MarkBook^® section 11-2

Exporting Grades, Comments, Learning Skills, etc. to Peel Reports

The Peel Student Information System has custom Ministry report cards. There are two techniques to transfer MarkBook-generated report card data to Peel's SIS. The first of these is a screen-to-screen transfer. For the second, Asylum Software has created a separate Transfer Utility program for the purpose of enabling each teacher to generate a delimited file to export their MarkBook secondary class data to Peel's SIS electronically. This 600 Kb program is already installed in each user's MarkBook 200X directory and it can be launched at any time. Submission of the file will be over the network. We recommend that any school using this utility transfer circulate copies of section 4-4, section 4-7, section 4-8, and this section 11-2 to teachers. MarkBook clients may print and copy any pages from this web site.

SETTING THE 'FIT' VALUE FOR PEEL REPORT CARDS

Before doing this transfer, build the report card comments in MarkBook as described in section 10-1 and following. Set the comment 'fit' size as per the following table. Once set, any paragraph exceeding the fit value will turn red indicating that it's too big for the printed Peel report. Use the MarkBook tools to automatically spell-check each student's comment.

TECHNIQUE 1: THE SCREEN-TO-SCREEN TRANSFER PROCESS

This technique transfers report card data directly from MarkBook into Peel SIS by running both software applications simultaneously on the same computer. If the user has access to SIS web submission, MarkBook will transfer the data from a computer at home through the browser.

To initiate the submission to SIS, it will be necessary to work on a computer that has access to the SIS submission screens, has MarkBook installed, and has the MarkBook class data. Launch SIS, provide your user access protocols, and locate the data entry screens for the class. Then, launch MarkBook, open the same class, click Comments in the upper menu bar, and select Transfer Mode. MarkBook reduces to a fraction of the computer screen. You'll get a view similar to the following with BOTH programs open. In this sample, Peel SIS is in the upper half of the screen and MarkBook's Transfer Screen is in the lower half of the screen. Both programs can be moved on your screen by grabbing either upper blue bar and dragging to a fresh location. Alt-Tab on the keyboard will move between programs if necessary.

The MBT_200X.exe execute file is in your MarkBook directory. Open any class, and click on Setup in the upper menu bar. Select Transfer Setup and follow the setup options on this page.

The transfer program is a separate MarkBook execute file called MBT_200X.exe and it may be accessed with its own icon - note the book with the arrow in the upper left of the next image. This program may be launched independently, or it may be called from MarkBook.


To use this transfer utility, the teacher's classes should have been set up electronically from SIS download #50 as described in section 4-7 (http://www.markbook.com/mb_manual/peel.htm). The student number is the key identifier to move your summary data back into SIS. Additionally, each teacher should have recently updated their MarkBook class folder using a fresh SIS download as described in section 4-8 (http://www.markbook.com/mb_manual/update.htm). The user should have prepared their report card comments in MarkBook as well.

The transfer utility execute file must be set up for Peel DSB. If not already done so, launch the transfer program and click on the Setup button. Then, select the Student Information Software as Peel DSB, plus the type of district, Public - English and the grade level, Secondary, from among the options as shown below. Click Save and then Exit Program. From this point on, the transfer utility will make files compatible with Peel's SIS.



Once set up as per the previous image, launch MarkBook, open a class, and select the Reports option in the upper menu bar. Click on Transfer to Peel DSB. The transfer program will launch and load the current class.


The user is now prompted to select the type of report, if not already done. The Public - English choice comes up as the default. If this is the first time you have worked on a transfer for this selected class, click the Start New File button.


If you have previously worked on a Peel file for this class, the unfinished file will appear in the Continue Working On ... window. In this case, select this existing file - PHG2DOA in this example - for the purpose of editing it or completing it. Click on Continue > to move to the next screen. If the user wishes, they may delete the unfinished file by highlighting it and clicking the Delete selected 'Working File' button. If deleted, the user may start a new file to pull fresh data from their MarkBook class folder. However, if the user wishes to incorporate fresher grade, attendance or comment data, select the appropriate Update cells and then click Continue.

Start New File moves the user to this screen whereas Continue skips this next screen and goes to the following one. Here, you will select the Report cycle (!st report in this example), Mark Set, Block, Category, and Comment Files that you'll use for submitting the report data. If all or most students in the class have an IEP, check the cell in the Program box. When your selections have been made, click Next.

Editing Student Data, Selecting Learning Skills, Comment Size Measurement
The transfer program pulls the teacher's marks and comments for each student from their MarkBook class folder and displays the results as per the next image. Or, if Continue was selected in the second-previous image, the data from the partially completed file is loaded into the transfer program and displayed as per the following image.

At the top, there is a scrollable window to move through the entire class student by student. The course code / section and student number appear. If edited, no items on this screen are written back to the user's MarkBook class folder. Attendance is summarized automatically if the user has entered attendance. The grade, 88% in this example, is editable but this will NOT re-write the user's source data. Editing the grade may be necessary based on modal or "most consistent" analysis. Or based on professional judgment. Fill in the IEP cell as appropriate. The attendance numbers can be edited too. Click and type to make any edit.

In the Learning Skills frame, use any of the five buttons to flood-fill the five skills. Or, use the five pop-down menus to select skills one at a time as shown for Teamwork. The sixth Learning Skill, Use of Spoken French, is enabled only if a French district was specified during setup and does not apply to Peel.

The Comment frame displays the paragraph built and saved in MarkBook. Or, type a new comment here. However, construction in MarkBook, as described in section 10-1 and following, enables the user to build the comment from a bank and spell-check it. For this screen example, an over-sized comment is intentionally displayed - it exceeds the 250 character limit for the Peel DSB secondary report. In this circumstance, the text turns from black to red to warn the user. The teacher must now edit the comment down to make it fit. Once edited, the text of the comment will save in the new Peel export file but it will NOT over-write the original comment in the user's MarkBook class folder.

If time runs out before finishing each student, click on Save 'Working File' - Exit to store a partially completed file. Or, if each student is complete, click on Save Report File to move to the next screen. In the former case, the program will create a storage file with all data saved as built so far (the user will return to this file using the Continue > button in an image above). In the latter case, this transfer program will scan the entire class and warn the user about defects such as missing data. Should there be any problem with the data such as a missing skill, an oversized comment, etc., this utility will identify those deficiencies and not permit the creation of the export file until each deficiency is corrected. Once all corrections are made, the utility will move to the next screen.

Each class can be saved as an independent file. Click Individual File in the image above. Use the following Windows screen to locate a storage location for the file. Once located, click Save. In this example, the user has selected their MarkBook 2003 directory, MkBk2003 but any other location, including a directory on the server, will do. Notice the file name - both the teacher's surname and the course code appear in the name. SR1 means first report cycle. SIS is the extension unique to Peel.  Do NOT change this file name. Deliver each file to your admin or the SIS secretary either through the network, on diskette, or as an attachment to Email.


A teacher can include all of their classes in one multiple class file. In this case, click Combined File. As per the following image, the user has selected a diskette and must now click Save. Notice that for a Combined File, the user's surname is in the file name at the bottom of this image but there is no course code. Submit the file as described in the previous paragraph.


When Save is clicked, the transfer utility will generate a comma-delimited file, in the specified location, that looks like the following file as viewed in Notepad or in a word processor.  Only the first two students, Jonathan and Annabel are shown. There are 13 fields for each student, each in quotes and separated by commas.


Submit the file(s) over the network, on diskette, or as an Email attachment to the designated recipient. All teachers' files should be deposited into a common directory as specified by the school's administration. Peel's SIS system will read the files, populate the SIS data base, and merge the data onto report cards. The submission works through the 'Media-X' upload into SIS.


Manual: Go to section 11-3 to see details on MarkBook's export to MarkBook Admin Edition.

Asylum Software's Home Page | Send Us Email | LockerManager | MarkBook CNX for handheld computers | Why Use Class Management Software? | Start of the MarkBook Manual | Order a printed MarkBook Manual | LogiNotes (MarkBook En Français) | Bar Coded Attendance | MarkBook's Home Page | Electronic Report Cards | Order MarkBook