On 12/9/10 1:23 PM, "Jason Ulrich" <julrich@micds.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> We use Whipple Hill for report card writing for our 5-12 graders. Our
> Lower School elected not to adopt their grading/report card tools so far.
> That is still a topic of discussion for us.
>
> Gradebook - The gradebook is pretty simple to use. If you are already
> maintaining assignments on your course pages, then you just fill out a
> couple fields to include it in the gradebook. Points, assignment type,
> factor, whether it's extra credit or not. One nice thing about the
> gradebook is that it's directly tied to attendance so you can easily see
> if a student was absent the day it was assigned or on the day it was due.
> You can also add comments that are private to you and choose whether or
> not to publish assignment grades to the students and/or parents.
>
> Grading - The course grading lets you setup letter grades, competencies
> and comments which can both be displayed on a single report card. There
> is a structure for "reviewing" grades if that is a part of your process.
> You can calcluate your grades based on the gradebook and also factor in
> other grades to that calculation. One note about the comments, the
> authoring tool is primitive. You can bold, italicize, and underline and
> there is a spell check, other than that it's basically just a text box.
> If you author your comment in Word and then try to paste you will lose any
> formatting that you have. So, most teachers do end up having to maintain
> a copy outside of the grading system. The reasoning behind this
> "restrictive" approach is the tool that generates the report cards can
> have a difficult time with any special formatting or Word's infamous
> special character codes. If you love writing HTML, you can go that
> approach, but let's be serious. Another complaint is that it would be
> nice to be able to see what you have written about a student in a previous
> term while you're authoring in the current term. You can reference a
> prior term report card, but having one view has been suggested, to
> streamline the process.
>
> Report Cards - If you're flexible on the appearance of your report card,
> they are fairly simple to build and can include attendance information if
> you're tracking that in Whipple Hill. However, if you are very specific
> on how you want your report card to look, then you will want to
> investigate this further. Basically what you're getting is a template
> with some options on what you want to include. You can include more than
> one term on a report card. One issue that was a "deal breaker" for the
> Lower School is the ability to include grades from multiple terms, but
> only include the most recent comment. Our comments are lengthy, so
> having to include all the comments from each term makes the report card
> pretty lengthy. If your parents are strictly using them online, then it
> may not be a big issue, but for us it just didn't work.
>
> I hope that helps anybody that's considering this as an option. Feel free
> to contact me with any other questions.
>
>
> Jason Ulrich
> MICDS Technology
> 314-995-7314
> julrich@micds.org
>
>
>
>
>
>
> A forum for independent school educators <ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU> writes:
>> Hello,
>> We are exploring using something other than Powerschool as a vehicle for
>> report card writing and sharing.
>>
>> We have been using Whipplehill for a while now and teachers use it for
>> sharing information such as news stories, homework, etc. I'd love to talk
>> with anyone who is using the Grade Book and Grading modules for K-8.
>>
>> Ellen
>> --
>> Ellen Baru
>> Director of Technology
>> The Cathedral School
>> 1047 Amsterdam Avenue
>> New York, NY 10025
>>
>> Phone: 212-316-7447
>> Fax: 212-316-7558
>> E-Mail: ebaru@cathedralnyc.org
>>
>> [ For info on ISED-L see https://www.gds.org/podium/default.aspx?t=128874
>> ]
>> Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution,
>> non-commercial, share-alike license.
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>
>
>
> Jason Ulrich
> MICDS Technology
> 314-995-7314
>
>
> [ For info on ISED-L see https://www.gds.org/podium/default.aspx?t=128874 ]
> Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution,
> non-commercial, share-alike license.
> RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=ISED-L
--
Jeanne Robb
Director of Technology
Harbor Day School
3443 Pacific View Drive
Corona del Mar, CA 92625
(949) 640-1410
[ For info on ISED-L see https://www.gds.org/podium/default.aspx?t=128874 ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
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