What everybody says!
- High School Principal: "Have never gotten so much positive feedback from teachers and parents about anything the school's done!"
- High School Principal Sheila Beckham said the school's student attendance rate has been higher since it has used Smartweb.
- MIS Director: "Our SmartWeb has already paid for itself by saving us resources, maintenance, and support costs!"
- MIS Director: "Best investment I ever made!"
- Greg Gentry, the school system's testing director, said test scores have been higher since the SmartWeb was installed. "We can't say test scores have improved because of this, it's just one tool," Gentry said. "It's absolutely improved communication and made (parents) more aware of what's going on.
- Teachers: "No more paper work, floppy disks! And SmartWeb actually listens to us!! Thank You, SmartWeb!"
- "Teachers report attendance every day directly into their online grade books and get test scores posted online", said high school chemistry teacher Shannon Norfleet. "It makes record keeping easy, and transferring grades to the office easy," Norfleet said. "Everyone should use it --- it's there, paid for, no excuse for not using it."
- Parent: "I can now be proactive and be more involved in my child's progress! Why didn't the schools do this sooner?"
- Parent: "My daughter hates SmartWeb because now I know all her grades and I'm online with her teachers on SmartWeb!"
- Herald Tribun: "Ryan knows how to rally when he needs to. So if he blew off a few homework assignments during the semester, he never worried as long as he pulled up his grades by the time his report card came out". That was until last year, when his mother couldn't look at his grades online any time of the day or night. "He doesn't tell me everything," said Ryan's mother. But thanks to SmartWeb, she knew.
- Macon Telegraph: "Parents watch it" because they want to make sure their children make a B average to attend public colleges tuition-free. parent, whose son is a junior at high school, uses Smartweb for that very reason, he said. "I was on it last night with my son looking over my shoulder holding his breath," he said. " I think (Smartweb) will help parents be more involved with their students," he said. "It's a good conversation piece for me and the boy. I know right now he has four A's and two B's --- he knows (now) I know what his potential is."
- Student: "With SmartWeb I could check on how I stood in each of my classes, and where I needed to work harder. I got accepted to university as well as qualified for the "HOPE" grant, Thanks SmartWeb! "
- Support Personnel: "I don't have to drive to each school anymore as I did with the old GradeBook! I login from my PC and walk the teacher through her/his GradeBook!"
- Trainer: "I showed my class how to login and said explore it on your own. Let me know if you have any questions. And the whole training took less than an hour! They were impressed SmartWeb!"
- Herald Tribun interview with teachers and parents: From the teacher's perspective, the online version is much like a paper grade book. Teachers enter students' grades on homework assignments, quizzes and tests as well whether a student was late to class or absent. The difference is that as soon as the teacher posts the information, parents can see it. All they need is a Web address, a login and a password, and they're connected to their child's data. "The parents were ecstatic," said, Maria, a teacher who has used SmartWeb as well as another online grading tool. "It's no more guessing, especially with high school kids. They're not real open. Instead of digging for the information, (parents) can log on." There are benefits for teachers too, Maria said. SmartWeb runs on the district's network and is connected to its central server. So when she wanted to send an e-mail to all students reminding them of a quiz on Friday, she didn't have to type in any addresses. she could just click on her class list, and access students' e-mail addresses automatically. Dena, a Spanish teacher, said she's already seeing benefits. Mid-quarter grades are due next week. Ordinarily, Dena would have to manually enter them from her grade book into the district database. SmartWeb automatically posts the grades to the network. "It saves us a ton of work right there," she said.