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 School
Maestro III is a comprehensive teacher productivity tool. The included
gradebook program is the most advanced program available and supports
a wide variety of different grading methods. The program is suitable
for use by individual instructors or by entire school systems. In addition
to the gradebook features, the program also tracks attendance and discipline,
does seating charts, records subjective grades such as conduct and citizenship,
creates reusable lesson plans, report cards, honor rolls, GPAs, schedules,
and transcripts. The program also tracks appointments and maintains
contact information. The program can be used to produce fully formatted
form letters which may include a customizable letterhead with logo.
Form letters may also be emailed to parents and students and may include
report attachments.
Most School Maestro reports may also be published to the Internet
using the Russ & Ryan EdWare server (or school web server). Students
and parents may access their reports using any computer and browser.
Teachers can select which reports they want to be available via the
Internet and can chose from a wide selection of progress reports, attendance
reports, homework reports, report cards, and transcripts. If desired,
schools may host their own Internet reports and emailing if they have
a web server. Comprehensive usage data is available.
There are several methods that teachers may use to do their grades
at different locations. Single users can install the program on a school
computer and a home computer and move the database from location to
location. The program supports XCopy deployment. That allows single
users to place the program and their database on a USB memory drive
and then run the program directly from the USB drive. Teachers can just
take the USB drive from home to school and be able to work on their
grades at either location. Network users can run School Maestro III
on any computer on the LAN at school. Home users that use the network
version at school can install the program on the home computer and connect
to the school database via the Internet. Home users may also use their
web browser to do grades (does not require any software to be installed).
The web browser interface may be used by any computer with a compatible
browser. This includes Windows 95 computers that can't install the Microsoft
.NET Framework and Macs and Linux computers that use the Mozilla browser.
Remote desktop connections may also be used to run School Maestro III.
School Maestro is highly customizable and allows you to add your
own database fields and create your own queries. Extensive import and
export features are provided. The program supports 4 types of users
- master users, teacher users, secretary users and counselor users.
All user access is controlled by passwords. System administrators are
also allowed direct access to the database. The database used is a SQL
Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2005 Express, or MSDE (Microsoft
Data Engine) database. A Microsoft Access data project may be used to
create your own queries and reports. However, customization is usually
not required since the program includes a large number of reports that
are user configurable. Schools with SQL Server 2000 can use the Enterprise
Manager to maintain the database. Schools with SQL Server 2005 can use
the SQL Server 2005 Management Studio. If you don't have SQL Server,
School Maestro includes all the necessary tools for creating logins,
adding users, attaching and detaching the database, and backing up and
restoring the database and can automatically do daily backups and database
maintenance.
For network use, a file server is required. Other than the Microsoft
.NET framework, no files need to be installed on teacher workstations.
Each workstation would load the program from the file server. A database
server is also required. This needs to be a Windows 2K or 2003 computer
and may be the same computer that is used as the file server. SQL Server
Express would be installed on the database server and is more than adequate
for most schools. Schools may also use the full version of SQL Server
if they have one. Optionally, the database may be hosted on a Russ &
Ryan EdWare server.
The Internet reporting application for parents requires a Windows
2K or 2003 web server with a digital certificate to support secure SSL
connections. Six months of reporting using a Russ & Ryan EdWare server
are included with the program. Optionally, schools may host their own
Internet reporting if they have a web server.
The optional web browser interface also requires a Windows 2K or
2003 web server with a digital certificate. This can be done using a
Russ & Ryan EdWare server or the school may host their own web browser
interface if they have a web server. Six months of web browser interface
using a Russ & Ryan EdWare server are included with the program.
It is also possible to access the database via a wireless network.
- Supports XCopy deployment (run from a removable USB drive).
- Additional licenses may be added at any time.
- Optional web browser interface.
- Option for schools to host their own Internet reports for parents.
- Supports master, teacher, secretary, and counselor type users
with customizable privilege levels for each user type.
- Easy to use toolbar and treeview interface. You may easily drill
down to get the desired data without having to run a report.
- Internet report publishing allows students/parents to retrieve
their reports at any time.
- Several different methods available for teachers to work at
home.
- Form letters with pdf report attachments may also be emailed
to parents and or students. Teachers do not need an email account
to do this as the email is sent by the web server.
- Supports dropped students. Dropped students may be left in classes
for record purposes but are not included in class statistics or
reports.
- Multiple school years per calendar year are supported. School
years may include up to 6 semesters. Each semester may include up
to 9 marking periods.
- Supports any combination of classes with semester or yearly
exams and exam weights may be specified independently.
- Supports various rounding methods for calculating class averages,
semester averages, and yearly averages.
- Specify which subjects are included in GPA calculations and
whether that subject gets a semester or yearly grade.
- Unlimited user defined subjects.
- Define your own grading schemes - may contain up to 1001 letter
grades.
- Supports letter grade averaging schemes.
- Unlimited user defined task categories.
- Unlimited user defined attendance categories.
- Unlimited user defined discipline codes.
- Unlimited user defined "canned comments"
- Track attendance and subjective grades by class or overall or
both ways.
- Option to automatically deduct for excessive absences.
- Automatic class scheduling around holidays or using rolling
blocks. Easily reschedule a class for a missing day.
- Supports not entered scores and not counted scores, allows you
to specify the default score, and also allows you to specify the
initial score for any task.
- Scores may be entered as any combination of raw scores, percentage
scores, letter grade scores, or as text.
- Enter an optional task code with each score. Unlimited user
defined task codes.
- Enter an optional comment with each score.
- Full support for point systems, and task categories with percentage
or relative weights.
- Discard the worst "n" scores per category.
- User regular extra credit based on points or a weighted extra
credit category.
- Specify task weights for individual tasks regardless of how
you are calculating the overall average.
- Full import/export support with foreign id numbers for subjects,
instructors, students, classes, class rosters, tasks, scores, attendance,
lesson plans, and student pictures.
- Support for automatically recalculated custom tasks whose scores
depend on other task scores.
- Live updates to points, averages, letter grades, and statistics
as scores are entered. Great for " what if" analysis.
- Manually override any program assigned average or letter grade.
- Easily excuse students from the requirement to take a semester
exam.
- Extensive support for entering comments on report cards, progress
reports, attendance reports, and discipline reports. Comments may
be manually entered, automatically assigned based on letter grade,
or selected from a list of "canned comments".
- Use up to 10 user definable subjective grades such as conduct
and citizenship.
- Transfer tasks to any class. Great if you teach several hours
of the same subject or use the same tasks from year to year or marking
period to marking period.
- Import student pictures. May be included on seating charts and
student reports.
- Add custom fields for recording any type of student information.
Easily import student data from other programs.
- Data entry may be done using a data form or a data grid (user
preference).
- Easily record appointments and keep a Things To Do list.
- Record and maintain contact information.
- Edit and save lesson plans by subject using user defined headings.
Automatically assign subject lesson plans to classes or drag and
drop lessons to specific class dates.
- Automatically create seating charts or manually arrange them
by "dragging and dropping". Seating charts may include the student
picture.
- Automatically assign student id numbers and passwords.
- Automatically start new marking periods with all the same classes
and students as the previous marking period.
- Easily order students in alphabetical order, as entered order,
id number order or manually drag and drop to any order (late joining
students can be placed at the end of the roster).
- Easily post grades at the end of a marking period. After posting,
the student's current gpa and cumulative gpa are automatically updated
as well as his current credit hours. Transcripts may be printed
at any time. Credit hours may be calculated by year (high school)
or by semester (college).
- Honor roll reports may be for any single marking period or semester.
- Students may be transferred between classes. Scores will also
transfer if the classes have the same tasks.
- Tasks may be sorted by date or as entered and optionally grouped
by category.
- Extensive statistical information for scores and averages. Option
to exclude not entered scores from the statistics.
- Automatically promote students to the next grade level at the
end of a school year.
- Reports may include color. Optionally view reports in color
but print in monochrome. Reports may include a a user defined logo
and letterhead.
- Export data to comma or tab delimited ASCII text files or to
html and pdf files.
- Easily empty the database of no longer used student and class
information.
- Class averages may be imported as single task scores for custom
calculation.
- Create, edit, save and run queries to obtain any desired information.
The query results may be printed as a report or may be exported
to other programs.
- Print 19 of the most common types of graph paper.
- Extensive context sensitive help.
- All reports may be individually customized.
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