NetClassroom Tips and Tricks

3/16/12 10:06 AM in General

NetClassroom Update

As of yesterday afternoon, life with NetClassroom at Saint Stephen’s has finally returned to normal.  As I’m sure you are aware, our server for NetClassroom failed and the next couple of weeks were frustrating at the least, if you were trying to access information on NetClassroom.  I put in some very long hours and spent many of them with analysts at Blackbaud, our vendor.  In the end, I went back to my own experience and rebuilt the software as I had done it originally.  This solved the errors and intermittent functionality so everything was working again.

Unfortunately, just when NetClassroom was fully functional again, it was time to turn off grades for processing of report cards.  The timing was terrible, but unavoidable.  Of course, this meant many of you who hadn’t been able to get in during the rebuild, now logged on to incomplete information, so that though you may not have even seen your student’s grades for a couple of weeks, you still had a couple of weeks to wait.

Please accept my sincere thanks for your patience as we worked through this.  We at Saint Stephen’s consider our communication with our families to be of great importance, and any time that communication is interrupted, you can be sure we are working hard to restore it.  Your graciousness and understanding was very much appreciated.

3/2/12 10:00 AM in Tips and Tricks

Being Prepared

Have you ever felt like a test was suddenly tomorrow and you didn’t know it was coming?

Let me explain a few things that I think will help.

1. Be aware that teachers do not have access to NetClassroom.  They have a separate program that feeds NetClassroom, but they don’t have any control of what you see on your home page.  They enter the due date and assignment, and then grade it.  That’s all they can do.
2. You, as a NetClassroom user, have the control of what you see on your home page.  (My Settings…Customize Home)
   
• You may not realize that you need to customize your home page for EACH child.  Be sure to switch from one student to the next to set preferences for each one.
  
• I don’t encourage long spans of time for grades or assignments, because you can always go to the assignments page or the grades page to see all.  But I do recommend showing at least 3 days on the home page.  Or if you’re having problems with tests and other projects sneaking up on you,  5 or 7 days might be best.  Then you would see the assignments coming up, as well as, the ones due for the next day.
3. NetClassroom does not allow the assignments to repeat each night.  Study for chapter test on Friday, March 2nd, can only be entered once.
4. Another safeguard that I share with students is to go to the assignments page at least once a week to see what is coming up in each class.

I hope this information will be helpful for you and improve communication  through NetClassroom.  Questions?

2/24/12 6:16 PM in Tips and Tricks

Update on NetClassroom

We continue to work with consultants and technical support from Blackbaud, the vendor for NetClassroom.  Significant progress was made this afternoon.  We hope to have a final solution soon.

2/10/12 4:50 PM in Tips and Tricks

News for Password Changes

Now that we have launched our online forms site at Saint Stephen’s all of our parents have been uploaded as users on the new site.  Once this happened the process for changing a password was revised  The good news is that you can also change your user ID now, which you couldn’t do before.

You will find that I have removed the “Change Password” page from the MY SETTINGS menu in NetClassroom.  But I have added a link at the bottom of the home page that you can use to get to our online forms site to change your user ID or password. 

1. If you aren’t already on NetClassroom, just go to http://onlineforms.ssesbbservices.org. 
2. For this visit you can ignore the directions for the ESRC and just go to the login part.  Log in with your usual NetClassroom credentials.  
3. Once you have logged in, just click on the “Change User ID/Password” menu on the sidebar.
4. Change the user ID if you wish, or simply create a new password with your existing user ID.
5. Then use the “Logout” option on the sidebar.
   

12/12/11 12:10 PM in General

Processing Report Cards for Interim 2

As you know, Interim 2 is coming to a close on December 16th, and that means report cards will follow soon after.  I thought it would be helpful to give you insight into our timeline for report card processing.

Dec. 16th – Interim 2 ends, Interim 2 marking column will be turned off for NetClassroom to allow us to enter/edit/process grades and comments for report cards.  (This means if you want to check up on your student’s work for Interim 2, you should take a look before 1 pm on Dec. 16.)

Dec. 27th – Upper School report cards will be published on NetClassroom by 4 pm.
NOTE: Interim 2 will still be turned off.

Jan. 6th – Lower, Intermediate, and Middle School report cards will be published on NetClassroom by 4 pm.  Interim 2 will be turned on again.  All daily grades and assignments from the interim will be viewable again.

12/1/11 10:49 AM in Tips and Tricks

Resetting your Password (see 2/10/2012 post)

From time to time I get requests from parents or students for forgotten passwords or because they can’t seem to log in to NetClassroom.  My experience has been that in many cases the User ID is the problem as much as the password.  To demystify the User ID, let me say that we have a naming convention for User IDs; your last name and the first 2 letters of your first name, all together without spaces and not case sensitive.  If you share a first name with someone else in your family, there may be a 1 added to your User ID.  My name is Elizabeth Teahan, so my User ID is teahanel.

If you have forgotten your password you can enter your User ID on the log in page for NetClassroom and click Forgot your password? underneath to start the process to reset your password.  The best thing about this functionality is having a solution that is immediate; you don’t have to wait for a reply from me – usually during regular business hours.  You can still get in that night or during the weekend.

Once you click on the forgotten password link you will be directed to a page containing your security questions, the questions you set either last spring or the first time you accessed NetClassroom this year.

You do have to enter the answers to your questions exactly as you entered them originally.  Then click Submit.  At this time you will have the opportunity to reset your password.  You will have to enter the new password you would like to use, and then enter it a second time to verify.  Submit once more. You’ll be redirected to the original log in screen.for NetClassroom where you will reenter your User ID and your newly reset password, and you’ll be in NetClassroom again.

If for some reason this process doesn’t solve your problem – you can’t get past the security questions, for example, please contact me for assistance.  I will be happy to supply your password or reset it for you.

Also, if you would like to periodically change your password or you want to change it from the machine-generated one that you have to write down to remember, it is easy to do so once you are logged in to NetClassroom.  Go to the My settings menu and choose Change password.

On the change password page, you just enter the old password one more time, and then enter your new password once, and then again to verify.  Click submit and your new password with be in effect the next time you log in to NetClassroom.

11/18/11 11:00 AM in Tips and Tricks

Printing Teacher Comments

One of the most frequent requests I have from parents regarding Net- Classroom concerns how to print grades, comments, or assignments from the site.  For this post I am going to focus on printing teacher comments (assignments to come soon).  To access teacher comments written as part of the report card, go to <student’s name> grades and choose AVERAGES.

On the averages page, the default view is with the comments collapsed or hidden from view.  You will need to click on EXPAND ALL to view the teacher comments.

For the most readable print, you will need to copy and paste the text into your word processing program. Highlight all the text under the green bar that labels the marking columns.  Copy – right click and choose copy, CTRL-C, or Command-C on a MAC.

Then paste the text into your word processing program.  The table that appears in Microsoft Word is pretty non-functional, but if you look for the smart tag (I used Word 2007) at the bottom of the pasted text and click on it, you can choose “Keep Text only.”  You may need to remove some blank lines between sections of text also.

On a Mac, if you paste into Pages, you will get the text without the table when you paste.  Because of copying from a web page there will be a lot of extra lines between the text fields, but you can easily remove the extra lines.

Either way the result of this simple option is a nice version of all the teacher comments on the screen.  Once pasted, you can even adjust the text size, add a title at the top (student name, grade level, academic year and term.)

11/7/11 12:20 PM in General

INTRODUCTION

For those of you who may not know me, my name is Beth Teahan, and I’ve been at Saint Stephen’s forever (well, almost).  I started as a middle school English teacher, moved to teaching computer, then to coordinating technology integration at Saint Stephen’s, and finally to my current position as database administrator/registrar and trainer at the school. This journey represents 25 years of being a part of Saint Stephen’s.  Not only have I been an employee of Saint Stephen’s, but I am the wife of an alumni and a parent of 3 students who began their education at Saint Stephen’s and are now alumnae themselves.

The purpose of this blog is two-fold.  The first purpose is to provide orientation to the new pages in NetClassroom, to answer frequently asked questions, and to provide general information about what’s going on with NetClassroom.  The second is to provide an avenue for parents to respond, ask questions, communicate issues with NetClassroom so I can do a better job of supporting you.  Please use this forum to request information that would be helpful to you. CLICK ON THE TITLE of the post to enable the comment functionality.

11/7/11 12:14 PM in General

CHANGE

We’ve started out this academic year with some mixed reviews.  Everyone has responded favorably to the new look and feel of the NetClassroom program update that came out in mid-August. But there were some issues also, particularly errors when trying to open documents teachers shared on NetClassroom.  Unfortunately, some glitches are inevitable with major program updates such as this one.  It’s why techies wait for a while before purchasing and installing a new operating system, often until the first service pack comes out.

I ‘m pleased that our vendor, Blackbaud, has already released two update patches to address issues as they have arisen.  Most recently, the update patch has resolved the problem we were having with shared documents not accessible through the documents list.  If you are having problems with NetClassroom, don’t hesitate to contact me for assistance (bteahan@saintstephens.org)

11/7/11 12:10 PM in Tips and Tricks

CLASS DETAILS PAGE

One of the features of the new update is the Class Details page.  This is my favorite page in the site now because you can find all the pertinent information about a class on this one page.  You can access the Class Details page by going to the <student’s> classes (ex: Amy’s classes)

menu and choosing Class Details.  Be sure to check the side bar for customizable settings – Academic year -2011-2012, Session-Regular, Marking Column – Int 2 (currently).

On this page you will only view one class at a time; you can change classes using the drop-down menu at the top of the page.  Don’t forget to set the correct marking column at the top of the page also.  Though you can only see one class, you can see EVERYTHING for that class on this page.

• You can click on the teacher name to find contact information for the teacher – her schedule, extension, and email address.
• Announcements for this class
• All the documents shared by this teacher for this class, whether assignment documents or general class documents
• Complete assignments list
• Graded student work with current average in the class  (you scroll down to find the grades)