FAQs
Q. Will LiveGrades ever cease to be free or is this just a marketing ploy to become a paid service later?
A. LiveGrades will never have a cost associated with it for any West Virginia school. It will remain free for any West Virginia school as long as they continue to use it. Schools outside of West Virginia can also utilize LiveGrades, but there is an associated fee for doing so. Contact us to learn more if you are a school outside of West Virginia and are interested in LiveGrades.
Q. What Schools Can Utilize LiveGrades?
A. LiveGrades is for any school, public or private, from Kindergarten through higher-education. A school need not be located in West Virginia to use LiveGrades. However, only schools located in West Virginia can receive LiveGrades for free. Citynet offers the LIveGrades platform for free to West Virginia schools as a way of giving back to our home state, and the communities in which Citynet serves.
Q. Does LiveGrades work with the West Virginia Education Information System (WVEIS)?
A. Yes! We can work with your county's WVEIS coordinator to have LiveGrades automatically import class rosters and other information. This import is hands-off, and happens nightly. If your WVES coordinator drops a student today, they'll be gone from your roster tomorrow.
Q. Will LiveGrades work without the West Virginia Education Information System (WVEIS)? What about with a different backend system?
A. Yes. LiveGrades was developed to be a fully featured stand alone software product that does not require integration with any other information system. For customers within the state of West Virginia, we have built an interface that allows the system to interact with WVEIS (the states backend information system). This interface allows the software to automatically receive class rosters and update student information from the centralized state database, and to feed grades back to the state's system at the end of the year. For customers outside of WV, you can still add and manage all of your student information and grades right from the LiveGrades teacher website. If your school uses a different information system, Citynet can work with your system administrators to develop an import process that will capture the needed information to automatically update LiveGrades.
Q. My email address is out of date. Can I update it?
A. Yes. Once you log into LiveGrades, you can update your email address by going to "Account" and clicking the option to update your email address.
Teachers
Q. How often do I need to set-up my classes?
A. Classes last for a whole semester (however long that is for your school system); setup your class once, and you're good to go! Want it even easier? If your school is in West Virginia, we can work with your WVEIS coordinator to make sure that you never need to create your classes or input rosters.
Q. How long can I view my students' grades?
A. Teachers can view your students' grade information at any time during the school year. LiveGrades lets you look at last semester's grades as easily as you can your current grades, run reports on them, or anything else you need. Once the grades are no longer available from the standard interface, we still have them. Parents and students can view their information for as long as they are in the system; if a kindergartener started at a LiveGrades school this year, they could check those grades in high school.
Q. Can I print out my students' grades?
A. Yes! LiveGrades lets you print your students' grades at any time, and allows you choose what grading periods and classes to display. LiveGrades also gives you access to a number of other reporting features that let you do things like print out reports of individual students' assignments grades. We also provide you with some options that make work easier for you and your substitutes, like blank attendance sheets, blank grade sheets, and seating charts. All of our reports are created using Adobe Acrobat, which makes it easy to save your PDF reports, print them out, or back them up locally.
Q. I use points instead of percentages. Is that OK?
A. Sure! LiveGrades handles points and percentage based grading systems.
Q. Do I have to use my district's default grading scale?
A. Although your school or district may have mandated grading scales, we don't require their use. Teachers can setup any number of customized grading scales, and can use any combination of them for their classes that they would like.
Q. Can I drop my students' lowest grade?
A. LiveGrades will automatically handle the dropping of low grades based on the number you supply the system. If a student gets a lower grade later, the system will update to count that as the dropped assignment. The choice of which grade to drop is based on the grade's overall impact to the course, and it ignores any assignments that were bonus or that the student was excused from completing.
Q. Does LiveGrades support standard-based grading options?
A. Yes. All of the state standards are pre-loaded into LiveGrades, and non-numerical grading option is available, along with the capability to use any other custom grading system that a school would need.
Q. Can schools use LiveGrades for attendance?
A. Yes, LiveGrades has an attendance module that can be made available by the district administrator.
Parents & Students
Q. How long will it take for parents and students to see updates to their grades?
A. When you update a student's grades, LiveGrades will automatically make those changes available to parents and students.
Q. Can parents just see their student's grades for this semester?
A. Through the Parent and Student login at LiveGrades, parents and students can quickly access their grades from the current semester, or select any previous school years in order to see historical grades. If a child is going into Elementary school this year and your school begins using LiveGrades, when that student graduates from High School, they will be able to see all of their grades for all twelve years. Talk about a powerful method for easily comparing performance over the years!
Q. I'm a student, can I update my password to something easier to remember?
A. Once you log into LiveGrades, you can update your password by going to "Account" and clicking on "Change Password".
Q. How do parents log into the system?
A. Teachers/schools have the ability to print out sheets containing a pass code for each of their students. This information can be sent home with the students to their parents. Parents access the site at LiveGrades.com, and create a profile for themselves. This profile is basic information such as name, email address, and desired login information. They can then enter the username and pass key from the sheet received by the student to associate the student to their account. Without this information (the username and pass key), you cannot access any information about the student. Once the parent's account has been created and the student associated by providing their information, the student's information will be available each time they log into the system. If the parent has multiple students, they may simply enter additional student credentials and associate each student back to their account. When the parent logs in, they would then see each of their student's listed and can select which they would like to view.
Q. Can we print report cards from LiveGrades?
A. Yes! LiveGrades has an extensive reporting catalog for various data reporting requests.
Have Other Questions? Want to Learn More? Contact Us!
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