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Forum thread: Locking A Mark

Chris
20 September 2010
16:14
Component: STEARsoft web interface
Suggestion:
Locking a mark would be very helpful because when the office marks a student ill or on holiday sometime staff will mark over the holiday or ill mark with a N (Absent)

Thanks
Chris
Marcus Butler (STEARsoft)
20 September 2010
19:34
Dear Chris,

Thanks for this suggestion.  There is already an auto-lock feature (I don't know if you were aware), so that attendance marks before the current day can't be changed on a main attendance sheet.  A teacher has to deliberately bring up the codes screen to change any such attendance, and teachers should be trained to leave a written note if they over-write or change any existing code.

The particular situation you describe also sounds unusual.  STEARsoft is designed to allow marking an absence (O) to be independent of giving a code letter (I for ill, or H for holiday) which goes inside the O.  In normal use, there should therefore never be the conflict you describe.

Although this wouldn't present itself as a problem in the way STEARsoft is being used in all the school deployments I know about, I'm obviously keen to understand other ways that STEARsoft might be used and try to accomodate them, so I'd be grateful if you are able to describe in more detail how you are using STEARsoft with multiple users at your school. I can then perhaps see where any problems might lie and give some useful advice, or use this to inform how to implement such a lock system most usefully.

Thanks again.

Yours sincerely,

Marcus Butler
Chris
20 September 2010
21:01
Well here at our school we used to use a system called winfolder from bromcom and staff could tap N on the keyboard to mark absent and a forward slash for present so then staff would just send the register to the server and all the detail would be seen and the office for truancy etc.

But due to cost we moved to a more cheaper system (STEARsoft) and we was trying to use your software like winfolder so staff wouldn't have to learn a new system all over again because staff are quite busy.

Thanks
Chris.
Marcus Butler (STEARsoft)
21 September 2010
13:26
Dear Chris,

Thank you very much for this and for taking the time to bring this to my attention.  This really highlights the need for us to produce a simple tutorial that explains basic usage of an attendance sheet.  I'm not familiar with bromcom, but it sounds like your staff have anticipated STEARsoft to be far more complex than it actually is.  Training at our school often takes less than 5 mintues for new teachers who have never used any attendance system before, and that includes the time setting up their password and a short-cut on their desktop.  Marking attendance typically takes between 7 and 11 clicks including the clicks to open and close STEARsoft (if it's not already open).  Teachers only put in Present, absent or Late marks (using the main symbols that you cycle through by clicking on the attendance sheet.  The office independently adds the codes (which appear in the middle of the absence mark).  When used like this, All the other time-saving features of STEARsoft are then available such as the list of oustanding absence notes at the bottom of attendance sheets, and the alert messages that appear in the top left area. The statistics and warnings on the summary pages will also then all be correct.

When used like this teachers have reported that they like STEARsoft because it saves their training time several times over during a term and makes things really easy, because they can ignore all the codes the office adds and just concentrate on the basic attendance they have to mark, knowing they won't muck anything up.

The symbols used in STEARsoft are the traditional standard ones that have been used since I can remember.  They equate directly to how attendance is marked when using a paper register book, so experienced teachers shouldn't find STEARsoft alien, and new teachers will be learning a standard system that they will find elsewhere.

I will let you know when we have a tutorial to address this in case your school would find this useful.
Marcus Butler (STEARsoft)
21 September 2010
13:31
Chris,

Sorry, three other things that may help.
1) Your school should allocate time for such training as might be required. It could come out of a training day or a tutor meeting for example.
2) If someone is made responsible for such training, it can be valuable school-wide experience that can count favourably in professional development reviews.
3) There are customisable keyboard shortcuts for those who like to use a keyboard, and if anyone has an iPhone or iPod touch, the App for these has proved very popular indeed.

Yours,

Marcus.
Pam
27 September 2012
13:13
I am not sure If I am missing something. I am based in the office and I take all the morning registers. If I want to mark a student absent for the whole day, I have been logging in to each individual teachers timetable to make the ammendment on their register. Is this the right way to do it? Or can I mark it on mine and it will change on all staffs when they log in?

Thanks

Pam
Marcus Butler (STEARsoft)
27 September 2012
14:46
Dear Pam,

Thank you for your post. No, this doesn't sound the most efficient, so I hope I can help. When you say you take all the morning registers, does this mean you role-call the students yourself, or that teachers return their role-call to you and you check them, or enter them onto STEARsoft?

A typical way of working is for the teachers to mark the attendance directly into the system (STEARsoft). Someone in the office would then view this using the 'All School Data' link to get an overview of all absent students in the school. They can then authorise absences when phone-calls are received by putting a code letter (or dot) in the absent circles: From the All School Data view, clicking a class goes to the attendance sheet directly. For this to work, these morning registration classes need to be tagged as 'Priority' classes, and the person in the office needs to be given a 'Power Teacher' account in STEARsoft.

During the rest of the day teachers would take their attendance registers using STEARsoft, and STEARsoft will automatically notify the teachers if the attendance they've marked doesn't agree with the attendance recorded at the start of the day. So you should not have to go through putting in absences; this almost defeats the purpose of checking the actual attendance in class throughout the day.

I don't know if I've helped there. I hope so, but please do respond with more questions. If this is still confusing please say and perhaps I could write a tutorial video to help explain...

Yours,

Marcus
Marcus Butler (STEARsoft)
27 September 2012
14:51
Reflecting further, in the typical situation I described, the authorisation 'code' would only be put in the first registration class of the day; not then repeated throughout the day. A class teacher during the day will know by the STEARsoft messages whether the absence was for the whole day (and will be followed up by the morning registration tutor) or just this lesson, so needs following up by themselves.

Marcus.
Pam
27 September 2012
15:18
Thank you for this. Yes I now understand. That is more helpful.
I walk around and register all the studnets first thing in the morning.
But is there any way that the absence will be marked in the teachers registers automatically, for example when there is an authorised absence days in advance.
We'd love it if they can see who wont be in the their class prior to the register being taken.

Thanks
Marcus Butler (STEARsoft)
27 September 2012
17:11
Dear Pam,

I think I understand a bit better where you're coming from.

At the moment I can't think of a quick way to do what you're asking. This is a feature I could look at for the future.

In the mean time, two other things may or may not help:
If a teacher wants to see who is going to be absent for a particular class they can mark all students present (in advance). They will then be alerted for any students that you marked absent on that day in the morning registration session. Once checked, they should clear the present marks which could be misleading to others. This will certainly work 'on the day', I'd need to test if you could do this for future classes. I don't think it would work beyond the current day; but then that is unlikely to be an accurate forecast anyway.
If the class being taught is in the same grouping used for morning registration, the teacher could use the 'All School Data' link to see that class's attendance (teachers can see this data in a read-only way).

As I say, this sounds like something to investigate for a feature in the future so thank you for this.

Yours,

Marcus

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