PowerSchool Conference Session Line-Up

Home News and Events League Trainings Colorado PowerSchool Conference PowerSchool Conference Session Line-Up

Colorado PowerSchool Users Conference
January 30-31, 2012

Conference Session Line-Up

Note, this page will be updated periodically so keep checking back!

Jump to: Day One (January 30) | Day Two (January 31)


Day One (January 30)
Session Title	Level	Audience	Time	Location	Description	Presenter(s)
Q&A for Newbies	Beginner	Secretary	8:15am - 10:00am	Room 104	If you are new to PowerSchool, learning to navigate your way around can be somewhat of a daunting task. This session is designed to help the 'new comer' learn how to navigate through PowerSchool. Topics covered, will include, but are not limited to, how to use the 'Help' function, understand menu's, how to perform basic searches, and using group functions. In addition, there will be a discussion outlining the sessions that are offered at the Conference to help you plan which sessions you may want to attend.	Tina Bingman, Garfield School District No. RE-2
Simple Custom Screens	Beginner	Administrator	8:15am - 10:00am	Room 600	Learn how to use existing and custom fields to create custom screens that will meet the needs of your specific school and staff. Custom screens can mirror a form your school uses; a process you want to define; a collection of related information fields; or just information or instructions for other admin users. This is one of the easiest and most useful features you will ever use within PowerSchool! Prerequisites/User Permissions: must have access to System > Custom Fields/Custom Screen to create. However, there is value in participants learning the capability and ask their PS Administrator to create the fields/screens for them. Handout	Robin Zook, Colorado Springs Early Colleges
Reports (Part 1)	Beginner	Secretary/ Registrar	8:15am - 10:00am	Room 303	In this session, attendees will dive into the reports that are currently supplied by PowerSchool. Participants will explore Student Reports, such as Attendance and Absentee Reports; Class Ranking and Honor Roll; and Parent Access Reports. We will also talk about modifying the Class Rosters report to supply other information that we don’t normally use it for. Attendees will also learn how to use uncommon data tags in exports as well as reports that will help you as a PowerSchool Administrator to identify data inconsistencies and other issues.	Nyssa Strom, The Pinnacle Charter School
PowerSchool through the Year	Beginner	Counselor	8:15am - 10:00 am	Room 304	There are tasks that need to be completed before school starts, whenever a term ends or begins, and at the end of the school year. This session will cover calendar and grading setup, storing grades, adjusting current grade display, rolling students over at the end of the year, and other jobs that crop up throughout the year. Prerequisites/User Permissions: Admin account with District and School setup access PowerSchool Through the Year PPT PowerSchool Through the Year Notes	Wilma Payne, Cesar Chavez Academy/Dolores Huerta Prep High
GPA, Honor Roll, Class Rank, Historical Grades	Intermediate	Counselor	8:15am - 10:00am	Room 302	In this session, participants will learn all about GPA calculations and how to use them in honor rolls, class rank, reports, and current grade display.	TC Travis, Wray School District/Eastern Colorado PowerSchool User Group
Daily Tasks (Part 1)	Beginner	Secretary	10:15am - 12:00pm	Room 104	This session will focus on the typical day for the secretary/registrar/attendance clerk. We will share tips on how PowerSchool can work for us and what we can do to manage our daily tasks. Topics covered will include personalization, searching, attendance, reports, log entries, and getting data out for daily inquiries.	Tina Bingman, Garfield School District No. RE-2, Rifle
DDE Fundamentals for Beginners	Beginner	Systems Tech	10:15am - 12:00pm	Room 302	Understanding the 'back side' of PowerSchool will open up possibilities for more detailed searches and more comprehensive exports! Learn how to navigate the most commonly used tables. Get comfortable filtering the data in a table to find what you need. Explore the 100s of data fields available for export! Prerequisites/User Permissions: Must have access to System > DDE	TC Travis, Wray School District/Eastern Colorado PowerSchool User Group
Reports (Part 2)	Intermediate	Secretary/ Registrar	10:15am - 12:00pm	Room 303	This session will focus on in-depth reports that require more information and updates from PowerSchool Administrators. We will visit Report Cards and Form Letters for the first portion of our session. Then we will move into a discussion about object reports. They aren’t as scary as you may think!	Nyssa Strom, The Pinnacle Charter School
Scheduling Basics	Beginner	Counselor	10:15am - 12:00pm	Room 304	How to set up sections, mass enroll students, drop and add classes on student schedules, and re-instate an accidental drop. (This class does not cover how to use PS Scheduler to Build or Load a schedule.) Prerequisites/User Permissions: Basic Admin account with scheduling enabled Scheduling Basics PPT Scheduling Basics Notes Scheduling Basics Worksheet	Wilma Payne, Cesar Chavez Academy/Dolores Huerta Prep High
Attendance	Beginner/ Intermediate	Secretary/ Registrar/ Systems Tech	10:15am - 12:00pm	Room 600	Learn how to setup your attendance and how to modify any setup to meet your districts policy. We will also go over a custom report by Power Data Solutions called Attendance One and a brief overview of the existing reports in Power School 7.0. Please come prepared with clearly defined attendance codes and types of reports you will need for reporting purposes. Prerequisites/User Permissions: Participants will need admin access to make changes to attendance codes, and PS administrator login rights to access Custom Pages Management.	Cassandra Young, West Denver Prep/ Paulina Lerma, West Denver Prep
Lunch and General Session	All Levels	All	12:15pm - 1:45pm	Room 301	CDE will discuss the data collection process from the state’s perspective.	Colorado Department of Education
Daily Tasks (Part 2)	Beginner	Secretary	2:00pm - 3:30pm	Room 104	This session will take you beyond the beginner Daily Tasks session. We will take a more in depth look at everything from count day tips, to exporting using templates, creating form letters, running class rosters, and learning how to use those 'all powerful' codes to pull data. Prerequisites: Daily Tasks (Part 1)	Tina Bingma, Garfield School District No. RE-2
PowerSchool for Principals	Beginner	Principal/ Administrator	2:00pm - 3:30pm	Room 304	Principals and Building Administrators can use PowerSchool to monitor student and teacher performance, communicate with parents, and analyze trends. Learn about tools that will save you time and help you run your school more efficiently. Prerequisites/User Permissions: Admin account	Wilma Payne, Cesar Chavez Academy / Dolores Huerta Prep High/ Carrie Kirkutis, Stone Creek Charter School
Object Report Share	Beginner/ Intermediate	Secretary/ Counselor/ Principal	2:00pm - 3:30pm	Room 303	In this hands-on collaborative workshop, you will learn 1) how to save object reports so you can duplicate or share them and 2) how to import, customize and use object reports that have been created by other PowerSchool users. Please come prepared to "show and tell" object report your school uses. Handout	Robin Zook, Colorado Springs Early Colleges
Excel Tips & Tricks	Beginner	All	2:200pm - 3:330pm	Room 302	Once you have exported data out of PowerSchool, Excel features can help you accomplish your tasks more quickly! Learn short cuts to copy, paste, fill, merge, add borders, freeze panes, view dual sheets, format data, find and replace, and more.	TC Travis, Wray School District/Eastern Colorado PowerSchool User Group
Updating Custom Pages to PS7	Intermediate	All	2:00pm - 3:30	Room 600	After years of being on PowerSchool you've got it working just the way you like it with lots of custom p ages where needed. It's looked the same since the days of PowerSchool Pro and people have been happy, but now PowerSchool 7 has come out and the pages, while they work, don't look right anymore. Suddenly users know very well which pages are old and which are new. In this course we'll go over what has changed, why the change benefits us in the long run, and how to update pages from PowerSchool 6 to PowerSchool 7's new look. Feel free to bring some custom PS6 pages and we might update them in class.	Jason Treadwell, Power Data Solutions
Searching Savvy-Finding Who and What you Need	Intermediate	Administrator/ Secretary	3:45pm - 5:00pm	Room 304	In this class you'll learn to combine search elements and save searches and selections. We'll explore the tables in DDE, and learn to match selections from more than one table to come up with the exact data you need. Prerequisites/User Permissions: Admin account Searching Savvy PPT Searching Savvy Notes Searching Savvy Worksheet	Wilma Payne, Cesar Chavez Academy/Dolores Huerta Prep High
A Deep Dive Into Historical Grades	Intermediate	All	3:45pm - 5:00pm	Room 302	Explore the DDE/DDA Stored Grades table and find out all the things you can do there like searching for certain types of grades; finding all students who have taken and passed a certain class; and how to make mass changes or individual corrections.	TC Travis, Wray School District/Eastern Colorado PowerSchool User Group
Best Practices in Colorado State Reporting	Beginner	Administrator	3:45pm - 5:00pm	Room 600	Compiling and submitting Colorado State Reports requires a team effort!! Focusing on the October Pupil Count Report and the End of Year Report, this workshop will give you an overview of the data that is required for these reports along with some tips of how to gather the data. Learn how administrators, secretaries, registrars, data entry clerks and enrollment personnel can all work together, using PowerSchool, to make the reporting process go as smoothly as possible.	Michael Gelinas, Charter School Institute
Excel Fabulous Formulas	Intermediate	All	3:45pm - 5:00pm	Room 303	Beyond simple mathematical formulas, learn how to separate data into multiple columns and how to combine data back into one column. Combine data from two spreadsheets into one. Create a pivot table that will analyze your data for you! Simple if-then formulas will also be presented. Handout	Robin Zook, Colorado Springs Early Colleges

Day Two (January 31)
Session Title	Level	Audience	Time	Location	Description	Presenter (s)
Dashboards & Widgets (Part 1)	Intermediate	Administrator	8:15am - 10:00am	Room 104	You need to make a presentation to the board with information you know is in PowerSchool. While it's easy enough to pull the data out and show the information in excel, what would really be nice is if the charts and graphs built themselves. In this course we'll go over what dashboards and widgets are, how they are built. Prerequisites/User Permissions: Ability to understand queries, basic customization knowledge.	Jason Treadwell, Power Data Solutions
Graduation Plans			8:15am - 10:00am	Room 600	Learn how to setup Graduation Plans, assign to students and run reports.	TC Travis, Wray School District/Eastern Colorado PowerSchool User Group
Immunization Set up and Tracking	Intermediate		8:15am - 10:00am	Room 303	Users will learn how to setup and maintain immunizations, run a quick import of immunization data as well as build custom reports containing immunization data. Prerequisites/User Permissions: Access to the District level set up functions	Michael Gelinas, Charter School Institute
General Overview PowerTeacher & WebGradebook	Beginner/ Intermediate	PowerTeacher Users/ Trainers	8:15am - 10:00am	Room 304	Learn how to teach the teacher. PowerTeacher portal is a teacher’s resource for student information, attendance, and the web-based gradebook. In this session you will learn how to get the most out of PowerTeacher Portal so you can go back to your school and help those teachers you work with.	Wilma Payne, Cesar Chavez Academy / Dolores Huerta Prep High/ Erica Konieczny, High Point Academy
ReportWorks (Part 1)	Intermediate	Those who need ad hoc reports	8:15am - 10:00am	Room 302	Get acquainted with PowerSchool’s new reporting tool that provides users with a drag and drop interface for creating custom reports. Prerequisites/User Permissions: ReportWorks access preferable, but not required Handout	TBD
Dashboards & Widgets (Part 2)	Advanced	All	10:15am - 12:00pm	Room 304	Understanding how the dashboards are made is one thing, it's a whole other thing to actually build one. In part 2 we will work on building a new widget and adding it to an existing dashboard. We will also look at creating a new dashboard and adding a new tab to the dashboard area. Bring in your ideas for dashboards and widgets as we'll work on someone's idea in class. Prerequisites/User Permissions: Dashboards & Widgets Part 1, ability to understand queries, basic customization knowledge.	Jason Treadwell, Power Data Solutions
Intro to the Colorado Course Code Project & the Teacher/Student Data Link for CDE	All	All	10:15am - 12:00pm	Room 600	This session focuses on the Statewide Standard Course Code Project and Teacher/Student Data Link. Both are new CDE collections that are scheduled to be implemented in the 2012/2013 school year. There will be a brief overview and discussion of what data is being collected and how PowerSchool is being used to pull the information.	Tina Bingman, Garfield School District No. RE-2, Rifle
Incident Management	Intermediate	Administrators/ Principals/ Office Staff/ Guidance Staff	10:15am - 12:00pm	Room 303	Learn to set up the incident system for use, add and edit incident details and conduct incident searches.	Patty Fry, Summit School District/ LaDonna Colema, Delta County School District
Creating Standards-Based Report Cards	Intermediate		10:15am - 12:00pm	Room 304	Participants will be engaged in a brainstorming session and Q&A regarding the tips and tricks of creating a standard based report card including but not limited to; PS codes, comments, transaverage score codes, text, lines, attendance. Standard Based Report cards are NOT DYNAMIC so it's all about real estate. We will explore the curriculum side of standards and how that may impact the report card that you may have to create.	Bob Cornacchioli, DERO Technical Services
ReportWorks (Part 2)	Advanced	Thoe who need ad hoc reports	10:15am - 12:00pm	Room 302	Check out the new Student Basic + Grades data set available in Report Works v 1.5. This data set allows the creation of both traditional report cards and standards-based report cards. By the end of this session, you will be able to set the details and scope for Report Cards, complete the layout of a standards-based report card by creating a crosstab table, and customize the appearance and data to fit your needs. Prerequisites/User Permissions: This session will move quickly and assumes that all participants have worked with ReportWorks or took the ReportWorks Part 1 session.	Tracy Wetzler, Alamosa School District RE-11J
Customization, Part 1--Getting Started with Customizations	Beginner/ Intermediate	Administrator/ Systems Tech	1:15pm - 2:45pm	Room 104	How do customizations work and what is possible? We will answer that question by showing you how to navigate within the PS Administrator Custom Screen menu and expose you to basic HTMLpages. Find out how easy it is to do 'little' customizations to your student screens. Prerequisites/User Permissions: CPM access for anyone wanting to customize their own PS, but don't need admin access to attend.	Wilma Payne, Cesar Chavez Academy / Dolores Huerta Prep High/ Robin Zook, Colorado Springs Early Colleges
PowerTeacher Admin Portal	Intermediate	Principals/ Administrator/ Curriculum Leaders	1:15pm - 2:45pm	Room 302	Use PowerTeacher Administrator to support grading policies by distributing gradebook settings and keeping track of teacher gradebooks. In this session, you will examine how to set up users and permissions in PT-Admin, work with gradebook settings and view and analyze individual teacher gradebooks. If time permits, we will then focus on how curriculum leaders can enrich teachers’ resources by sending class content and web links to specific groups of teachers.	Tracy Wetzler, Alamosa School District RE-11J
Setting Up Standards (Part 1)	Intermediate	Administrator	1:15pm - 2:45pm	Room 600	Analyze how to set up and use school-level standards at your district. Learn how standards and PowerSchool work together, how to create an import template for getting standards into PowerSchool easily, and how to maintain and store scores for standards. Finally, review the codes used for standards-based report cards. Prerequisites/User Permissions: how to put the Standards into the system, attach them to certain classes, and how to build standards-based reports.	Patty Fry, Summit School District/Tina Bingman , Garfield School District No. RE-2
Single Sign On Set-Up and Roll Out			1:15pm - 2:45pm	Room 303	Come and learn how to roll out Single Sign-on Portal for parents! This feature allows parents to create one account and attach multiple students to their account.	TC Travi, Wray School District/Eastern Colorado PowerSchool User Group
Elementary Scheduling in Excel	Advanced		1:15pm - 2:45pm	Room 304	Participants will learn an alternative method of scheduling your elementary school (possibly Middle School) with Excel. Mass Enrolling students into classes will also be taught. It’s a simple system that helps administrators begin to speak PowerSchool scheduling language. Participants will also receive several resources, Planning Guide, Quickstart Guide to Mass Enrolling student, and a sample excel schedule. Prerequisites/User Permissions: those who have already worked with scheduling and have some conceptual knowledge	Bob Cornacchioli, DERO Technical Services
Customizations Directly on PS Pages	Beginner/ Intermediate	Administrator/ Systems Tech	3:15pm - 5:00pm	Room 104	Description coming soon.	Barb Wood, Cherry Creek School District
Grading with Standards (Part 2)	Advanced	Administrator/ Teacher	3:15pm - 5:00pm	Room 304	This session will show participants how to use standards in assignments and grading. Participants will be introduced to Web Gradebook and provided with demonstration on aspects. We will share tips and tricks on keystroke saving ideas, final grade entry and creating assignments and associating them to standards.	Bob Cornacchioli, DERO Technical Services
Intro to PowerScheduler	Intermediate	Counselor/ Registrar	3:15pm - 5:00pm	Room 600	Get acquainted with the steps of the Load Only process. Learn how to define the course and section information, prepare teacher/student information, and enter student requests. We will also take a look at constraints and how to define them. Lastly, we will take a look at evaluating our Load and resolving conflicts. Prerequisites/User Permissions: Access to PowerScheduler	TC Travi, Wray School District/Eastern Colorado PowerSchool User Group/ Tina Bingman, Garfield School District No. RE-2, Rifle
Data Integration	Advanced	Principal/ Administrator/ Systems Tech/ District Leaders	3:15pm - 5:00pm	Room 303	Learn how districts can define the processes associated with critical data related functions, such as student enrollment, and how to leverage current applications and technology to automate as much of the process as practical. This results in clean and accurate data which is consistent across multiple applications.	Matt Betts, President, Level Data Level Data Inc.

PowerSchool Conference Session Line-Up

Colorado PowerSchool Users ConferenceJanuary 30-31, 2012

Conference Session Line-Up

Colorado PowerSchool Users Conference
January 30-31, 2012