerGrade for free through PowerSchool Teacher. (Click to see the directions.) PowerGrade must be able to "see" and "read" your data, which resides on your flashdrive, so you have to have your flashdrive with you to use PowerGrade. You also must be at a computer with PowerGrade loaded on to the machine, and you must know your password. Then, we use PowerGrade to enter academic grades on individual assignments. These automatically and continuously calculate a final grade, which will appear on the report card.

***REMEMBER, POWERGRADE "TALKS TO" THE POWERSCHOOL SERVER UPON OPENING AND CLOSING.*** (This relationship appears in the graphic below!)

3rd through 5th Grade Core Teachers--

We have completed with scheduling students in our Bilingual and ESL programs and as a result, it is now time to run a very quick update to your flashdrive. This will only require about 3 steps to complete, and it should take under 5 minutes from start to finish. The iTech teachers have learned how to do this, but we are also providing you with a short, AtomicLearning.com-style video as well as a PDF document to walk you through the few steps it takes to complete this update. (PLEASE NOTE: The PDF document is housed on the password-protected Powerschool section of our website. If you need that password, please see you school's iTech teacher.) (The video is about 9 minutes long, which is approximately twice as long as it is likely to take you to complete this process.)

Did you know that if you have a Mac running OS 10.3.9 or 10.4 at home, you can load PowerGrade on to that machine for free? This small, fast, and easy download actually resides in PowerSchool Teacher. Have you noticed that on the left navigation bar one of the links says, "PowerGrade"? That is where the download link is located.

Follow these directions to load PowerGrade on to your machine, and begin using it to allow you to be as efficient as possible!

The new third through fifth grade report cards will be issued for the first time at the end of this trimester, and with the mid-trimester nearly upon us, here is a video explaining the "nearly" final draft of these report cards.

Watch the Intermediate Grades Report Card video here.