Intended Audience: IT Support and/or School Ops Staff
Date of Last Update: March 2023
Context: Ponder Paper uses enrollment data from PowerSchool to generate personalized copies of materials for each student. At least once each year and whenever new course sections are created mid-year, IT or Ops staff must set up each school by linking course sections from PowerSchool to the curricula that are available in Ponder Paper.
Note: This step can be taken after "course mapping" is complete (the list of courses and their regional variants) and after course sections have been assigned a teacher and at least one student for each school.
Purpose: This article contains the steps for linking course section enrollment (e.g., from PowerSchool) to curricula (i.e., the subjects available in Paper). This is a one-time process that must be completed when new sections are created in PowerSchool (typically at the beginning of the year).
Steps:
1. Navigate to "School setup" in the Ponder Paper menu. If you don't see "School Setup" in your menu, contact us at support@ponder.co.
2. Select your school from the dropdown menu at the top of the page. This will bring up a list of the named course sections at your school (based on enrollment data).
3. Select the course you want to link . Use the filter to search for a particular course, or scroll through the list. Click the "+" next to the course to select it.
- Note: Ponder Paper does not require that you link a curriculum to every course/section on the list. Coordinate with the appropriate Curriculum & Assessment Team to identify the courses for which users will print assessments and/or exit tickets.
- Each course/section can be assigned to only one curriculum
4. Assign a curriculum to each section of the course.
- Under "(1) Select a family & edition", search or scroll to find a different curriculum as needed. Click the curriculum name to select it.
- Under "(2) Select variant," choose the regional variant of the curriculum that the course will use.
- Under sections, use the toggle switches to turn the curriculum "on" for each section that will use it. Teachers, section names, and students can continue to be changed after you take this step (Ponder Paper refreshes enrollment data twice per day).
- Note: Course sections must have a teacher (with a valid email address) and at least one student assigned, in order to appear on this list.
- Submit when finished.
5. Repeat this process for each course that will use curriculum or assessments printed from Ponder Paper. Monitor your progress on the School setup home screen, where the number of sections and students will turn blue as you complete them.
6. Repeat this process any time new sections are created, including if a section is deleted and replaced with a new section.
- If schools change a teacher or section nickname or update the student roster for an existing section, this Setup process does not need to be repeated.
7. School Setup warnings: The following is an example of warnings on the School Setup page.
The red icons signify that the PowerSchool data is out of sync with Paper. This will happen whenever PowerSchool is updated since the last refresh. No action is needed as the sections will be back in sync after the next refresh.
The yellow icons signify PowerSchool sections that were deleted or replaced. Action needed: click on the edit icon (the pencil) and verify that the correct sections are toggled on as is mentioned in step 4: Under sections, use the toggle switches to turn the curriculum "on" for each section that will use it.
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