Here at Harrisburg Academy, we are new to using Netclassroom this year, and have decided at this point to post only report card grades. Before we make any decisions to turn on quarterly running totals or daily grades, we would like to know from any schools that are using these more informative web postings if they have had any particularly notable feedback, either good or bad, from faculty, parents or students. I would appreciate hearing from anyone with these experiences.

Bob, there are many advantages to allowing parents and students to see Quarter averages and daily grades. One, it cuts down on the communication between teacher and parent. Second, it holds the teachers more accountable for doing their jobs, that is, grading and posting grades. Overall, our parents absolutely love it. Our students generally don't care for it much since mom and dad know exacty how they are doing in each class. I can't think of any negative to having all grades up on NetClassroom. The basis behind NetClassroom is commmunication to the parents and students. The more the better, and it is somewhat automatic. It is such a part of our culture now that parents can check grades anytime they want. When I perform maintenance on the servers at night I get a bunch of emails asking why they couldn't get in the night before. Norm Dunkin Director of Information Services Landmark Christian School [Email Removed]

We have been using Netclassroom for 2 years. We are divided into 2 schools, elementary and middle school. Our middle school is required to post grades, but the elementary school does not, although many of the elementary teachers use Faculty Access as a gradebook. We have run into a problem with "running totals". We would like to have that feature turned on. Our middle school teachers, students and parents would love to be able to see that. But if I turn it on, then a running total shows up for elementary even though those teachers do not have a date in the "show date" column. This is very frustrating. Other than that, we have been happy with the product. Our middle school students love being able to check their grades and the parents do too. Marilyn Mossman Director of Technology Hillel Day School

We are a high school, and have been using NetClassroom for several years. I do think that it has made our teachers more accountable for keeping their grades up-to-date. Most of our students and parents like having this kind of detailed information. Our counselors have mixed feelings because of a few parents that check the grades too frequently. Some students have said that their parents check multiple times daily. Students have said that they would like to be able to have a bad quiz grade every now and then without having to take the heat at home. I would like a feature that would allow us to limit the number of times a user logs in each week. Other than that, we really like it. We no longer mail any grade reports other that at the end of each semester, and we may stop those soon as well. Elaine Mouton

We just starting using NC this year but haven't published report cards. This summer as a test, we published last year's report cards 2006-07. NC isn't updating the old report card with out new 2007-08 MP1 report cards. BB is stumped. Has anyone else run into this problem? If so, how did you fix it? Debbie Fitzgerald Steward School

Try using the "Remove Report Cards" function from the Administrative tasks on the Grades module. Then "Publish" them again. Parents may have to hit the "refresh" button on their browser. Marilyn Mossman Director of Technology Hillel Day School

Our school is 10 years old and we have always posted grades online. We started using Netclassroom about 2 years ago. Feedback from parents has always been positive as they can track their student's progress through each and every assignment. Our students also like the idea of seeing their running average although some of them find it a tad annoying that their parents can also see their grades ...:) One downside about Netclassroom from a faculty perspective is that they don't have the same "view" of the grades as the students/parents do. Faculty only have access to student progress within FAWeb. They would love to be able to see what their students see especially when they have to respond to queries from parents. If someone has found a workaround to this, please let me know. Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions.

We too have heard the complaint from teachers that they can't see what the parents and students see. What I recommend is that the teacher select one student in the class and get permission from the student to use their NetClassroom userid and password. This way, they can logon as the student to see what everyone else is seeing. Norm Dunkin Director of Information Services Landmark Christian School [Email Removed]

I have a Blackbaud recommended answer to the question about faculty needing to see the assignments as the students and parents see them in Netclassroom, and it does not involve asking students for "permission". Choose one student from each class as the "test" subject. In that student's record in EE, on the relationship tab, add the teacher as a relationship and mark only the View Netclassroom checkbox. Now open the faculty record and note the new online user name and password on the Bio1 tab. The teacher can now use these credentials to log into Netclassroom and they can see that student's Netclassroom pages.

I actually did just that, then print screened shots, made a tutorial for teachers on parent/student views. They were thrilled with that.

Yes, I've heard this one too. Somehow adding each and every faculty member to a student's account or a group of students account will be really involved for us as we also assign passwords to students/parents & faculty in our environment. Do you have a generic faculty account or do you have each and every faculty member listed on the student's relationship tab in EE?

I did this for our Resource teacher, but it seems that to do this every year for every teacher for each of their classes would be too much. Marilyn Marilyn Mossman Director of Technology Hillel Day School

I did not automatically do this for all teachers. I asked them all cia email if they wanted it, and explained what it would do for them. Then for those that replied and said they would use it, I did it for them - perhaps 15 teachers. I'll do more if they ask.

I have had several clients who have done it for one teacher in order to get screen shots and create a tutorial for their teachers. I think this is a more feasible alternative for larger schools. Thank you for keeping us posted on what you like/don't like about our products. Naomi Harding Educational Consultant

Until Blackbaud allows administrative and teacher views of NetClassroom I don't think there is a good solution -- it is whatever works for each school. We have many, many people that want access to NetClassroom and we didn't want to mess with all of those relationships. So, we created a fake student for the Middle and Upper Schools. We enrolled that student in every academic class. We then distributed that student UserName & Password to the faculty.