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Teachers and custom fields

By Jane Campbell on March 25, 2013

Does anyone know a way for teachers to see custom field data for their students? I'm trying to create a report so track coaches can see their students and student cell phone numbers. Has anyone found a creative way around the PS limitation preventing teachers to access custom field data?

Tags: PowerTeacher • Custom Pages

Comments

8 Responses to "Teachers and custom fields"

Kathy Riese on March 25, 2013
We created a course called coach roster, enroll all their student in the course. They they can see whatever they need. Make sure the course does not count towards attendance or class rank and such. Each coach is a different section number. Works great for us.

Jane Campbell on March 25, 2013
Thanks, Kathy. That's what we've done. But we're trying to find a way for the coaches to be able to see and print students' cell phone numbers, which is a custom field we created in PowerSchool. PowerSchool doesn't allow teachers to access custom fields so we're looking for a way around that limitation.

Kathy Riese on March 25, 2013
Sorry, I sure didn't read your post very well. I'm thinking.......

Linda Kohlscheen on March 25, 2013
Can they utilize the quick export and just pull Student_Cell_phone is what our field is anyway?

Jane Campbell on March 25, 2013
No, it looks like teachers can't access data from any custom fields, through a report or export. An admin user can do the quick export, but the idea is to let the coaches be able to access the info they need. I'm looking for a way around this, but it might not exist.

Wayne Wiens on March 26, 2013

This can be done fairly easily. You can customize the Demographics page that teachers see in the backpack on PowerTeacher. You can add any field you want to this page.

If you are hosted, you will have to use Custom Web Page Management through PS Administrator. If you host your own server, you will go to the Custom web root folder. My instructions below assume you know the basics on how to customize a page.

Here is how to do the customization.

1. Customize the demo.html page found at: Teachers > Studentpages > demo.html

2. Copy the code for one of the table rows that already exists. This would be between a <tr> and </tr>.

3. Paste this code on the page where you want it to be displayed.

4. Change the reference of the field you copied to the field you want to use.

Example:

You copy this:
<tr bgcolor="#edf3fe">
<td>~[text]psx.html.teachers_studentpages.demo.home_phone[/text]</td>
<td>~(home_phone)</td>
</tr>

You change it to this:
<tr bgcolor="#edf3fe">
<td>Student Cell Phone</td>
<td>~(student_cell)</td>
</tr>

Changes are in bold.

NOTE:

this code: ~[text]psx.html.teachers_studentpages.demo.home_phone[/text]
looks complex b/c it is used to translate text to different languages. You can just replace it with your own hard coded text, such as "Student Cell Phone".

student_cell would be the exact name of the custom field you want to use.

<tr bgcolor="#edf3fe"> gives the line a solid blue background color. Don't include this if you want the background to be white.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Jane Campbell on March 26, 2013
Thanks, Wayne. I'll give this a try.

Jane Campbell on March 26, 2013
Very simple and it worked! I also discovered that teachers can print a report from PowerTeacher that lists the students and their cell phone numbers. So ... all the comments in PowerSource about how teachers cannot access custom fields in PowerTeacher must not be accurate ... Thanks again, Wayne!

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