The problem of information silos is one that plagued most industries and education is no exception. It is not uncommon to hear from districts complaining that their parents might have 5 or more unique logins for the various systems required to stay involved in their child’s education. School districts may have a student information system, learning management system, online registration… Read more →
In the educational world, YouTube has been considered a ‘bad’ word. This is a bit troubling considering the wealth of information that is available on YouTube which could be used for educational purposes. Many school districts are unaware of the tools they have to filter YouTube which may reduce the likelihood of a student stumbling across content that may be objectionable. One of the… Read more →
Disclaimer: CWS Software LLC sells a Parent-Teacher conference scheduling solution called PowerPTC, but the tips mentioned below should be helpful regardless of the scheduling method your organization uses. 1. Give Your Teachers Space Many school districts do not have enough classrooms for each teacher to have their dedicated space, so teachers must share classrooms. This can make scheduling Parent-Teacher… Read more →
With PowerPTC, it is possible to have guardians & parents schedule with faculty members who are not directly tied to their student’s schedule. This feature, called Open Scheduling, can come in handy if your district would like parents to be able to schedule Parent-Teacher conferences with counselors, principals, deans, activity directors, coaches, department heads, etc. Open Scheduling is another way to keep… Read more →
Powerschool is a popular Student Information System in use by many school districts. If your district is larger than a few thousands students, you will likely need to scale out your installation to include multiple application nodes. Often it will be recommended that you pay a consultant to perform a high availability setup, but in my opinion this is something… Read more →
Content filters are expensive, they can degrade the user experience, add to your IT department’s work load, and generally they don’t work that well, especially with the rise of SSL traffic. For school districts, they are a necessary evil, the best we can do as an IT department is make them as minimally invasive as possible. For districts using Fortigate… Read more →
School’s out, but parent-teacher conferences will be here before you know it. We want to help make your next parent-teacher conferences successful by offering 50% off PowerPTC. The reduced rates are available until July 15th, so create your PowerPTC.net account at https://www.powerptc.net today! Read more →
We are proud to announce the release of 1.0.0 of PowerPTC.net, the world’s smartest parent-teacher conference scheduling software. This update includes many bug fixes as well as the ability to email parents or guardians their activation codes. Sign-in at powerptc.net to try out the new features or head over to cwssoft.com/powerptc for more information on PowerPTC.net. Read more →
A new “Go Live” checklist has been added to the Support section of PowerPTC which allows for easy tracking of the steps required to configure PowerPTC for roll-out. This document can be downloaded from the Documents & Files in the Support section of PowerPTC.net. Read more →
We have updated PowerPTC to include the ability for an administrator to allow for the creation of appointments with teachers or staff members who are not directly tied to a student’s course schedule. This allows for parents and guardians to schedule with school counselors, coaches, and principals. To give the new features a test drive, head over to https://powerptc.net. Read more →