Web2School server at Currier, Dorset and Sunderland were upgraded to verssion 1.77.1a. See the new features below.
New Features in v 1.77.1a:
Teacher Desk – Taking valuable input from teachers and administrators, we have made some significant changes in the Teacher Desk. Color has been added to the display windows, icons are improved, and frequently-used functions are easily accessible from multiple places. Double-clicking a course now opens to the window you probably use the most often – the Daily Grades window.
New Daily Grades Interface – The Edit Daily Grades screen under the Teacher Desk has been re-designed to put more control in the hands of teachers with fewer clicks. A toolbar is now embedded in the window containing drop-down choices for:
o Assignments – Teachers can use the new Quick Add or Quick Modify to add or change assignments and assignment types. Quick Add opens the assignment type and allows you to quickly enter a new assignment. When an assignment is already selected, Quick Modify opens the assignment and allows you to modify the name or any other information about the assignment.
o Notes – Allows you to view/edit student or assignment notes. Right-clicking in the assignment cell also gives you immediate access to notes.
o Actions – This menu gives you access to the Drop Lowest Grade, Copy Grade, Zoom Assignments, Manage Roster, and Manage Colors features.
o Reports – This drop-down menu combines the previous ‘view text’ screens with Web2school’s powerful grade book reports. View All Students in CSV creates a single spreadsheet with all students and all grades for this term of the course. View Single Student creates a simple text file with all grade data for the selected term/course. The remaining 4 Grade Book reports, Daily Grades, Student Daily Grades, Class Assignments, and Daily Grade Summary, formerly only available under the Grade Book Reports menu, are now easily accessible from within the teacher grade book.
Other display changes – Teachers will see other display enhancements, including:
o The Working Term now displays on the Teacher Desk. For those teachers who are assigned a calendar, the working term will always be determined by the date and term definitions in the calendar. For teachers who are not assigned a calendar, the term will default to the last term worked in on that computer.
o Term Average grades that are not auto-calculated will now display in Bold in both the Daily Grades window and the Averages and Exams window.
o Grades that have been dropped using the Drop Lowest Grade feature will display in italic and in parentheses.
Daily Grades and Student Information– Right-click on the student name to see drop-down menu options including View Student Information, View Grades Detail, View Student Notes, and control of the course roster.
Daily Grades and Assignment Information– Click on the Assignment heading to Zoom, Add or Modify the Assignment, to assign/clear an existing color for an entire column, or to select an assignment whose grades you would like to use for Mid-term, Final, or Custom Exam grades. Right-click on an individual student’s assignment to control cell color, view/edit student and assignment notes, and to add/modify assignments.
Assignment Types and Assignments – The field length has been extended to allow for longer entries.
Averages and Exams Interface – The Averages and Exams window has also been re-designed. Radio buttons are used for number/letter grade switching as well as for turning Autocalcs on/off. A right-click allows you to View Term Notes for a student. Grades for Final, Mid-term, or Custom Exams may be copied from an assignment in Daily Grades by clicking the assignment heading and selecting the Copy Values to Exam. The new Options button allows teachers to:
o Turn auto-calculations on and off for all students at once. When changed to Off, the previously auto-calculated grade remains in bold. You may also turn auto-calcs on or off by student by right-clicking their term average.
o Use View Text button to create a simple report containing term average and exam information for each student.
o Use Export CSV to create a spreadsheet of term average and exam information for the course.
o View configured comments.
Advanced Custom Exports:
Elementary Daily Grades – Teacher, course, skill, and grade data may now be exported from the elementary grade database into a spreadsheet.
Discipline – Discipline data and student data may now selected in one export.
Master Schedule Filters– When a user exports Master Schedule, the Filter option will now give the choice to filter by course name, number, or department.
Master Schedule Course and Sections – There are now several course and section formats to select from in a master schedule export including course/section, course-section, and course:section.
Course Notes:
There is no longer a limitation to the amount of text entered for the Notes field in the Course information window. The course notes will now wrap to the field as there is no longer a size limit.
Attendance:
Class Attendance – The window is enlarged to display more students without scrolling. In addition, a tally now displays at the bottom of the window indicating the numbers of students who have been assigned class attendance categories (AB, DS, etc).
Entry and Withdrawal Membership Information – An option has been added allowing users to copy values from a previous entry or withdrawal field, defaulting to the most recent entry or withdrawal instance. This enables to retain most values and to make only required changes.
Scheduling:
Show Dropped Courses – In the student schedule window, you may display courses that have been dropped.
State Categories and Utilities:
State Categories – Users now have options to tag descriptive and user-defined categories as “Required” or “Hidden”. With the “Required” option, the State Utility window checks to see if a value has been associated with these fields and flags the ones that does not, back to the user. With the “Hidden” option, users can now choose to not display categories which are already displayed in the Attendance section. These options have been added to minimize data entry errors.
State Utilities – Validate Fields – There is a new option on the main search window to validate the fields associated with the list of students in the search window. This window will display all of the Descriptive and User Defined values associated with each student in a spreadsheet type format. Users can scan for missing information and edit the fields to fill the required information.
State Utilities – Attendance – A new tab has been added to the State Utilities window which displays the same attendance information as shown in the Student Information Attendance tab window. This feature was added to facilitate easier input of information for students who move from one category to another which results in an attendance enrollment change (ex. Special Education, Free and Reduced status etc).
