We currently use FAWeb7 and are looking for input from others who use this. Can you tell us what problems you are having or what you like about it. Can you compare it to any other programs you have used? All input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Lisa Hoffmeier Graland Country Day School

I don't have anything I can compare it to, but we use it pretty fully at Norman Howard School in Rochester. For the first few years of Registrar's Office use, we just entered Grades and Comments at the 5-week period. When we upgraded to EE7, we decided to use it for Class Attendance and GradeBook. I'll admit that I was apprehensive about the reception I would get when I told them they had to keep it up-to-date. We don't have 100% compliance on Class Attendance entry, but the staff took to Gradebook like a fish to water. As one teacher explained when I commented on how surprised I was to see people using it: "You freed them from the calculator!" All our problems have been user error: someone sets a default of 10 for a quiz, accidentally uses the Quiz category for a test, gives a student a 91 (out of 10!?), and suddenly their totals are skewed. Every time in the past 1.5 years that a teacher has said there was something wrong with the calculations in FAWEB, it has turned out to be a typo on their part. [i]--- Edited at 1/12/2007 11:18:18 AM by Tim Shaw[/i]

Tim, Thanks so much for great input! We are having a bit of pushback from faculty who do not want to enter comments directly into FA7. We used to say that they could copy and paste from Word but had to turn off formatting. Well, lets just say, that didn't work well. So we ended up with crazy font sizes on report cards. How does your staff enter their comments? Lisa

There's a feature--I don't recall where, but tech support could tell you--where you pick the font and size for Comments. I would expect this to override pasted text. I'm pretty sure it does, because I have a faculty member who uses a Mac (we're largely Windows here), who writes her comments at her leisure in Word on her Mac, then copies/pastes into the Comment field. She actually advises this for her colleagues, for 3 reasons: 1) You can write your comments anywhere (if you have a laptop) and don't need to be logged into FAWEB. (I don't provide access from home.) 2) You have a larger field to write in. 3) The word processor's spelling checker is faster. (Or at least it was in version 6.) Typoes are the biggest problem with Comments; Admins proofread and hand the draft reports back and give teachers until the end of the day to make corrections. Another bonus to using FAWEB for Comments: we insist on two pieces of mandatory information--Level of Support Needed & Effort Level--for which I have created a table in the default comments area. They click on the binoculars icon in the Comment window, click 2 boxes (one for each level), and save themselves from typing/pasting those lines again and again. If we had inconsistent fonts/sizes, the Admins would first ask me to fix it. If I said I couldn't fix it and it's because people insist on NOT using the program, they would mandate the use of the program for Comments, simply because the need for a consistent and professional look outweighs the teachers' comfort/convenience. If teachers (or any employees) based what they were willing to do on comfort and convenience, who among us would still have jobs?

You set up the fort type and size for comments under Business Rules.

Our teacher copy and paste from Word. You can set a default for font and size in EE configuration for when you post from FAWeb. The only formatting that has caused a problem is ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, etc.). When teachers use ordinal numbers in Word and copy and paste to FAWeb, it changes all succeeding text to superscript. So we just tell teachers to write out those numbers in their comments (first, second, etc.).