November 23, 2007
Multiple Final Grades on an Individual Progress Report in PowerGrade
There may be times where you want to have multiple final grades printed on the Individual Progress Report that can be printed in PowerGrade. The other day I had Nancy from Fessenden call our help desk with this question so I can not take credit for this idea to blog on this!! To add multiple final grades in the header, go to the report and by default there is a final grade code of < FG grade:* > (no spaces). Replace the * with the final grade that you would like to pull. So if you are printing a progress report at quarter 2 time and would like to print the quarter 1 final grade and the current quarter 2 grade your code may look like this:
Q1 Grade: < FG grade:Q1 > (no spaces in the code)
Q2 Grade: < FG grade:Q2 > (no spaces in the code)
Posted by Melissa Bitz at 12:06 PM
May 2, 2007
Viewing PowerGrade Backups
Tip of the week for all of you! You can quickly view all of the PowerGrade backups on your server by clicking on System, PowerGrade settings and Current PowerGrade backups. It is nice to view this for a couple reasons. 1st if a data file goes corrupt you can look at the list and determine how far you need to go back to get the correct information. 2nd a quick look at this will show you if the teacher’s files are being backed up! Just this week I was helping someone with problems in PowerGrade. I was going to pull their backup and when I went to look at the list of backups for this 1 teacher, the last back up that was made was way back in February. Sometimes a backup can fail because of the network connection or perhaps someone has gone into the preferences and unchecked the auto backup. So it is important to check periodically to be sure all teachers are showing up to date PowerGrade backups! It’s not hard to do at all…it’s just hard to remember!
Posted by Melissa Bitz at 2:10 PM
March 14, 2007
PowerGrade Atoms
Sorry I have been slacking for that last month or so! Hopefully I can get back on schedule with my regular blogging again!
I just wanted to quickly let you know that EduTech has built some new Atoms that specifically target PowerGrade users. The 4 hour training for teachers can be a bit overwhelming at first so this a resource that we have provided in hopes that teachers will go back and use when they get “stuck!” The website is http://nd.atomiclearning.com/
This would also be a great tool to use when new teachers are hired in your district.
Also remember that every student and teacher in the state of North Dakota has access to the Atomic Learning website. http://www.atomiclearning.com/home
They have a ton of PowerGrade stuff there as well!
Posted by Melissa Bitz at 12:27 PM
November 15, 2006
Using Averages In PowerGrade
If you are experiencing incorrect final grades, it may be due to the “use averages” checkbox being marked in PowerGrade. There have been several cases this year where a school calls the help desk and states that the final grades for all students is wrong. One of the first things I check is that setting. The “use averages” checkbox is located on the general preferences tab within PowerGrade. Here is what an article on the PowerSchool support site states about using averages.
When using the “Use Averages” option, the Final Grade setup weighting is ignored.
It is mandatory that EVERY SINGLE ASSIGNMENT BE WORTH 100 POINTS.
It is also important to note that standards will not work correctly when the “Use Averages” is enabled.
PowerGrade averages the points earned on every assignment. When deriving the percent for a final grade it doesn’t look at the points possible of the assignments. It automatically assumes 100 points as what every assignment is worth. The Final Grade that is determined does factor in the total points of an assignment. This is why in order to ensure that both the final grade and the percent are correct, all assignments must be worth 100 points.
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Correctly Used Example
In this example each assignment is worth 100 points as they should be:
Assignment1: 80 points earned on assignment
Assignment2: 70 points earned on assignment
Assignment3: 70 points earned on assignment
Assignment4: 70 points earned on assignment
Assignment5: 70 points earned on assignment
(80+70+70+70+70)/5=72
So this will produce a 72% with the corresponding letter grade based on the grade scale cutoffs
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Incorrectly Used Example
If the assignments are set up incorrectly and lets say the assignments are worth 10 points instead of 100 then you get the following results:
Assignment1: 8 points earned on assignment
Assignment2: 7 points earned on assignment
Assignment3: 7 points earned on assignment
Assignment4: 7 points earned on assignment
Assignment5: 7 points earned on assignment
(8+7+7+7+7)/5=7.2
This will produce 7.2% but will still give the correct grade.
Posted by Melissa Bitz at 3:52 PM
November 2, 2006
Teachers at Both Schools
Do you have teachers teaching at 2 buildings in your district? For example the PE teacher is the PE teacher at the elementary and the PE teacher at the high school. If so, you want to be sure that teacher has 2 different teacher numbers and their middle initial in one of their accounts. I have run into several issues this past fall where there are 2 teachers set up in the system with the exact same name but at different schools. This is a problem when it comes to PowerGrade. Each time you close PowerGrade it backs up the data file. On the server you can see the last backup along with the name of the teacher. Well, if Jane Jones is teaching at the HS and the elementary and is named Jane Jones in both places, only the last data file that she worked in will be backed up. This makes it more difficult to retrieve specific backups. Be sure to include the teacher’s middle initial in one of their accounts. For example Jane Jones at the elementary would be Jane E. Jones and Jane Jones at the HS would just be Jane Jones. Now when PowerGrade backs up you will see a back up for Jane Jones, which will be the HS data and a back up for Jane E. Jones which would be the elementary data. They also need 2 different user names to access PowerSchool teacher. They can use the same password. I like to put a .hs behind their username at the HS and a .e behind their name at the elementary!
Posted by Melissa Bitz at 4:41 PM
October 18, 2006
Making Standards “A bit easier to read!!”
Sorry I have not blogged for a while. Today I want to share something that I learned from another person! I plan to implement this tip into my standards class from now on. (Thanks Stacy!!!)
I just taught a standards class a few weeks ago and this individual from a brand new school asked if there was an easier way to separate out how the standards are viewed by teachers in PowerSchool teacher. The standards can be hard to read, especially if you have a lot of them, when the font is the same all the way down the page. I had her try putting html tags next to the subject headings and it worked. It makes it a ton easier for teachers to read! So now when you look at her list of standards, the subject area, such as the word reading, is bigger and bolder and then the standards below appear in regular font! If you already have standards in your site and want to do this follow these directions!
1. Change to the District Office
2. Click on District under Setup
3. Click on Standards and List Standards.
4. Click on the name of the standard. Before the name add in the html tag, such as < b > (less than sign, the letter b, greater than sign with no spaces) So for example the standard name Reading would look like this < b >Reading< /b > (the / closes the html tag!)
5. Click Submit
Posted by Melissa Bitz at 1:36 PM
May 5, 2006
Are Your Special Services Staff Wanting To See Grades For The Students They Provide Services To?
By default, a teacher must have a student enrolled in their class in order to see the grades that student is receiving in their other classes. Now you can set up PowerSchool so that Special Services staff can monitor their students. Many Special Education teachers, Title I teachers, and even coaches like to monitor the progress of students they work with! If you would like to do this in your school, follow the steps listed below!
1. 1st add a period to the day (which will be just a period used by Special Services) by going to years and terms under school setup. Click on the year name to add extra period.
2. Then go to periods under school setup and name that period a unique name such as SS.
3. Be sure you have added your special services teachers in your site as teachers. If they are not in your system, then click on staff from the home page and new staff entry. Fill in the information and be sure to set their staff status to teacher. Click on the security settings to assign them a username and password to use for PowerSchool teacher.
4. Then go to courses under school setup, click on view master course list, new, and create a special services course ( you can choose to exclude on report cards and attendance here as well). Once you have submitted the course information you must check the box next to the course on the master course list to activate it.
5. Then go to sections under school setup and create a section for that course. Be sure to mark it occuring during the extra period you created and exclude it from ADA/ADM.
6. Choose your students and enroll them in this course and section.
Posted by Melissa Bitz at 9:20 AM
May 2, 2006
Displaying Modified Grades On Report Cards Using a Modified Gradescale
1 way to show modified grades on report cards is to add the modified letter grades to the grade scale. To do this;
1. Log into the district.
2. Click on district under setup and gradescales.
3. Click edit gradescale next to the gradescale.
4. Add in the modified grades, such as an *A. Make the cutoff and value a -1. This will cause the grade to be inactive in the teachers’ gradebook.
5. Click on system, PowerGrade Settings, and Update GradeScale to push the changes out to the teachers PowerGrade files.*Note that the teacher will get a warning the next time they open their gradebook asking them to accept the new gradescale so it is a good idea to let the teachers know ahead of time what to expect and they should be sure to accept it!
6. If the teacher has a student with modified grades they can now go into PowerGrade and choose Windows from the main menu and gradescales.
7. Click new to create a new gradescale.
8. Click on the non modified grades and give them a value and cutoff of -1 and check the remove from gradescale checkbox to make them inactive.
9. Choose the modified grades and give them a value and percent and uncheck the box that says remove from gradescale.
10. Apply the modified gradescale to a student by clicking the class roster icon in PowerGrade. Choose the student’s name and at the bottom choose the gradescale. Click Save Changes and OK.
11. Now the grades with an * or whatever you chose to show modifications will show in the gradebook and on the report card.
Posted by Melissa Bitz at 11:15 AM