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Email and Online Reports
How can I email reports to parents?
You can use the email report commands in the file menu to send email reports to all students in a class. Or you can choose the report you want from the reports menu, scroll to the student you want, right click in the window, and choose to email that report for that student.
Before sending email reports you must set up email addresses for each of your students and set up your email address and SMTP server information. Choose Edit Email Addresses from the Edit menu to set up student email addresses. Choose Edit Email Server from the Edit menu to set up your email address and SMTP server information.
How do I set up my SMTP server information?
You need access to an SMTP server to send email reports from Gradekeeper.
If you are using a local internet provider, or if your school provides an email address, you can probably use their SMTP server. You can find the SMTP server address, SMTP server port, and your username in your email client in the account setup options.
Note that some internet providers will only allow access to their SMTP server from within their network. So if you are trying to send Gradekeeper email reports from school, you may not be able to connect to their SMTP server.
If you use one of the popular email providers, like GMail or Yahoo, there is detailed setup information available.
How can I send email reports if I use a web-based email service?
You need access to an SMTP server to send email reports from Gradekeeper. Some web-based email services, like GMail, do provide access to an SMTP server. Other services, like Yahoo, only provide access to an SMTP server when you pay to upgrade to a higher level service.
If you use one of the popular email providers, like GMail or Yahoo, there is detailed setup information available.
How can students and parents access my grades online?
You can use Export to Web from the File menu to have Gradekeeper create all the web pages for your web site, but you need to upload those web pages to a web site that you have access to. Your school may have a web site you can use. Your internet provider may allow you to set up your own web site.
To upload your web pages to your web site, you will need to use an FTP application. FTP is File Transfer Protocol, the method used to move web pages from your hard drive to your web site. If you are using Mac OS X, you can use Fetch. If you are using Windows, you can use FTP Explorer. Both offer free licenses to educational users.
If you use Gradekeeper on Mac OS X and you have a MobileMe account from Apple, you can mount your iDisk and do Export to Web directly to MobileMe. Create a new folder called grades inside the Sites folder in the Web folder and export to that folder. Parents and students will be able to access grades at http://web.me.com/username/grades.
Gradekeeper also partners with School Center, SchoolFusion, SchoolSpeak, TeacherWeb®, and The Homework Site to make it easy to post grades online so parents and students can access them securely. Or your school can use the open source Online Grades software for free and set up online access to grades on their own web server.
Isn't posting grades online a violation of FERPA?
FERPA (the Family Educational Records Privacy Act) protects the privacy of student records. Using Gradekeeper's export to web capability does not violate FERPA, as long as you take the proper precautions. You can read more detailed information about Gradekeeper and FERPA.