Marks and Comments
I’ve created some videos on doing marks and comments in BCeSIS. These are a general overview and may be a little different from school to school. They are available on the district moodle site in the BCeSIS course under Learning Objects or directly at the link below
http://www.district.prn.bc.ca:16080/course/view.php?id=23
Safari
For those of us using macs we’ve been telling you not to use safari. The reason for this is that it doesn’t create reports properly in the admin side. I tried it yesterday with a sample teacher account and it worked fine. If teachers are frustrated with speed issues in Firefox, ask them to try Safari (I’ve noticed it is much faster to log in), and get them to check if reports work under it. If that works then go for it!
Sorry to the admins and clerical though since it only prints reports properly in OS 10.5+ that I’ve seen so far. Thanks Kathy and Ray for your help with this.
**Note: we are trying Safari with the newest version of Adobe Acrobat to see if it will work on the admin side **
Attendance
Most elementary schools run kid check which requires teachers to get their attendance done very quickly at the start of the day. Secondary schools are not running that as far as I know and we do not have a setting that locks teachers out of attendance after 15 minutes into a class. Teachers are able to go back two days (truly 48 hours) and change or enter attendance. While I would encourage prompt attendance, if you or your teachers are having difficulty entering attendance at the start of your class I suggest the following:
Print of the class roster in BCeSIS > set up the headings for the days of the week > take attendance on paper with a clipboard > transfer it to BCeSIS as you have time in your class or in your day. This way you have a hard copy of attendance if you need to evacuate the school for some reason. Thanks to several teachers who passed this along, specifically Mr. Clark over at NPSS and Mr. Haley at BB. Let us adapt rather than let ourselves be frustrated!
Speed
Running of other web applications like streaming music, downloading videos etc will likely cause a slowdown on your computer for BCeSIS. Also if you have students in the school using their own personal laptops or the wwp laptops, make sure you talk to them and let them know that streaming music and downloading non educational content are not acceptable. High bandwidth flash games and general web browsing that is not school related (and not allowed under the Acceptable Use Agreement) will also add to slow downs in your school. Responsible use online will help the bandwidth issues at schools.
Speaking of bandwidth… Bert Bowes and Dr. Kearney are scheduled to be upgraded to the same connection speed as the board office and NPSS (10MB) by February 09 I was told yesterday. Prespatou and Upper Pine are scheduled to be completed in November of this year. We’ve put Hudson’s Hope and Clearview on the list for next year. I’m also told that PLNet is committed to upgrading all of our schools to 10MB by 2010 which sounds pretty ambitious.