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TAP User Manual

v1.0 September 14, 2003

Getting started

The first thing you need to do in TAP is create a gradebook . If you're running TAP for the first time then you'll be taken to this form automatically, otherwise you can use the menu item Book/New. Creating a brand new gradebook will prepopulate it with all the TAP defaults for grade and attendance preferences. If you have already created a gradebook with the grades and attendance preferences set the way you want them, you can use the Clone button on the Create Gradebook form to copy all this data from an existing gradebook to a new gradebook you want to create. When cloning a gradebook you also can copy all created assignments or created students from the selected gradebook to the new gradebook.

Once you have a gradebook created you can setup your grade , attendance, and assignment category preferences. Following that you're ready to enter all the class assignments and student information. You'll probably want to create all the student entries immediately, but you can enter the assignments either in advance or as you need them.

After all this config, you're finally ready to actually use TAP! The main gradebook form can be viewed in two different ways: You can view a list of students for a given assignment in order to enter grades for each student, or you can view a list of assignments for a given student in order to enter grades for each assignment.

Forms Overview

TAP has these primary forms:

New book (shortcut B)
Open book (shortcut O)
New Category (shortcut C)
Edit Categories
New Student (shortcut S)
New Assignment (shortcut A)
Gradebook (shortcut 1)
Attendance (shortcut 2)
Summary (shortcut 3)
Labels
Grade labels
Class
Attendance labels
Notes

Additional shortcuts: Select by Student (T), Select by Assignment (G)

New Book

***SCREENSHOT NEEDS TO BE UPDATED*** This form is used to create a new gradebook. To create an empty gradebook just enter the new name and press "OK". To create a new gradebook using some data from an existing gradebook, enter the new name and select the existing gradebook from the list and press "Clone". A dialog will then appear so that you can choose to copy all assignment data or all student data from the existing gradebook into the new gradebook. Copying the assignment data is useful if you teach multiple classes on the same subject with different students. Copying the student data is useful if you teach multiple subjects to the same students. In either case, attendance and grade data is not copied but attendance and grade preferences are copied.

Open Book

***SCREENSHOT NEEDS TO BE UPDATED*** This form is used to open an existing gradebook. Simply select the gradebook from the list and press "OK".

New Category

Create a new assignment category.

Edit Categories

Allows you to edit categories. Use this form with great care once you've created assignments! Since assignments can be tied to a category, if you then rearrange your categories, delete some, or insert some, then any existing assignments may be "reassigned". Assignments track their associated category by the index of the category within this list, so for example if you were to swap two categories in the list then all assignments matching those categories would now belong to a other respective category.

New Student

This form is used to enter new students into your current gradebook. Just enter the last name and first name and press "OK". To assign a note for this student you can press "Note". Student notes are useful for contact information and other student-related data.

New Assignment

Assignments are created on this form and are given a title, the total points available for the assignment, the assignment weight, category, and due date. Assignment weights default to 1 and serves as a multiplier for the assignment points. So if as assignment is worth 20 points and has a weight of 5, the true total points for the assignment would be 20x5, 100.

Gradebook

This is the primary gradebook form, showing either all assignments by student (default) or all students by assignment. Displayed assignments can be filtered by setting the desired assignment Category. Assigned grades are shown in either numeric form (default) or letter abbreviation (if configured). Notes for the displayed student or assignment can be accessed by tapping the note icons down the left side of the form. Grade assignment notes can be accessed by tapping the note icons down the right side of the form. If a note has note yet been assigned the note icon will appear empty, otherwise it will appear with data lines.

Students are displayed alphabetically while assignments are displayed in due date order (oldest to newest). To view or enter a note for a student or assignment displayed, just tap on the student name (if viewing by assignment) or assignment title (if viewing by student). The current view is accessed by the menu "Options" "Select by Student" or "Select by Assignment".

Addendance

Attendance is viewed and entered on this form. Attendance data can be viewed by date (default) or by student. If "By Date", you can select the date you want to view. If "By Student" you can select the student you want to view. To take attendance for a new day, tap "New date" and select the date for the attendance. The attendance letters displayed on this page are created on the attendance label page. To view or assign a note for a given attendance record just tap the corresponding note icon form the right side of the form.

Summary

The gradebook summary displays grade averages for all students. The default view "Student" shows the selected student's grade averages by assignment category. The "Category" view shows all student averages by the selected assignment category. By default this view is sorted by student name, checking the "Sort Avg" checkbox will sort the display by average instead. Down the left side of the display is the student's class ranking.

Labels

This preferences page lets you set the labels on the main gradebook page.

Grade Labels

***SCREENSHOT NEEDS TO BE UPDATED*** This preferences page lets you set the grade letter abbreviations you want to use either in place of numeric grades or as descriptive aids to numeric grades. Numeric grades are the default with a setting for the "#Keys" on this form of 0. If you want to indicate a grading scale to augment the numeric grades then set the #Keys to the number of divisions in the desired grading scale. This will show a number of fields to be completed for each grade division: A division abbreviation, a division description, and a division threshold percentage. You should enter your divisions in either highest to lowest order or lowest to highest order, TAP will figure out which based on the threshold values you assign. For example, for a traditional US grading system, you could enter:

Abbrev Desc Threshold

A Excellent 90

B Above average 80

C Average 80

D Below average 70

F Failing 60

You can also select how you want grade selection to be made, either Numeric, List, or Button. The Button setting works well for a small number of grade divisions (5 or less), while List works for larger numbers of divisions. Typically, you'll set this to Numeric to just enter the actual points earned on an assignment.

Attendance Labels

This preferences page lets you set the attendance letter abbreviations you want to use. Simply set the number of attendance selections ("#Keys") you want to use then set each attendance abbreviation (single character) and corresponding description for up to 10 attendance labels. The default settings for a new gradebook are 4 keys of P (Present), E (Excused absence), U (Unexcused absence) and T (Tardy).

Class labels

Using this preferences form is completely optional as none of the data set here is used within the TAP application, it is strictly for your convenience.

Notes

Notes can be entered from many places within TAP. You can attach a note to students, assignments, grades, and attendance. Only one note can be attached to any of these items but each note allows up to 32k of text, so you can track just about as much as you'd ever want to for each note.

Java CSV Application

A java desktop application is under development to mirror all of TAP's functionality. While it is being developed, you can use this simple java application to create text files from your gradebook and attendance data, ready to be imported into a spreadsheet application like AppleWorks or Microsoft Excel. Just click the "Open Palm File" to select the pdb file to load then click "Make CSV" to create the text files. If you're using AppleWorks 6, set the "Line Endings" to "Mac (cr)". For Excel on Windows, use "Windows" and for Excel on Unix use "Unix". When you click on "Make CSV" you will be prompted for the file to save the gradebook to as well as for the attendance records. After you import these files into your spreadsheet you can print or manipulate the data as required. To launch the java app, just double click on "tap.jar".

Backup notes

Given the complexity of an application like TAP, it's highly recommended that you make frequent backups of your TAP database pdb files. TAP creates all it's PalmOS database files with the automatic backup indicator set - this means that each time you hotsync your gradebook files will be backed up to your desktop automatically. However, the current Palm Desktop only keeps one backup, we suggest that you frequently "backup the backup" to protect your data. This way if something dire should happen you can restore your data successfully.