MarkBook Comment Introduction

    MarkBook^®    section 10-7

Working With Electronic Report Cards

Electronic Report Cards (ERCs) are computer-generated reports with sophisticated data input required by teachers. Instead of submitting a grade and comment trigger numbers, some ERCs demand one or more grades (aka "strands"), learning skill indicators, and unique anecdotal paragraphs. This is far too much data for a school secretary to type into a terminal. Consequently, teachers must perform this task. MarkBook speeds up the whole process tremendously.

ELECTRONIC REPORT CARDS:

Electronic Report Cards (ERCs) are computer-generated multi-subject reports cards with a very lengthy and unique comment for each student. The visual appearance of these reports and their ability to communicate can be impressive!

However, these computer reports have proven to be troublesome for many teaching professionals. Someone must enter the data into the computer that generates the report forms. School secretaries do not have the time to input a small paragraph for each student in each subject. Therefore, each teacher must input the data! This requires computer expertise and typing skills - typically at critical times just before report cards must be printed and sent home! Many teachers indicate that enormous amounts of time are required to input the data. And they cannot anticipate whether or not their typed comments will fit in the available spaces in the ERC software - comment space sometimes varies from one subject to another on the same report card! Furthermore, some of these reports require multiple marks for each subject in addition to the very lengthy custom comment paragraphs!

MarkBook Has a Solution:
Assemble your anecdotal comments in MarkBook. MarkBook automatically calculates the grades, strands, age, and an attendance summary. Then, when confronted with the software that generates an ERC, copy and paste your grades, ages, and comments from MarkBook directly into the electronic report - minimal typing and minimal input time required! And NO paperwork - use your computer to do the transfer! Should the ERC software drop your data, MarkBook still has an intact backup copy.

Knowing that such a report is coming, use MarkBook to set up and keep track of all assessments in a category system that anticipates the categories (aka Strands) of the ERC that your school will use. Three examples follow. In each case, the user could set up one Mark Set with these various items as categories, or one Mark Set for each category.

English	History	Mathematics
Oral & Visual Communication	Knowledge & Understanding	Number Sense & Numeration
Reading	Thinking & Inquiry	Measurement
Writing	Communication	Geometry & Spatial Sense
	Applications	Patterning & Algebra
	Summative	Data Management & Probability

The report may also require an overall grade. MarkBook will calculate this as well using a weighting supplied by you.

As data input time for the Electronic Report Card nears, start building your comment paragraphs. MarkBook is designed to reduce the problems with typing skills and comment creation. In fact, you can build professional custom comments for each student without typing as described in section 10-5. Then, input the data into the ERC as in section 10-8.

Editing the "Fit" Value:
Edit Fit Values

MarkBook comes with a "Fit" value pre-set for its own printed student report card as seen in section 9-6. If you create a comment paragraph that is too large for this printed space, the on-screen comment will turn red as a warning. This pre-set value can be edited to check for fit in other applications such as an ERC.

The Fit Mode is an alternative way of making sure that your comment will fit into the space available on an external ERC report. One method is described in section 10-4. Another is described here. Either technique allows you to compare the size of your comment in advance with the physical space available in the report that will eventually receive your assembled comment. Each subject can have a different size of comment, a different font, a different point size and/or a different character count. To edit the Fit values from the Comments screen, click File and select Edit Fit Parameters. You will get this screen. Click the Subject button, select a subject (English in this example), select a font using the Font field (MarkBook and many reports use Arial by default), and edit the numeric values in the points, Frame, and Lines boxes. MarkBook has a set of defaults loaded for most subjects but these may be edited at any time. Click Update when finished.

Some experimentation with printing the ERC on your printer may be required to ensure that your measurement of the available space in the ERC is accurate. Also see the size/fit functions described at the beginning of section 10-4.

Manual: Go to section 10-8 to see how to transfer comments into an ERC.