I would like to know what other BlackBaud - GradeQuick users feel about the loss of GradeQuick support when moving to version 7 (Education Edge)?

I wasn't aware of that. That would be really big! We didn't have any plans for moving away from Gradequick. Can this change.

Given all that it takes to convert and upgrade to EE, we were surprised that in addition we would have to train the entire faculty on a new grade book program. I don't think that BB has any idea as to the impact a new grade book has on a faculty. However, that being said, FAWeb seems like it will work fine, and the web access eliminates the problems we encounter as teachers check in and check out their GQ files on floppies. Larry Landon School

We have looked at FAWeb and agree that it would take care of the grading like Grade Quick has in the past, but we also use Edline for progress reports and many other reports, forms, etc. FAWeb does not allow you to send reports to Edline only to NetClassroom (BB's product).

we left GradeQuick in 2003 for FAWEB and I am delighted that we did. Not only is it more user friendly for faculty, it's more user friendly for importing the grades and comments into the Grades module. Give it a few months and your faculty will appreciate the change. Plus, you can use it from any internet connected computer - at home, at work, etc. Dial-up is terminally slow, cable modem is great. [i]--- Edited at 3/1/2005 11:44:28 AM by Pat Doering[/i] [i]--- Edited at 3/1/2005 11:45:19 AM by Pat Doering[/i]

I evaluated Grade Quick last year, but decided on FA WEB instead since we already used Blackbaud products. We went from having no gradebook to FAWEB very smoothly, there is really no training required, it is very self explanatory. However, I did run a 2 hour session for my teachers, using the Blackbaud supplied training materials (with a little tweaking) and we were up and running in no time. Of course, you always have that 10% of faculty that "don't get it", but the majority of the faculty adapted very quickly. There are several enhancements in the FAWEB version that come when you upgrade to EE that we are looking forward to, such as being able to get a class average for any assignment. We do not use the Net Classroom feature, but I email progress reports from FAWEB to parents with little trouble. Carolynn Parisi Mount Saint Mary Academy Watchung, NJ

Carolyn, I agree that implemting FAWEB was relatively easy. We did some training sessions with faculty but a bunch of them just read my handout and figured it out on their own. Many of the teachers do not use the Gradebook feature for their classes but we do use the grades and comments portions to produce report cards. We are still sending hard copies home to parents, however. When you email them home, what email program are you using and are they Crystal reports or .pdf files or ?? Thanks. Barbara Prine Kingswood-Oxford School

Barbara - We too still send official Interium reports home on hard copy. This past year, we ran them out of FAWEB at the advisor level so each student printed on a page. Next year, I will write a cyrstal report for this so we can customize it. I don't think we woudl ever mass mail Interiums or Report cards, since we do not maintain an email distribution list for all the parents. However, we have parents that want weekly progress, so I just run a FA web progress report, and cut and paste it into an email. You have to spend a few second adjusting the spacing, because you lose the formatting when you cut and paste, but it is much easier than typing something up from scratch. Once we upgrade, I will probably look at creating a more formalized pdf report for this. Carolynn Parisi Mount Saint Mary Academy Watchung, NJ

OK. I see. We don't do official interim reports - just a case-by-case contact with parents as needed. Our regular report cards, sent out four times a year, are already done in Crystal - we don't use the canned FAWEB ones for much of anything because they can't be formatted the way we want and are pretty useless for our purposes. I was thinking we could turn the Crystal reports into .pdf files and email those - in the future. I work in the IT department and that's not something we wish to add to our task list - it would need to be another department once the details are ironed out. Thanks for the information. --Barbara