We are pleased to announce that the HTML5 TeacherPlus Gradebook and its management site were both updated during the early morning (EDT) on February 13, 2018. Included in this update are many important feature fixes, along with enhancements to roster change notifications, annotation mode, and contacts.
Features and Enhancements
Added Student Roster Change Notifications
Teachers will now receive a notification when they open their gradebook if a student has been added to or withdrawn from that class.
Annotation Mode is now faster and easier to use
While the fastest way to enter a lot of annotations using a mouse is to use the “Advanced Annotation Entry” feature (accessed by right-clicking any score cell), we have improved entry with a keyboard when Annotation Mode is on. When using the keyboard, selections can now be made without teachers ever having to reach for their mouse.
Annotation mode is used when entering annotations from the main grid. If Annotation Mode is off, the gradebook assumes teachers are entering scores. If Annotation Mode is toggled on, then the gradebook assumes teachers are entering annotations.
No matter what the mode, annotations or scores can always be entered by right-clicking the cell.
- In the Gradebook menu, click the Annotation toggle. The Annotation toggle key turns green when Annotation Mode is on.
Click in a score cell and begin typing any characters from the code or description. Matches will appear as the teacher types. Pressing Enter selects the first one or pressing ↓ and then Enter allows the teacher to select any other match.
To improve speed, until a second character is typed, only matches in the code are displayed.
Changes have been made as to which contacts are displayed to teachers in their gradebooks
A previous update allowed the manager to specify which contacts appeared by relationship. This meant that if the relationship “AUNT” was selected, then all aunts appeared for all students.
With this update, instead of selecting all contacts by relationship, specific contacts may be selected. In-other-words, instead of selecting ALL “aunts”, specific aunts may be selected.
The method used to select contacts will be the same method currently used to determine which contacts appear in the PlusPortals:
If a contact has access to the parent portal for a student as set in Administrator’s Plus, then they will appear in the gradebook as a contact for that student (assuming Show Contacts is on).
- Mothers and fathers will always show as contacts regardless of their portal access setting.
- With this change, contacts shown in the gradebook will match the contacts shown in portals.
- For any contacts to show in the gradebook, Show Contact Details must be selected in the Manager. The Manager can also be used to specify which contact fields will be displayed. (EMail and Cell Phone numbers are always displayed.)
Feature Fixes
- Changes have been made to improve the speed of saving attendance.
- Teachers can now change the semester exam dates in their gradebook.
- A period used within an Arabic narrative will not change the order of the words.
- Scrolling on the Settings-Gradebook tab has been fixed for teachers using Windows 8