Faculty Access for the Web (BBaud) Are you using it?

[Marti Weston]

I would love to share tips with people who use this software for report writing. Maybe we can pool our tips. I have tutorials I can share and lots of tips from our first year (last year).

[Demetri Orlando]

In case anyone missed it, Tom Hart has started a Blackbaud Users Group on this site. Please come "join" it as a place to aggregate conversations on the use of Blackbaud.

[Barbara Streuli]

We just began using FAWeb and Education Edge. Our lower school report cards for the first semester were done using the Blackbaud system. Overall, the process went well. We did find one bug: in the overview, foreign language accents were not printed correctly. I contacted tech support and they promised a fix soon. We told the teachers not to use word for their comments because of the hidden formatting. Some of our teachers used Notepad; most were not comfortable entering directly into FAWeb but hopefully that will change.
We used the report card format from Blackbaud but I am certain that we will move to Crystal Reports for more perfect formatting. Is it difficult to learn? Those of you who have used Crystal, how did you start in and how did you prepare yourself?
We have not purchased Net classroom and I don't see that happening any time soon.
Thanks.

BTW, Marti, is it possible to get copies of your tutorials?

[Brenda Rilling]

We use Crystal Reports for out report cards. I found that the exports were sloooooooowwwwww as molasses in winter. Anyone else have that problem?

Crystal has a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it's OK. Although I have a background in programming.

We also have special requirements by our Ministry of Education that have added additional wrinkles in our reporting process and ones that as of now, FAWeb and EE don't support.

Would love to continue the conversation and get more tips.

Brenda

[Renee Ramig]

We use FAWeb for 6th - 8th grades and Crystal reports for the final report cards. (It was not flexible enough for K-5 report cards.) Teachers don't particularly like it, but they tolerate it pretty well.

[Imana]

Hi Marti, our faculty has been using FAWeb for about 3 years now. I think we are still perfecting the process. We currently do not make the information public to parents. Teachers basically use it at the end of a quarter or semester for report cards and to write comments about grades mid quarter.

[Bill Lamers]

Indeed, we use it in the MS and HS. Next year it will be my job to instruct and help. We do grades, report cards, comments, etc. A present we get a overload (my opinion) training session and a binder. I am thinking of another way: FAQ?, create a links to most used functions?. I'll be watching this to see what others do for training, new and ongoing.

[Melissa Tredenick]

Our teachers are required to post all grades on FA Web and update them at least once a week. They are also required to write weekly comments on students enrolled in our Learning Resource (LR) program.

Students and teachers are given logins to access these grades and comments. Advisors and LR teachers can access the student's grades as well by just clicking on the students name in their class list.

We just started it this year and it's worked very well for us. Much better for us than individual email reports which is what we were using previously!

Tips: Do a teacher training on it at the beginning of the year and before the first grading period!! (once you have it implemented you only need to do training for new faculty obviously)