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New Features And Enhancements Latest Press Releases
Novemeber 18th, 2009 New Feature: FACTS Tuition Management integration Sycamore Education has added a seamless interface to the FACTS tuition management system. Schools which use the FACTS system can now keep track of all transactions within the Sycamore Education system. August 3, 2009 New Feature: Grade Skill Sets Grade level skill sets are now available for your school to help in tracking students progress in a particular area. Your school can now create as many skill sets as needed. Teachers can then associate these skill sets with particular assignments. Once the assignment is graded, the teacher can drill down into each students subject grade, using this icon August 3, 2009 New Feature: Athletic Director Nearly all of Sycamore Education's client's are going to greatly appreciate the new Athletic Director feature. This features allows you to easily manage all your sporting events, and the highlights/game summaries that are typed out in the Scoreboard area will scroll on the right side of the homepage until the designated date. All the scores and stories will be available and easy to access. The new Athletic Director is intuitive and user-friendly. May 13th, 2009 New Feature: Student Types A new student filtering capability has been added to Sycamore Education. Your school can now create as many different 'Types' of students as needed. For example, if you're a K-12 school, you might want to create a 'Type' called "High School,” one called "Middle School," and another called "Elementary School". Once these 'Types' are created, they can then be associated with students within the Student Profile area or with the new report called 'Student Types'. This feature allows for more specific reporting capabilities. April 28, 2009 New Feature: Narrative Report Cards A new report card is now available for those schools wishing to provide parents with a narrative evaluation of their students. Teachers can now go into each one of their classrooms and go under 'Grade Book/Narrative Evaluations' and click on the; students’ link under the appropriate session and enter an unlimited text for their evaluation. This evaluation can then be printed out using the new 'Narrative Evaluation' option under 'Grade Mgr/Report Cards'. This report card will be saved into the Student's Document area just like any other report card. New Feature: Going Even Greener Use the 'Drop Box' capability to allow your students to upload an assignment directly to the teacher without ever using a sheet of paper. Any assignment a teacher creates can be made available by checking the 'Use Drop Box' option in the new assignment window. New: School VS. Classroom Defined Grade Categories Here's a new capability available to 'super users' and those with 'Classroom Mgr' permission: pre-defining Grading Categories for any or all of your classes. On the Classroom Profile screen (Classroom Mgr/ Select class name [in blue]), locate the Grading tab at the top. Choose whether it is a points-based class or categories-based class. Lock the 'Grading Categories' to keep teachers from altering the setup (found in the upper right corner.) This is also where the Grading Scale will be selected, which is only available to those with 'Classroom Mgr' permission. Enhancement: Quick Click For Parents We've added a quick link for parents to view the entire month's lunch menu. April 8th, 2009 Enhancement: Matrix Schedule We now offer another view of a student's schedule. The Matrix Schedule feature allows for quick and easy viewing, which is more defined and permits editing. A printable matrix schedule is also available. Classes that are defined by a department will be highlighted in the department color. Check out the matrix schedule in the student's profile/Schedule tab and select the Matrix tab. Enhancement: Time Saver For Teachers Teachers will love this one! Now copy multiple assignments to another class (or even multiple classes) if needed. Simply select the assignments that need to be copied and under the new 'Choose Action' drop down menu (located in the top right corner of the Assignments page) choose 'Copy to Classroom.' The 'Choose Action' drop down menu is also the place to go to move multiple assignments from ‘future’ to ‘current’ or ‘current’ to ‘graded.’ New Feature: Parents To Print Statements When parent login is enabled, parents now have the ability to print their own statements - for Childcare, Sports, Tuition or the 'Super Statement' (which shows a summary of all accounts and a final balance). Parents can access these statements anytime, from any internet-connected computer. Enhancement: Discipline Notification Teachers now have the option to notify parents via Pass-a-note when a 'Discipline Log' is created for a particular student. February 25, 2009 New Feature: Communicate With Parents Via Text Messaging Communicating with your tech-savvy, on-the-go parents just became easier with Sycamore Education's added SMS feature. This new text messaging feature enables anyone with 'Communication' permission to text message information right to a parent's cell phone. Use this feature for anything from "School will be closed tomorrow." to "Reminder: Silent auction starts at 6:30 tonight." Find this under Communication/Batch Text Msg. Encourage your parents to register their cell phone numbers. When they login to Sycamore they can go to My School/My Contacts and click on the cell phone icon by their name. They choose their cell phone provider from the drop down box and we'll do the rest. New Feature: Sponsor Ads Want to generate a little extra income for your school without taking on another fundraising campaign? Sycamore now allows you to sell advertising space to parents or sponsors from your community. The scrolling Sponsor Ads will be displayed on parent and student homepages. Create as many Sponsor Ads as your school can sell. Each school is in complete control of setting the price and collecting the money from the ads. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Sycamore Education Adds Several Conferences to Fall Schedule August 26th, 2009– Sycamore Education, a comprehensive online school management system, has added five conferences to their fall schedule:
Attendees can stop by the Sycamore Education booth for a demonstration and a chance to win a free iPod . FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Sycamore Education Helps Schools “Go Green” May 25th, 2009 – Sycamore Education, a comprehensive online school management system, makes it easy for schools to become more eco-friendly. Schools can significantly reduce the paperwork sent home to parents by utilizing the vast array of features within Sycamore Education. Parents can simply login to Sycamore Education to check on grades, assignments, attendance, progress reports, schedules, upcoming events, lunch menus, and much more. Parents can even enroll, or re-enroll, their students online. And Sycamore allows schools to reduce paper usage and postage expense by providing online statements for tuition, cafeteria, and other school related fees. Some additional “green” features available within Sycamore Education: Digital Drop Box: Teachers can easily allow students to turn in assignments online without ever having to use paper or a printer. Students can simply turn in their assignments online via Sycamore’s ‘Drop Box’ feature. E-Verification: Schools now have the option to allow parents to view and verify an unlimited variety of documents online. For example, a school could make ‘2nd Quarter Progress Reports’ available to parents online. When a parent logs in, he/she would be prompted to view this document, and then confirm. This feature allows schools to easily track and report on which parents have viewed any given document. E-Verification not only saves paper, it saves time, postage, and labor. SMS Text Messaging: Schools can easily notify families of changes to schedules, snow days, emergency situations, postponements, etc, via text messaging. Parents need only register their cell phones within the system. In addition, Sycamore Education dramatically reduces the carbon footprint for thousands of users all across the United States and in 10 additional countries by providing centralized processing, which eliminates the need for thousands of servers, and the power and support necessary to run them. Since 1999, Sycamore Education has added hundreds of enhancements and features to help schools save energy, time, and resources. For more information about Sycamore Education visit: www.sycamoreeducation.com. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Nebraska Company Helps Improve Education in Afghanistan (Jalalabad, Afghanistan) – February 19th, 2009 – The Khurasan University of Modern Sciences (KUMSA) has contracted with Sycamore Campus to provide a comprehensive, online campus management system for their campus in Jalalabad. KUMSA is a private non-profit university and is the only university in Jalalabad registered with the Afghan government. As recently as 2001, when the Taliban controlled the government, females were prohibited from being educated in Afghanistan. Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, the political and cultural positions of Afghan women have improved substantially, and educational institutions like KUMSA are significant contributors to this progress. KUMSA offers its excellent programs and activities to both men and women. Furthermore, Dr. Parisa Poplalzai, the founder of KUMSA, has earned the distinction of being the first female university president in the country. Dr. Poplalzai selected Sycamore Campus because it offers a truly web-based solution, which permits her to securely access and manage data even from her office in California; because it offers a comprehensive solution to the complex administrative, academic, and student needs of her institution; and because Sycamore Campus was the most affordable option. “We are very pleased to be working with Dr. Poplalzai,” said Glen Ellis, CEO of Sycamore Leaf Solutions. “Now more than ever, affordability is a key factor for educational institutions. We’ve actually made our products more affordable in response to the weakened economies we are seeing here and abroad. We anticipate steady growth for Sycamore, both domestically and internationally, given the incredible value we offer.” Established in 1999, Sycamore Leaf Solutions is a leading provider of web-based school management systems for educational institutions, with satisfied clients across the USA and in 8 countries. more information about Sycamore Education, visit www.sycamoreeducation.com. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE INNOVATIVE COMPANY CREATES EMERGENCY ALERT TO MAKE SCHOOLS SAFER NATIONWIDE December 4th, 2007—An innovative product designed by Sycamore Education allows K-12 schools, and college campuses to add the capability of instantly notifying an entire school, or an entire campus, of an emergency situation. Sycamore's alert could make a significant difference in helping prevent the violent tragedies that our country has witnessed at various educational institutions. Sycamore Education, a leading provider of web-based school management systems to educational institutions across the country, designed this revolutionary new product to make schools safer, and to give parents and students added peace of mind. "Given the recent tragedies at some of our nation's educational institutions, we thought it was crucial to develop a way to quickly notify a large number of staff and students of an emergency situation, " stated CEO Glen Ellis. The safety alert can be issued by any teacher or staff member from any computer that is connected to the internet. Once issued, any computer in the school or on campus will function both as an audible alarm, and an information center regarding the nature of the alert. For example, if an individual with a weapon was observed entering a school building, within seconds, any teacher or staff member could initiate a school-wide, or campus-wide, safety alert. This would instantly trigger all computers to emit an audible alarm; additionally, the alert could direct personnel to lock down all classrooms, or to evacuate the building, etc. The alert can also include as much information as the person initiating the alarm has time to add, such as the location of the intruder. Significantly, the system also permits comprehensive and instant communication after the alert has been issued, so critical information can be shared real-time from any computer regarding new information, or new instructions to staff and students. Sycamore's safety alert could help school's respond proactively to a desperate situation. Sycamore's web-based safety alert system provides an immediate low-cost solution to a complex communication problem; it eliminates the cost, and the design challenges of a hard-wired system, and it allows schools to connect an unlimited number of classrooms and buildings to the system at no additional cost, and without the purchase of any equipment. Any school, or college, could have an effective alert system in place within hours, not days or weeks. Sycamore Education is already providing this safety alert, free of charge, to the schools across the country which currently use Sycamore Education for school management. Sycamore Education is a leading provider of internet-based school management systems. Since 1999, Sycamore has been at the forefront of the migration of schools from client server-based to web-based systems, with anytime, anywhere access for teachers, administrators, parents, and students. Sycamore Education provides a comprehensive, all-in-one system, which emphasizes Communication, Collaboration and Administration. For more information about Sycamore Education, visit www.sycamoreeducation.com. |
found in the Student Summary area of the Grade Book , to find out what particular skills that student is excelling in and which skills that students needs help. Toll Free: (866) 757 4968