MarkBook Class Modal Analysis

    MarkBook^®     section 8-10

Creating a Class Report as an HTML Document
Reach this screen from the Class Report screen by clicking on the HTML tab. Use this feature to quickly create web documents for posting lesson summaries, achievement data, attendance data, homework, and whole-class announcements on the Internet.

Email from a client after using this HTML feature for the first time:

It's good to see that you folks NEVER rest on your current successes - inspirational at the very least y'all are! The latest addition has prompted a wave of +ve concern in many of my students - web-marks have given some of them 'religion'; they can no longer deny their progress, or lack of it, and this without even telling the parents that the marks are online!
We recommend that you DO tell parents where this data is located on the web.

ACHIEVEMENT DATA ON THE INTERNET
Reaction to posting assessment data on the web is highly varied among professional educators:

Whatever your personal view, it's clear that the communication of assessment over the Internet is a rapidly growing phenomenon. Many students, especially at college and university, count on the Internet as their only reliable source of information about their personal achievement. Regardless of grade level, actively-involved parents know that their children benefit from parental access to information about homework, curriculum, achievement, and upcoming activities. Our beta testers for this MarkBook tool cited it as the best feature they have ever had for communicating detailed messages about these components of education. It's free and it's paperless. Students cannot manufacture a bogus MarkBook report, they cannot forge a parent signature, and everyone has access whenever it's convenient to them personally. There is one drawback - if students finish a major test at 3:00, they expect to see the results on line at 3:05!

MAKING AN HTML CLASS REPORT

MarkBook provides a Class Report tool for building a web page (a Hyper Text Markup Language file) from this screen. It takes a few seconds to create this page from start to finish. From the Class Report screen, click on the HTML Report tab. If you wish to add a custom note on this HTML page, typing that note will take a bit longer. Note that the teacher has built a series of notes on sequential lessons. He edits this note daily (MarkBook remembers the last text used), creates the page using the button at the bottom right, and refreshes the page on the Internet. The page created does NOT use real names. Instead, students are identified in alpha order by whatever is in the Code Name field on the Edit Names screen - see section 4-1. Please note that this HTML feature in MarkBook is NOT automatic. The decision to post this data and the re-fresh rate are entirely up to the individual teacher.

Preparing the HTML Page

Select the options you'd like from the Options box. Alter the background using the button in the lower left corner. For better visual presentation, we recommend keeping light shades. If there are students who must be excluded from the report, click their names in the list at the right. MarkBook will sandwich their names in <<>> brackets. From this point forward, these individuals will be excluded from class HTML reports until the teacher clicks the name again to remove the brackets. When you click the Create the HTML Report button, MarkBook will suggest a file name and location. Edit these as you see fit. View the resulting file with your web browser.

Except as noted in the next paragraph, in order to post/replace the page on the web, you or your school will have to have a program for moving the HTML file onto the selected site (school site, teacher's personal web site, etc.). Such programs are called File Transfer Protocols or FTPs and good ones cost less than $50US.

TeacherWeb

If you don't have a web site to display this data, www.teacherweb.com can supply one for you. This is a low cost service with many tens of thousands of teacher clients and school administrators around the world. In fact, your entire staff could use this service. As of this writing, the cost is $25 US or $33 Canadian per year per teacher. Careful about your school's name - some schools are multiple listed with two or three similar names created as individual teachers signed up. There is a bulk sign-up service for all teachers in a school or a school district at lower cost. This site accepts files, photos, and graphics so you don't need an FTP program. After moving your MarkBook HTML file/page onto your TeacherWeb site, TeacherWeb will set up links to the page.

MarkBook makes a file specifically for TeacherWeb. See Student Reports and click on the Print/Communicate tab. You can post individual student data to TeacherWeb with a web browser.

Even if you don't plan to post your own data on the web, TeacherWeb gives an enlightening perspective of the kinds of messages that professionals around the world communicate to students and parents. Cruise through the site by searching for teachers geographically.

PUBLIC IDENTIFICATION OF STUDENTS AND THEIR PERSONAL DATA

Obviously, personal assessment data should be private. Consequently, individuals on MarkBook's web page must remain anonymous. Some jurisdictions have specific policies about not presenting assessment data in a manner that enables any person (other than the student and their parents) to link specific grades to identified individuals. We encourage that kind of policy. MarkBook does NOT use real names in this web report. Rather, MarkBook's HTML report uses the Code Name field described in section 4-1 for student identification. And the report is re-sorted into code name alpha order. If you haven't entered anonymous code names from your students, MarkBook automatically assigns an alpha-numeric code name to each.

OTHER TIPS ABOUT POSTING YOUR CLASS DATA ON THE WEB

If you don't already post achievement data on the web, we recommend the following:

Once posted, give students and parents your web page URL (Uniform Record Locator) address so they can go to your site at any time. Obviously, students should give parents their code name. Or, let parents know the code name for their child on Parent Night.

Manual: Go to section 9-1 to view an on-screen individual Student Report.