Grade Master

We are pleased to announce that GradeMaster was selected as the "20 Most Promising K-12 Technology Solution Providers 2018" by CIO Review. This is great recognition for our company as we look to further enhance our product in 2019. I wanted to go through some of the new features that we worked on this year and what we have planned for 2019.

So where do I begin? Let's start in the admin portal. In the student management and staff management module a user can mass upload student and staff pictures to the portal. This function has reduced the time it takes for one to upload pictures to the portal allowing for more time to be spent in the classroom. Another huge time saver is the transfer student function. If you have a student that starts off in one class and then transfers to another class at the end of the quarter, semester, trimester they can be moved into the new class in less than 30 seconds.

So, what happens at the end of the school year? Does all of our data go away? Do we have to re-import all of our student data? The answer of this is NO. We have added a school year rollover that keeps everything in place and moves students up in a grade level. If a student does not move up an administrator can manually move that student to the proper grade level. In order to provide the school with as much data as they need GradeMaster has developed a behavior log. Administrators can keep track of discipline issues all in one portal.
GradeMaster has really helped out the school nurses with a great new EMR (Electronic Medical Records) module. This module is FERPA and HIPPA Compliant with hourly backups of our database. Nurses can add when students visit then, the reason for the visit, medication given, and storing of physicals, eye exams, and dental exams. Students that have medical conditions will now have a special icon that will be seen on the admin portal, teacher, and student portal to quickly identify those students.
Finally, in the admin portal we have added a print all feature for the report cards. This feature allows for admin to print an entire class report cards in a matter of minutes. As you can see we have added quite a bit to the admin portal. Let's take a look at the enhancements of the teacher portal.
In order for GradeMaster to be an all-in-one solution we needed to have a few more modules and enhancements to our program. We worked very hard to create an easy messaging system that is built into the system. Teachers can email students, attach documents or reports from this module.

Earlier this year GradeMaster partnered with SmartEdTech to provide struggling students with a specific lesson. #SmartEdTech completes the circle as GradeMaster records the data but what do you then do with the data? #SmartEdTech allows teachers to submit an intervention to students that need extra help or work on an IEP goal. Specific apps will appear in the student portal for that student to complete on their own. Teachers receive reports on student completion and how well students perform on that specific task.

On the assignment page the grading period automatically goes to the current grading period. Although a small modification, again a HUGE time saver for teachers. So, what is in store for #GradeMaster in 2019?

First, all users will be able to login via Google. With the Google Integration a user cannot only just login but they will be able to sync their calendars in our portal. We have also partnered with Heartland Solutions to allow parents to pay for registration and school fees utilizing MySchoolBucks.

Early in 2019 we will be launching our beta of online school registration. Schools can eliminate the paper registration, errors in processing, and reduced costs associated by going to an online format. We will tie this online registration to MySchoolBucks for a seamlessly easy transaction.

The next item GradeMaster will be working on is strengthening our online IEP module. As GradeMaster is the only online gradebook to have this embedded into an all-in-one system we wanted to really enhance this for our users. We would love to hear feedback on what YOU would want in an online IEP module.

How would you like to have your parent/teacher conferences to be scheduled online? GradeMaster is working on having an electronic parent/teacher conference signup so that parents can easily request a conference time with their child's teacher.

Finally, in late Spring early Summer GradeMaster will be working on adding assessments to the system. This is a huge undertaking therefore requiring a lot of preparation in order for this to work properly. We are looking at having teachers be able to add their own assessments online and the system will grade them. Our goal by the end of the summer is to have a robust assessment center that users can effectively use.

As you can see, we have been busy this past year and look forward to giving our users an even greater experience in 2019. If you have any suggestions on how GradeMaster can improve or modules you would like to see please feel free to reach out to us. We value your feedback.

Happy Holidays,

Ben