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Forum thread: Class Trips
| Miguel Gomez-Marshall 22 April 2010 14:44 |
In Attendance Summary ("All School Data"), how do we indicate that students are present and on a trip? Is the only best way to individually sign them out? Many thanks for your attention to this post. |
| Marcus Butler (STEARsoft) 22 April 2010 15:24 |
There are various options. At our school, they are usually marked absent (with a circle) because they are off site, but given a code letter V (which for us means school visit somewhere). If they leave part way through the day, they will be marked present instead, but we don't then sign them out. For such trips, there will be a known and checked separate list that is advertised and kept in the office. This is usually a copy of the list taken by the trip itself so is no extra administration work and has everything there for the event of fire etc. If your school has information stored electronically and there is a database of the pupils out on a trip, you can use the selective attendance flood-fill option (under settings within "All school Data") to complete the registers en-mass. This requires setting up in the administrator area under the ODBC setup. It also requires you to already be importing class and student data using this method. I hope that helps. |
| Marcus Butler (STEARsoft) 22 April 2010 15:27 |
If you have an idea for a new feature that you would find useful (in this or other regards), please do suggest it, and although I can't promise that all ideas will be incorporated into future releases they will certainly be looked at and may influence development subtly if not more directly. |
| Miguel Gomez-Marshall 30 April 2010 20:26 |
Thanks for the quick reply, Marcus! It helps to know the options. Ideally, it would be great if we could mark them present, but also have a column or indicator in the attendance summary that the class is on a trip. Or, possibly simpler for your software engineers, if we could sign out multiple students at once, as opposed to signing them out individually... |
| Marcus Butler (STEARsoft) 01 May 2010 11:19 |
Hi Miguel, I think I understand you... By attendance summary, I am presuming you mean the main screen within "All school data". Both suggestions you make are doable, although when putting in such things we'd like to think wider if possible and do something that might benefit other situations too. The multiple 'sign out' option would immediately be quite flexible and might be useful in other ways - but by the sounds of it, that might not be the best solution for you as the Attendance Summary would then have a huge list of names making it hard to pick out if one student didn't go. That said, my suggestion of marking everyone absent would also lead to a long list of names and be no better in that regard. This leads to a few thoughts which I shall put below in separate messages: Marcus. |
| Marcus Butler (STEARsoft) 01 May 2010 11:23 |
We could make the list of absent students change to instead list the present students if say 75 percent of the class was away. The possible snag here would be missing the extra long-term absence stats for the absent students; however this would probably not be relevant if more than half the class was away. Perhaps combined with any of the further thoughts below, do you think this might this help clarify the screen? |
| Marcus Butler (STEARsoft) 01 May 2010 11:29 |
I'm not sure why you want the students marked present when they are away on a school trip. If it is for statistical counting purposes, you can flexibly set absent codes of your choice to be recorded as present for statistical purposes. You can set this up via the "Settings" tab a click "Statistical meaning of codes". Equally, although I suspect this is not the case, if it was a statistical motivation for marking the students away, you can have codes against present students and give these specific meanings in the same way as absence codes. These are quick and easy to add on a student by student basis and on a class wide basis using the default attendance option. |
| Marcus Butler (STEARsoft) 01 May 2010 11:37 |
Sorry for the typos above. To summarise, we shall certainly give your suggestions further thought, as this is an area that looks like improvements could be made. The repeating of suggesting finding a way to do what you want by using codes is really just because it is so quick and easy to annotate registers in this way (and neat), that if this can work it is likely to be the fastest for your staff; they also link in to the final statistics found under the counters page (There is a release not far off (currently in testing) that has an improved counters screen). |
| Marcus Butler (STEARsoft) 01 May 2010 11:45 |
Developing this thought process. What do you think of this: Use a specific code (possibly a code letter along with a present mark) - and have a new column in the summary that highlights students based on such codes (customisable of course). This would have the advantages of codes (quick, easy to apply and contributes to statistics), but overcomes the problem of them not being visible on the summary screen? For your specific purposes, would you want a list of the student names away, or a list who are not away, an all-or-nothing based on a class or simply a counter (eg "13 students on a trip")? Thank you again for your interest in helping to make STEARsoft better. Marcus |
| Miguel Gomez-Marshall 20 May 2010 18:57 |
Hi Marcus, Thank you so much for all the troubleshooting. Your feedback is much appreciated. We really rely on your system, and it has performed exceptionally well. Many teachers were worried about switching initially, but the ease of use of STEARsoft was very evident throughout my presentation. I too think the codes work, and they are ideal for statistical purposes. As you explained in your 01 May 2010, 11:19 post, our suggestion focuses on the main screen within "All School Data." This is the screen our front office receptionist and I access most often. Your solution in your post at 11:45 is PERFECT! For our purposes, specifically, a list of students that are out of the building is ideal. |
| Miguel Gomez-Marshall 20 May 2010 19:07 |
In sum, a custom code that would do the following would really help us out: for statistical records and official register purposes, indicate that a student is present but not in the building. This indication would also be reflected in a new column on the main screen (i.e. Attendance tab, "Attendance Summary") within "All School Data." When a student returns from a trip while school is still in session, we will just go into the teacher's register for that class and update that student's record to the default code for present, and that will indicate that they are in the building and present. Does that all make sense? Thanks again so much. |
| Marcus Butler (STEARsoft) 20 May 2010 19:23 |
Dear Miguel, Thank you for this further confirmation of what might help. It won't happen immediately, but this is something that I think worthy of trying to include as an optional feature in a future release. Kind regards, Marcus |
| Miguel Gomez-Marshall 20 May 2010 19:35 |
Marcus, Wonderful. Thank you for the consideration. We will remain hopeful! :) Kind regards, Miguel |
| Marcus Butler (STEARsoft) 10 June 2010 22:32 |
Dear Miguel, You may have seen, the latest release (version 5.0.1) released today has the new feature you are after. Go to the settings tab to configure the new optional column. I hope this gives you what you are after. I would be interested to hear how useful it is and whether you have further ideas for improving it or developing it further. Kind Regards, Marcus. |
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