Wednesday, November 12, 2008

SmartMusic End of Quarter Tips and Observations

Well the end of the quarter has arrived.  Actually, it was last week and the report cards went home today.
I did take late work.  I always have because if I make an assignment, it is because I want to know the kid really knows this stuff.  Yeah, it is extra work now, but the pay-off later will make a difference.  No unimportant assignments!  SmartMusic does help track student progress.
I did have some interesting things happen to kids who took advantage of my generosity.
If a student "enrolled in class" after the deadline for the assignment, I  would have to go into the little note tab (it looks like a cell note in Excel) and manually adjust it so the student gets the assignment added to his project list. 
If a student tried to submit the project after the term was over, I needed to go into the assignment in Impact (click on the assignment description in the grade book) and set the last accepted date back a bit.
Both problems were things I could have prevented and no big deal.  I will be choosing my dates more  wisely in the future. Fortunately, I check my Impact grade book and e-mail often and saw some of these coming.
The end of the quarter is also a good time to get those kids registered for the wrong class fixed. Any data base administrator will tell you that keeping the data correct and current is the biggest part of the job.  Some kids have schedule changes as well.  Time to maintain the data!
  

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