Save the Date!

Below are the dates for the Spring Focus Group meetings.  All meetings will have registration beginning at 9:30 and the meetings will run from 10:00 – 12:00. We will send out a registration email sometime in early April. Spring Focus Group meetings are where we give everyone a first look at the IEPWriter enhancements that will go live in the summer.

Thursday, May 12, 2016
Intermediate Unit #1: Room 119B
Registration: 9:30 A.M. to 10:00 A.M.
Meeting: 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M.

Friday, May 13, 2016
Midwestern Intermediate Unit #4: LGI 1 & 2
Registration: 9:30 A.M. to 10:00 A.M.
Meeting: 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Capital Area Intermediate Unit #15: Keystone Room
Registration: 9:30 A.M. to 10:00 A.M.
Meeting: 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M.

Thursday, May 19, 2016
Luzerne Intermediate Unit #18: 3rd Floor Auditorium
Registration: 9:30 A.M. to 10:00 A.M.
Meeting: 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M.

Friday, May 20, 2016
Montgomery County Intermediate Unit #23: Room
Registration: 9:30 A.M. to 10:00 A.M.
Meeting: 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Appalachia Intermediate Unit #8: Training Rooms A & B
Registration: 9:30 A.M. to 10:00 A.M.
Meeting: 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M.

Thursday, May 26, 2016
Allegheny Intermediate Unit #3: Sullivan Room
Registration: 9:30 A.M. to 10:00 A.M.
Meeting: 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M.

IEPWriter Enhancements

Below is a list of enhancements that we will be making for the 2016-2017 school year and which will be previewed at the Spring Focus Group meetings.

• On the student list page, when the Print all Progress Reports link appears, we will add the ability to pick and choose which students' data will be printed.
• On the student home page, we will show response data such as date of document return and status.  Users currently have to open the document to find this information.
• We will add certain dashboard categories to the notification center to get emails (past due events).
• On the IEP goal page, we will add a checkbox to identify if it is an ESY goal and if so, populates that data in the ESY section of the IEP.
• If you have the Progress Monitoring Module, we will add the ability to choose data points to appear on the Progress Report (in addition to the graph or not having anything print).
• We will add the ability to create contact info under School Data for transfers and have that information show when a district selects your district, to make it easier to know who to contact.
• When working on a NOREP, we will populate the educational placement area from the Penn Data section of the IEP.
• For all notification events, we will ensure the PA Secure ID is being sent and adds case manager.
• On the ER and RR past due reports, we will add a column indicating which students have ID as their exceptionality.
• We will add the ability to bring information from the IEP when working on an RR (similar to the way information can be brought from an RR or ER into an IEP document).
• On certain documents such as the Permission to Evaluate and Invitation document, we will add the ability to regenerate and add a second or third notice option.
• We will add a way to indicate parent refusal on the Permission to Evaluate document.
• When doing a mass roster change, we will redo the process so users do not have to individually check each student to update the assignment records.
• We will add a new notification event to track when a revision to an IEP is started.
• We will perform various additional performance enhancements.

Upcoming Events

PDE Conference – 2/10/16 – 2/12/16

PETE&C - 2/21/16 – 2/24/16

Stop by and say hello at our booth!

OnHand School's EdInsight Instructional Management System

For those schools that use this software in addition to IEPWriter, we are working on additional ways of sharing data between our systems. We are passing roster information to OnHand and will be adding a way to get testing information that can be brought into forms in any rich text area (a new icon will be added for those schools to select which data they will want). We are also changing the way documents are shared and will be making this a real time event, rather than the documents being captured at certain intervals.  

Copying and Pasting Content from Word and Other Sources into IEPWriter

If you try to select and copy an entire document or page of text, you are more likely to include unwanted formatting. Select only the information that is needed. For larger documents, it is best to select and copy the information in sections rather than selecting and copying everything at once.

When working in Microsoft Word with the intentions of creating content for IEPWriter, do not apply unnecessary formatting. Additional formatting can be applied with our own rich text editor once the content is in IEPWriter. Avoid setting margins and indents.

When working with tables in Word, avoid setting fixed column widths. If it is necessary to set column widths, in the table property dialogue, use percentages rather than a specific value in inches. For example, use column width = 50% rather than column width = 3 inches. Users should try to avoid tables having a large number of columns; column heading text should be kept to a minimum. Larger tables should be split into multiple tables to ensure that they will fit within the bounds of the document for which they are intended in IEPWriter.

Large tables and other content with a lot of formatting can also be saved as an image file and uploaded to our rich text editor as an image. Most modern devices have a built-in snipping tool to capture an area of your screen that can be saved as an image file. Image files will work best if the dimensions of the image are no greater than 600 pixels by 600 pixels.

In Closing…

We hope everybody is staying warm. We look forward to seeing everybody again and showcasing our changes at the Spring Focus Group meetings!