Monday 10-27-08 
3:31 pm

In an email to staff from Renee

With the end of the quarter quickly approaching, I need to clarify a few things regarding some procedures in ProgressBook.

1)      Grade Calculation/Push into eSIS (Report Cards):  The Report Card Entry window will be opened from On Wednesday, October 29^th until midnight of Tuesday, November 4^th.

What this means is that during this time, teachers will need to:

a.       Click on the Enter Report Card link from their dashboard

b.      Select the course from the left dropdown box for which they wish to review and submit grades

c.       Click on **Show All Students**

d.      Click the checkbox over the grading period

e.      Click the “=” sign to the right, which will calculate the students’ grades and display them for review.

f.        Review the grades (and at Parkside, the Marks for the Standards).

                                                               i.      Grades and Marks that were calculated will be outlined in red/salmon.

                                                            ii.      If there are grades that you wish to modify, STOP HERE AND GO BACK INTO YOUR GRADE BOOK.

·         IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT YOU ADD AN EXTRA CREDIT ASSIGNMENT AND PROVIDE APPROPRIATE CREDIT TO BUMP UP A GRADE AS DEEMED APPROPRIATE – OR – MODIFY THE SCORES OF PREVIOUS ASSIGNMENTS AS DEEMED APPROPRIATE.

·         ALSO, IF YOU NAVIGATE OFF OF THE SCREEN, YOU WILL NEED TO CLICK THE CHECK BOX AND THE “=” SIGN AGAIN.

g.       PARKSIDE:  Enter appropriate marks for effort and enter the any comments (Not to exceed 135 characters) you wish to appear on the grade card.

LBMS/HIGH SCHOOL:  Enter the appropriate comment codes for the comment that you wish to appear on the report card.  The code will not be displayed for you, so you will need to have a list of comment codes if you are not familiar with them.

h.      You will need to assign the mark of a W to students who have withdrawn.

i.         Once you are satisfied with the grades, click on the SAVE button at the bottom of the screen, which pushes grades to the Parkside Report Cards or into eSIS for LBMS and the High School.

DO NOT CLICK SAVE UNTIL YOU ARE HAPPY WITH THE GRADES!!!

j.        YOU ARE FINISHED!!!

2)      Report Card Printing:

a.       Parkside:  Standards-based report cards will be printed from the main office by a person to be determined.  If you feel that you need a printed copy of a student’s progress, you can run a progress report from your main dashboard.

b.      LBMS/HIGH SCHOOL:  Your building will follow the same procedures as in the past – the report cards will be printed out of eSIS.

Q1:  What if I need to change a grade after the 4^th?

A1.  This will need to be done by your building principal in ProgressBook, so try to be as accurate as possible.

Q2:  How long can I enter assignments and grades for the first quarter?

A2.  You can always enter assignments and grades provided that the due date on the assignment is no later than October 31^st for them to count in the first grading period.  However, if the assignment is not graded until after November 4^th, then you will need to work with your building principal to recalculate/modify the grades and reprint report cards

Q3:  Can we just go and change the grades in eSIS?

A3.  No.  If you makes changes in eSIS, they will not be reflected in ProgressBook.  As the grades for the Semester Averages are calculated in ProgressBook, changes made in eSIS only will cause the Semester Averages to be incorrect

I hope this helps to clarify some of the process.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.  This is new to us all (or at least 99% of us), and the only stupid question is the one unasked.

I will try to share any questions with the rest of the staff as needed/appropriate.

Happy Calculating!

Renee

Thursday 10-2-08 
1:34 pm

In an email to staff from Renee

LEECA did a mid-day update for us after I made the necessary changes and it appears that all should be VERY well (not perfect, but nearly so) now with our ProgressBook setup.

One thing to note:

There are several classes that are still not showing up Averages.

 If your classes are not showing averages, it could be one of two things:

1)      Please go to the Grading Scale Setup and ensure that EACH of your classes is set up.

At Parkside, the Choose the default assessment to show for the students' progress needs to be set correctly for each class.  If you are teaching more than one subject area and you had copied the Grading Scale Setup to all of your classes, it will not stick.  You can only copy the Grading Scale Setup for LIKE subjects.

2)      For Parkside in particular, on the Main tab for each of your assignments, you MUST ensure that you have checked the check box next to Achievement.  Otherwise the grade will not get mapped to any assessment.

Let me know if you are seeing any new issues since the update.

Thursday 10-2-08

In an email to staff from Renee

It appears that some tweaks that LEECA worked with me to make last night has caused some disruption to your grade books.

Do not fear. . . NO DATA HAS BEEN LOST. . .

After some further tweaking today, they should all be set up properly.  If they are not looking correct later today, they will by tomorrow.

Tweaks were made to the reporting periods to simplify what parent see in the Parent Access side and what you see for your grading periods.

The meeting at LEECA yesterday brought to light several issues that we had been wondering about.  Here’s a brief recap:

·         ProgressBook Support:  Continue to use the proper channels for support (1^st – Help Pages, 2^nd – ProgressBook Implementation Specialists, 3^rd – Kurt Thonnings or Albie Weiss, 4^th – Me).  I will take any issues not able to be resolved to LEECA.  ALSO OF NOTE:  Please do not use the ProgressBook Feedback Form for support issues.  As I stated in a previous email, this Feedback Form is for PRODUCT ENHANCEMENT SUGGESTIONS ONLY!  No one will respond to these.  ProgressBook will simply log any requests for enhancements and when they see a trend, they will consider suggestions in a future enhancement.  Your cry for help will be lost if sent here.

·         Known Issues Reporting:  There are a few known issues that ProgressBook developers are working on as we speak.  One was the problem that we saw yesterday with the every-teacher-seeing-every-assignment, which was resolved.  I have asked that they inform us at a minimum weekly of these known issues or bugs that people have discovered so that we aren’t killing ourselves trying to resolve issues that we think are our own setup problems.

·         Attendance Problem:  While this does not yet affect us, the daily attendance has not been populating.  They found that there is a nightly routine that was not set to run that should be.  They plan to have this resolved within the next week.

·         Comment Codes:  There are several canned comment codes that eSIS has built-in.  These will still be able to be used; however, in order for them to be seen, these report cards will need to be printed out of eSIS.  This is not a real problem for us, as we do not use the canned comments at Parkside (which will be printing the report cards out of ProgressBook), and we do use them at LBMS and the High School (and, while we do all of our entry in ProgressBook, we will be printing report cards out of eSIS).

·         S/U Scales:  The reason that our S/U scale may not be working at LBMS may be because of an eSIS set up that I need to check on.  These should be working by the end of the week/early next week.

·         PHOTOS ARE NOW SHOWING UP:  Photos are now showing up for seating charts.  You will need to go to each seating chart you set up and click the check box to Show Student Photos.  It does work.  I saw it myself and it’s cool!

·         Work Sessions:  I will be attending 2 work sessions to finalize/perfect our report card/ProgressBook set up at LEECA.  After many requests, LEECA will bring Software Answers back in to facilitate work sessions to work out any setup issues that we report.  The sessions will be the next 2 Mondays (not sure on time).  Due to limited space and the content, I will be the only one allowed to attend; however, I need your input!  Please report any major problems that you see to your ProgressBook Implementation Specialists.  Kurt and Albie will compile the lists from them and I will take this to LEECA with me to the sessions.

·         Student Access to ProgressBook:  Due to the way that ProgressBook divides up teacher and parent/student access, in order for our students to use their network usernames and passwords will be for me to send the list to LEECA and for them to import them in.  I will get the list to LEECA in the next day or so.  Once I hear back from LEECA that it’s complete, I will let you know when students can have access

I think that’s all I can think of for now. . . It was a productive meeting and I hope to have some VERY productive work sessions the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for your continued patience as we get the system working for you.  It is a huge undertaking this year, and thankfully once it’s done, we won’t have to go through all this again