Power Grade Instructions

Please note: If Powergrade is already installed on the machine and you just need a new Gradebook-- CLICK HERE." For instructions in Word, click here.

First, a word about where to install this software:

• Choose your primary machine and install it there ONLY.
• The machine you choose needs to be connected to the Internet while you are installing and preferable whenever you are working on your grades (in some cases you can work offline).
• If you are a traveling teacher, you can have your grade book on the same machine as another teacher who has his or her grade book, but you need to be sure that is workable (the machine will be free when each of you needs to work on grades). You may also use a flash drive. See a trainer for help with this option.

You only want ONE copy of your gradebook. Do not download a copy at home and at school. If you go home and do a bunch of work on your grade book, then you come back to school, all of the work at home will be lost when you open the program at school… Instead, use Powerschool at home, but the gradebook, PowerGrade, at school on your main computer. Those wanting to try a flash drive, see a trainer for directions, but be aware there are dangers to this method if you do not understand computers well.

TO INSTALL POWERGRADE:

Disable Foolproof or Driveshield, if applicable, or this won’t work! You may need a tech’s assistance with this step. Also, if there are two teachers using the same computer and one has already installed PowerGrade, click here.

Open your browser, such as Explorer. Go to the district’s site by typing in ps into the address bar and hitting Enter. You may have to type in the full url if the Powerschool page doesn’t load: http://ps.gfps.k12.mt.us.

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Click on “teacher access” in blue at bottom of page. Then type in your user name and password, and click ENTER.

Once there, you will see the main Powerschool page… For the purposes of downloading the Powergrade client, click on the Powergrade button on the left.

Once there, you will see some links. You need to choose your platform and version 5.1 and click on that link:

You will choose OPEN or RUN—do not choose SAVE.

(also, if you get a message that the software cannot be verified, click okay)

Once you click open, you will wait while it downloads. You should see the progress bar…

When it’s done, you should see this.

Click next and then choose the location where you want to install Powergrade. The default is the C drive/program files/. If you want to install on your z-drive or a flash drive, you must indicate the new location now.

IMPORTANT—pay attention to where you are saving Powergrade. Click on Browse if you want to install some place other than the program files on the C drive.

Once you click past a few screens, you should see this progress bar. Be patient; it may not move and may appear to be doing nothing, but it is.

and finally…

At this point, you should see a shortcut in a new window open up. Double click on the shortcut. If you do not have a shortcut or it doesn’t work, see next step.

If you get a message that says “missing shortcut” (see above), click on browse and find the program, probably in C/programfiles/PowerGrade/PowerGrade.exe. To do this, go to the start menu to “My Computer.” Double click on the C drive; then double click on the Program Files folder and then on the PowerGrade folder. Inside this folder find the PowerGrade.exe. If you have saved PowerGrade to a flash drive or your z drive, go there instead to find the PowerGrade folder and inside it the .exe file. Select it and the shortcut should now work.

There will be a short delay as it starts up for the first time (also, if you get a message that the software cannot be verified, click okay… and then you will see this:

IF PowerGrade has already been installed, START HERE.

If no shortcut appears: When it is time to open PowerGrade for the first time, go to the start menu and to “all programs” and find Powergrade.

If Powergrade is already installed, open the program and immediately hold down the alt key, click on NEW and then follow the below steps when the window appears.

Make sure that you download the gradebook WHERE YOU WANT IT TO BE—C Drive, Z-DRIVE, THE DOCUMENTS FOLDER, YOUR FLASHDRIVE. First click NEW and then pull down the top box until the documents folder or whichever your want is showing in this box. Then be sure to NAME your gradebook: The file name should be your first name underscore last name--the same as your email name, plus the school year ex: Michael_Smithson0708. (This way a tech—or you-- can find your file if we need to troubleshoot). Save this file where you can find it!—do not save this data file on the desktop. It contains all of your grade book information and could easily be deleted. Also, never click on NEW again. You will go to OPEN once your gradebook has been created.

Pay attention to this box—it tells you where the gradebook will be saved. Don't just click Okay.

Once you have done this, Powergrade will need some time to set up…be patient…

You will then see this where you will enter: ps.gfps.k12.mt.us.

Choose your school and school year if prompted to.

Select your name from the list.

Enter your connectivity key—same as original password—see a trainer if you don’t know.

Finally, you will get this message:

When you click OK, you are ready to use Powergrade – and you won’t have to do this step more than once on your primary machine. You will access your gradebook by going to the start menu, to all programs to PowerGrade. Also, if more than one teacher uses the computer, each user will open Powergrade and immediately hold down the alt key. Then he or she will navigate to his or her own gradebook and click “open.”

To create a shortcut on the desktop, first close all windows; then go to start to ‘all programs’ to Powergrade. RIGHT click on the Powergrade icon (not the folder) and go to Send to/Desktop. You can then drag the shortcut to the Quicklaunch area if that’s what you would prefer to have it. If this doesn’t work, again navigate to where the Powergrade.exe file is located (see page 4). Or locate Powergrade, wherever you saved it, and right click on it and create a shortcut that way.

There are some new functions in Powergrade.

Copying your categories, grading scales and final grade setup:
1. First, setup one class with the categories you intend to use and with the final grade setup completed

2. Open the class you want to copy the setup information into.
3. Pull down the Utilities menu to Copy Class Info and specify the class containing the setup info you want to copy.
4. Select the items you want to copy into this class.

Rebuild Data From Server

The Restore Scores from Server page and Synchronize with Server page have been consolidated into one page, the Rebuild Data from Server page. This new page retains existing functionality from both pages, while introducing new functionality in the way of five new checkboxes: Class Roster, Class Setup, Notes, Preferences, and Scores.

Creating a Password for PowerGrade

1. Pull down File menu to “Open a class”
2. Click on the “Preferences button”
3. Under “Security” type your name
4. Click “Change Password”
5. Type in password and again to confirm
6. Click OK
7. Put a check mark next to “Use Password at Startup”
8. Click OK

Setting up categories

1. Open PowerGrade if needed
2. Open a class from the file menu or from the “classes menu.”
3. Go to the “windows” menu bar and pull down to “categories.”
4. Name some categories for assignments, such as quizzes, tests, homework and one called “final grade” in case you do your grades in EasyGrade Pro.
5. If you want to copy the categories to all of your classes, you must open each class one time to load the students.
6. After opening each class, go to the ‘utilities’ menu and pull down to “copy class info.”
7. Select the class to ‘copy from’—the one you created the categories in.
8. Then click ‘save’ if prompted to do so.
9. Click on the “categories” box and decide if you want the categories to go over the top of others in the class or add these categories to others that are already set up.
10. Once you have created categories, you will be able to create assignments in PowerSchool.

Taking Attendance with Power School

Ø Open your internet connection using Internet Explorer

Ø In the address bar type “ps” If “ps” doesn’t work at school, type in the full url: ps.gfps.k12.mt.us

o This will take you to the web-based Power School page

Ø Log in—see a trainer if you forgot your log in and password.

Ø You are now connected to the web-based Power School

Ø This is your start page; on the start page there are a number of icons:

o The chair represents the attendance portion of Power School teacher

o The other icons represent lunch count, student information, class reports, and individual assignments.

Ø Click on the chair

Ø The screen will indicate to record meeting attendance

o Your class roster will be on this page

§ Any time new students enter your class, they will automatically be added to the roster list, or if a student has dropped, his/her name will not longer be on the list.

Ø If everyone is present, scroll to the bottom of the page and click “SUBMIT”—this is very important. Unless you click ‘submit,’ the attendance clerk/secretary will not receive your attendance.

Ø You will see a box with pull-down a menu for attendance codes: present, absent, tardy.

o If students are absent, change the default “present” by choosing “absent” on the pull-down menu and clicking in the boxes next to their names; a capital “A” appears. Continue through the roster indicating which students are absent.

o If students are tardy, choose “tardy” on the pull-down menu and click in the boxes next to the names; a capital “T” appears. Continue through the roster indicating which students are tardy.

o Once you have completed the roster, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click SUBMIT

o If you accidentally need to change a student back to “present,” select “present” in the drop-down menu and click in the box. The box will now be empty indicating that the student is present and not tardy nor absent.

Ø If students enter you classroom late or you need to make changes, open your attendance using the same procedures.

o Go to the respective roster, pull down to the appropriate heading, make any necessary changes and then again click SUBMIT

• If you have difficulties at any time, clicking the question mark in the upper right corner of the page takes you to the help portion of the program. This is an excellent page-specific help resource.

Adding and Editing Assignments in Powerschool

• Login to Powerschool (from a school machine, type in: ps to your browser address bar and hit return – from home, you would need to type in: http://ps.gfps.k12.mt.us to your browser address bar and hit return) /type in the full url above if the shortcut “ps” doesn’t work at school.
• Enter your username and password
• NOTE: You must set up categories in PowerGrade before you can add assignments in Powerschool. See pg 9 for instructions.

On the PowerSchool start page, to create, edit, or delete assignments and assignment scores for each class, click the notebook icon next to the class. The Web Assignments page appears:

Click New. The Web Assignment page appears:

Use the following table to enter information in the fields:

Field	Description
Category	Choose the assignment category from the pop-up menu (until you have categories entered on the Powergrade end, there will be no categories to choose from here… the category will be “web.”)
Name	Enter the name of the assignment.
Abbreviation	Enter an abbreviation for the assignment.
Points Possible	Enter the maximum number of points for the assignment.
Due Date	Enter the date the assignment is due using the format mm/dd/yyyy or mm-dd-yyyy. If you do not use this format, an alert appears. If you submit the date with an incorrect format, the date field will be submitted as a blank entry. The due date must be in the selected term.
Description	Enter a full description of the assignment.
Scores	Enter the assignment score for each student (optional). To enter the scores at a later time, see the section "How to Edit Web Assignments” below.

Click Submit. The Web Assignments page displays the new assignment.

How to Edit Web Assignments

Web assignment information can be modified or deleted until you connect to PowerSchool using PowerGrade, at which point the assignments are moved to PowerGrade and are no longer stored in PowerSchool. Teachers then work with the assignments in PowerGrade as usual. In other words, makeup work will have to be entered using Powergrade as the assignments will no longer be available in Powerschool.

1. On the PowerSchool Teacher start page, click the notebook icon next to the class. The Web Assignments page appears.

2. Click the name of the web assignment to be edited. The Web Assignment page appears.

2. Use the following table to enter information in the fields:

Field	Description
Category	Choose the assignment category from the pop-up menu.
Name	Enter the name of the assignment.
Abbreviation	Enter an abbreviation for the assignment.
Points Possible	Enter the maximum number of points for the assignment.
Due Date	Enter the date the assignment is due using the format mm/dd/yyyy or mm-dd-yyyy. If you do not use this format, an alert appears. If you submit the date with an incorrect format, the date field will be submitted as a blank entry. The due date must be in the selected term.
Description	Enter a full description of the assignment.
Scores	Enter the assignment score for each student (optional).

3. Click Submit. The Web Assignments page displays the edited assignment.

How to Delete Web Assignments

Web assignment information can be modified or deleted until you connect to PowerSchool using PowerGrade, at which point the assignments are moved to PowerGrade (and are no longer stored in PowerSchool). Teachers then work with the assignments in PowerGrade as usual.

1. On the PowerSchool Teacher start page, click the notebook icon next to the class. The Web Assignments page appears.

2. Click the name of the web assignment to be deleted. The Web Assignment page appears.

3. Click Delete. The Web Assignments page displays without the deleted assignment.