Powerschool | Multi Select Tool

Selecting by hand...ain't nobody got time for that

"Multi Select" is a great time-saving tool that is my new favorite Powerschool feature! I love it even more than creating groups and working with groups, which is saying a lot because groups really made life easier. I don't know when Multi Select showed up, but I sure am thankful for it. 

Let me tell you why you're going to love it too...

Student Attendance Audit

How do I track Student Absences Over a Time Period That I Choose?

There are many situations where you might like to know the attendance numbers and totals for students for a certain week, month, or other period of time you determine. For example, if you are doing an attendance incentive group you'll want to be able to check the weekly attendance for that group each Friday. Or maybe you've created a school-wide incentive for perfect attendance for the month of September (Attendance Awareness Month!) and you need to know who gets the prize. This is the report you'll want to use.

Continue reading for instructions on how to use this report. 

Average Daily Attendance

How Do I Find My School's Average Daily Attendance?

Average daily attendance percentages have always been a common way to get an idea of how your school's attendance looks overall. There hasn't seemed be be any easy ways to get this data out of PowerSchool with the access that we currently have. I did some digging and found a report that seems to give this data as well as some other helpful summary numbers. 

Another question I got recently was a quick way to see how many school days there have been to date. I suggested using the Class Attendance Audit report as it gives you total days in the final column. However, the Attendance Summary Report seems to be a better option to get this information. It conveniently puts the number of days included in your report at the top of the page, so if you run it on the entire school year it will count up those days for you. No need to get out your calendar! 

Continue reading for instructions on how to use this report. 

PowerSchool Custom Report: Attendance Tracking Report

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

Are you tired of running 5 different reports and manually adding up numbers just to get the attendance totals you need? I am! There are children who need our attention and we're using our precious time scribbling down addition problems.  

We need a quick method to see group attendance data on one page that is already totaled and categorized by excused vs. unexcused. I decided to take on this task today with the inspirational background noise of Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview playing on Netflix. By the way, it is a very interesting interview and he shared some wisdom that I think applies to our plight:

Humans are tool builders and we build tools that can dramatically amplify our human abilities." 

-Steve Jobs

PowerSchool, like any piece of technology, is a tool that we can implement to multiply our efforts. Lets put down our calculators and let PowerSchool do the work for us. I'm pretty excited about how this turned out and hope it is helpful for you as well!  

What Do I do Next?

You may need to first import this report into your Powerschool system in order to use it. There are resources at the end of this post that will walk you through how to do this. 

Currently I am aware that this report is available in the following counties in NC:
Wake
Johnson

Continue reading for instructions on how to use this report, a downloadable guide, and the code to import this report into Powerschool for your county if you don't already have access to it. 

PowerSchool Tutorial: Print Reports

Reports, Reports, and More Reports!

The Print Reports function offers many different reports that can be run on individual students or groups of students. There are several different methods to select a group of students to work with, but we’re going to focus on working with a Stored Selection. If you would like to learn how to create a saved group of students with Stored Selections, check out my previous tutorial on how to create a group as well as instructions on working with a group.  

Once you have that figured out then come back here and continue reading for instructions on how to run all different kinds of reports to get the data you need.

PowerSchool Tutorial: Working With Saved Groups

What can I do with my group?

Once you have created your group there are tons of things that you can do with it. Let's go through how to get back to your Stored Selection (your saved group) so that you can get all kinds of data on these students. There is also a downloadable guide that you can save and print for later reference that details how to edit your group.

Continue reading to learn all about working with groups.

PowerSchool Tutorial: Create a Group

This is going to make you LOVE PowerSchool!

I was so excited when my wonderful data manager at Lake Myra Elementary School showed me how to create and save a group of children in PowerSchool and I couldn't wait to share this with everyone I know! 

This opens up so many great possibilities and I think there is a light at the end of the PowerSchool tunnel!  Creating groups is hopefully just the beginning of the potential this database has to make our work easier instead of creating seemingly endless frustration.  

So how can this help me as a School Social Worker?

Data managers already use some of these features to print letters, labels, and attendance summaries.  There are many other great uses for Social Workers.  

Here are a few ideas:

• Save your PLT list for each school
• Run attendance reports on your saved PLT list
• Print attendance summaries for your PLT list
• Save a list of students in an attendance group and run reports on them
• Save a list of students on an "attendance watch list"
• Whatever you want! (within reason)

Please comment and let me know how you see yourself using this feature.  Or if you have a question about a possible use post that too and I'll consult with my data manager extraordinaire to see if we can figure it out :)

I'll be posting a few more tutorials on what to do with your list once you have created it.  Subscribe to this blog and you'll get the info first!

Creating and Using Your Google Voice Account

Get ready...this will change the way you communicate

We had a great time learning about Google Voice last week. Hopefully everyone left less confused than when they entered! This service takes some getting used to, but once you have the hang of it you'll never want to go back to regular old voicemail again.  

Here's a peek into what we talked about for those who weren't able to join us:

Google Voice Presentation from Carly Price

There was one additional feature of Google Voice that we didn't talk about much and I wanted to make sure you all know about. Turning on call screening is important to make sure that our WCPSS voicemail system doesn't interfere with Google Voice, but its also a really neat feature. This allows you to have audio caller ID and choose how you want to deal with an incoming call.

How does it work?

When you pick up the call Google will say: 

"Call from _____, press 1 to accept or 2 to send to voicemail"

These are your choices:

1. Accept call 

    (Press 1)

2. Send call to voicemail 

    (Press 2 and hang up)

3. Send call to voicemail and listen while caller leaves a message. They won't know you are listening.

    (Press 2 and stay on the line)

3. Send call to voicemail, then decide you really DO want to answer the call after all.  

    (Press 2, listen to caller, then press * to answer the call)

Questions

We had some great discussion and questions from your fellow social workers on how to use this tool and other Google Apps. I love putting our ideas together to come up with new ways to use them. I'll be posting responses and tutorials related to the following questions. Subscribe to this blog so you can get emails notifying you of this information and future topics.

Google Voice

• When sending group texts on Google Voice do recipients' replies go to me or to the whole group?
• Can my WCPSS landline be set up to forward to my Google Voice number?
• How do I access Google Voice from my iPad, tablet, or smartphone?
• What are ways to quickly access my Google Voice account on my computer?
• How do I install the Google Voice extension for Chrome or the add-on for Firefox?
• Is there a way to change my Google Voice number if I want to?
• I already have a Google Voice account on my personal Gmail account. How do I transfer this account to my new WCPSS Google Apps account?

Other Topics

• How can I use Google Calendar to share my agenda with someone and exclude specific details of my events?
• How do I use Google Drive?

Do you have other questions about using Google Voice or something else? Post your questions here or contact me directly and I'll do my best to help. Someone else may have the same question and we can all learn together!

Getting Started with Your WCPSS Google Apps Account

How do I set up my GOOGLE account and why do I want to anyway?

Google Apps offers all kinds of web-based tools and resources for communication and collaboration. It is a great way to store and share information in a user-friendly format that can be accessed on the go. Basically, it's everything a social worker (or teacher, administrator, etc.) needs to organize and utilize the insane amount of information we need from day-to-day to do our jobs. Google Apps can make life much easier for you (and me!) by helping us connect in more meaningful and efficient ways.

I promise it's painless to get started, just click here.

Note: If you have ever set up a personal Google account using your WCPSS email address please watch this video to learn how to fix this conflict.

Now that you've set up your account a whole new world of technological wonders awaits!  You may already be familiar with many of the tools that Google offers and together i'm sure that we can think of some really creative ways to use them.  What ideas do you have?

Some of you will be joining our workshop next week to learn about Google Voice, which is a great communication tool.  If you're not able to join us, but are still interested in learning more i'll be posting a tutorial soon.  

Happy Googling!