Harmony 3.0 Beginner’s Guide for Secondary SCSD2 Teachers

FIND HARMONY

Harmony 3.0 is web based.

Do NOT use the orange Lotus Notes circle on the dock. You should not go “back and forth” between the client circle and the web version.

Save the Harmony 3.0 web site to your bookmarks bar. If you don’t know how to do this, get help right away!

LOG IN

Enter your username and password. These will be the same as you have always used for Harmony.

Click on the login button.

HOME SCREEN

When logged in, you see the home screen. You can search for a student in the search box at the top.

It is likely that you will go right to the classroom tab in the left column.

Classroom is the home to gradebooks.

Harmony 3.0 Beginner’s Guide for Secondary SCSD2 Teachers

FIND YOUR CLASSES

Your class lists and grade books will live in the Grade book section.

You can find grade books from previous terms in All grade books.

CLASS LISTS AND ATTENDANCE

Find a class roster by selecting the blue course number.

See current enrollment number from this view. New enrollees are now auto-populated in Harmony 3.0.

To take period attendance, select take attendance for the class.

SMS STAFF- You are required to take Harmony attendance for the class you have at 8:05 - regardless of the period. After 8:05, all attendance updating will occur in the office. If, later in the day you want to see if a kid is absent, you can look at the take attendance section and see what the office marked.

If a student marked in RED shows up in your room, notify the office.

Enter plan is also available from this view. SMS teachers are not required to use this. Google doc lesson plans are required.

Harmony 3.0 Beginner’s Guide for Secondary SCSD2 Teachers

TAKING ATTENDANCE

Mark a student absent or tardy by clicking directly on the student picture. Yes, right on the face!

One click (pause) and the box will turn blue signaling an absence.

If a student comes in late and should be reported tardy, click (pause) click again (pause), will turn the box yellow. Rapid double click may not get it. Click, then click is best.

If you want to change the attendance status of any student, just keep clicking the image until you get the status you need. White boxes designate present!

When the status is finished, select SAVE and CLOSE. Failure to finish with this sequence means that your attendance won’t be recorded.

Any student with a RED box has already been recorded absent by the teacher.

SMS NOTE: You TAKE attendance with your 8:05 class each day. The office does the rest. You can SEE attendance for a class any time.

NO ABSENCES?

If all kids are present and accounted for, be sure to click no absences before you hit save and close. Failure to select no absences when all kids attend will make it look like you never took attendance and the office will harass you!

Harmony 3.0 Beginner’s Guide for Secondary SCSD2 Teachers

OPENING GRADE BOOKS

Just like old Harmony, you must open a new grade book for each class each time you finalize grades. At SMS this is done once a quarter.

Click on New Grade Book and select the class you want to open.

You do this step one class at a time.

CHOOSE GRADE BOOK SETTINGS

You establish your gradebook settings when you open a new grade book. You can change your settings during the term if you need to do so.

The term (semester) is automated.

The Grading Period is chosen. SMS staff- the first quarter of ANY term is a 1 and the second quarter of ANY term is a two. NEVER use the choices of 3 or 4 in this drop down box.

Choose your grading scale - Select the SMS Grading Scale.

Calculate grades by Total Points or Categories. If you select categories, you need to name your categories. That list is customizable. You will also assign percentage valued for each category. This is great if you have a regular activity like Blogs or Labs or...

Choose your Final Grade option. It should stay Average Quarters for Semester.

Harmony 3.0 Beginner’s Guide for Secondary SCSD2 Teachers

FINDING GRADE BOOKS

After you create a grade book, click somewhere else (like the student tab on the left) and then go back into Classroom/Grade Books. Your grade book will appear.

You should have only ONE grade book created for each section.

USING THE GRADE BOOK

Your students appear in the new grade book. The Tools tab allows you to change grade book settings (Change Preferences) and do many traditional Harmony tasks.

USING THE GRADE BOOK

The New Assignment tab will be addressed in the next page.

The Finalize tab should NEVER be selected unless you are going to submit grades at the end of a quarter.

Harmony 3.0 Beginner’s Guide for Secondary SCSD2 Teachers

CREATING AN ASSIGNMENT

You create assignments from the New Assign tab. A box will open and you will fill in these details:

The date of the assignment. DO NOT LET THIS AUTOPOPULATE. Harmony 3.0 will mark in your gradebook if a student was absent for an assignment. (cool!) But this only works if you put the actual date the assignment was given in the Assignment Details.

The name of the assignment. This is a public name! Spell it right! Parents will see this.

Assignment number is automated.

Category. Select the category from the drop down box IF you use categories. If you don’t use categories, skip this part.

Total Points. Enter the points for the assignment.

Common Score. If it is likely that most kids got the same thing, enter that here. Go back and swap out the real scores for the few that did not earn it. REALLY COOL- If you use common score and a kid was absent on the day of the assignment, it will NOT give the kid that score.

You don’t have to use common score if scores are all over the place.

SMS staff- To make this work, we need to remember what date is assigned based on the roll. You can mass add an assignment but it is recommended to make date adjustments! You can do this from the individual gradebooks or by creating one assignment for one group of classes and the same assignment on the next day for the second roll kids.

Harmony 3.0 Beginner’s Guide for Secondary SCSD2 Teachers

ENTERING GRADES

Once an assignment has been created, the grade book will open and the name & date of the assignment will appear in blue. If you want to edit this, click on the blue and you go back to the original assignment entry page.

In this example, I had created a 100 point assignment called Biography and I used a common score because all of these students are brilliant. Note that you have editable boxes for each score AND you have a current grade and percent next to the name.

If you change the editable score and hit enter, you will get an updated current grade and percent.

As you continue to enter assignments, the columns will move to the right. The new assignment is always in front with the live grade.You do not have to create new grade book pages after ten assignments. You can enter unlimited assignments per grade book.

In the second screen shot, you see that a 20 point assignment is being added (Writing Sample) and individual grades are being entered. No common score has been used. This is a total points grade book so you can see that losing points on a small point assignment only slightly impacts the grade.

Harmony 3.0 Beginner’s Guide for Secondary SCSD2 Teachers

FINDING STUDENT INFO

This is the beauty of Harmony 3.0. Click the gray arrow to the left of any name in the gradebook.

Clicking on the gray arrow gives you the screen to the left... a photo and links to view student and view snapshot.

View student gives you the demographics screen and the chance to see parent contacts and the features at the left.

View snapshot gives you parent contacts, current year attendance, current year grades, current year discipline, prior grade history, and prior ISTEP.

The letters icon opens an autopopulated email field. If the parent has email on file, it will prep the email for you.

The adult heads icon opens a discipline entry. SMS staff will NOT use this feature this year but we will investigate it for next year. In 2013-2014, we will use our traditional discipline reporting forms and procedures.

The blue phone icon opens up a call log. If you call the parent, you can record the details of this call in fields that appear. This is a great way for you to document parent contacts!

FROM STUDENT VIEW

If you open student view or snapshot, you’ll see these icons.

Click the...Bell for a quick look at absences.Form for a quick look at schedule.Calculator for a quick look at current grades.Adult heads for a quick look at discipline.

Note: Whenever you open up a student view or snapshot, you will go back to your opening grade book page when you close out of that student. That is a tiny bit of a pain...