Special Education Module Receives a Functionality Facelift
Improvements have been made to the Skyward Special Education module. These improvements are enhancements found throughout the Special Education module, with specific focus on working with special education forms.
From IEP Expiring reports to Three Year Evaluation Due reports, you spend countless hours verifying that every special education form you submit is accurate. Here is a list of some of the enhancements Skyward has made to its special education forms that will be included as a part of the March Program Maintenance Pack (PMP):
March PMP Enhancements
- Table of contents – When you print a PDF form that has more than one page, a table of contents appears on the first page.
- Ability to lock down data – Your district can lock specific wording in forms, but allow for text boxes to be added to provide additional information.
- Workflow integration - Set up an auto-email trigger when forms are ready to be sent to other users to be reviewed or approved.
- Auto-save on forms - The time the form was last saved appears in the lower corner of the form. The name of the person who last viewed the form also appears at the bottom of the page.
- Ease of formatting
- Paste text from Word without having to delete Word tags
- Add your district logo with contact information to the top of any form
- Increased control over adjusting fonts and creating tables
- Built-in spell checker
You already use Educator Access+ to view student attendance, grades, and guardian information; now you can see all of the same information for your special education students. Educator Access+ now has a My Students with Disabilities tab that displays all of your special education students in one area. This tab also shows all unread forms and students you have viewed and not viewed.
Just like the GradeBook Tracker in the Skyward Student Management Suite™, the new release of the Special Education module also includes a Special Education Tracker. The tracker allows you to see at a glance the number of students in special education, active special education students, inactive special education students, case managers, and recent LEA representatives.
Future Enhancements
In the near future, you will also see additional enhancements to your Special Education module that accomplish everything from integrating workflow by setting up special education organization charts to adding special education student alerts to your GradeBook. You will also be able to optimize your use of the SkyPort customized dashboard by setting up unique special education widgets.
SkyPort provides you with an instant snapshot of data and real-time graphs that are specific to your responsibilities. By setting up widgets, which are movable windows or text boxes that display reports or messages, on your SkyPort dashboard, you can see a bird’s eye view of:
In the example below, if you click the name of a case manager, you will get a detailed list of information about that case manager, such as contact information and reports viewed. If you click on a number following the name, you will get the names of their students in a list.
Parents can also set up a SkyPort dashboard as a landing page to access Family Access. They will see similar information specific to their child, such as teacher contact information and upcoming meetings with case managers or teachers. This will eliminate time-consuming phone calls to the office with questions from parents on the times and dates of future meetings and conferences.
These new enhancements and features to the Special Education module have been created with you in mind, to streamline your every day work in special education. By using these new developments, you can be assured that your district’s special education program is successful and efficient.
To hear more about the latest updates to Skyward’s Special Education module, call 800-236-7274 or email info@skyward.com. Also, click here to see the listing of 2010 Skyward User Group Conferences in your state, and contact your state's steering committee to find out what user group sessions will be held on the enhancements to the Special Education module.
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