ThinkWave Support

Here is where you adjust settings to customize ThinkWave for your school. If you ever need to make a global adjustment of any type, come here first.

General

Files

To see files uploaded by teachers or students, select "Files". To delete a file, select Delete on the right. Additional files space can be purchased at ThinkWave.com

Grade Levels

To add grade levels to your school (such as Kindergarden, 1st, 2nd) click the Grade Levels link. Then click the Add Grade Level button (in the orange box in the top left). Type in the name of the grade level and press Save.

To edit a grade level, click on the grade level in the left navigation column. Make your changes and Press Save.

If you would like to add a custom field to a grade level, for example, if you want to track PSAT scores for all 10th graders, click on 10th grade in the left navigation column. Then click on the "add" link to the right of the Custom Field header. Add PSAT Score as a custom field and press Save. To edit a custom field, click the name of the custom field and edit as necessry.

Groups

Here is where you add groups. The groups screen can be used to combine students into groups parallel to their class enrollment. Examples of groups can be as broad as "All Students", Freshmen and Juniors or as specific as Pacific Islander, Debate Team or ESL. Groups can be used to select only certain students for which to print out a report. Further, all of those groups can have custom fields where you can record data about students in a group. Custom fields will appear in both the Groups screen and in the Students screen. For example PSAT scores can be recorded for all Juniors (you make a Group "Juniors" and add a custom field "PSAT Score" to the group.) Groups can also be used to print out additional data fields on the report card. For example, the PSAT score can be printed on all Juniors' report cards.

To add a group:

1. Click the Add Group button on the left (the box surrounding the Add Group buttom is highlighted in orange).
2. Enter the name of the group.
3. Click Save.

Enrolled

To enroll a student into a group, click on the "enroll" link. Then check the box next to the names of the students in that group.

1. Any custom fields associated with that group are displayed in the student screen. Those custom fields can be used to store just about any type of record or additional demographic data.
2. Students' report cards can be customized to include custom field data from any group a student is part of. For example, if you want to include the batting average for every member of the Baseball Team group on their report card, enroll all the students in the baseball team into the Baseball Team group (after creating the Baseball Team group in the Groups tab and adding a custom field to the group called "Batting Average"). Then enter all the students' batting averages. This can be done either by going to the students screen and clicking on the students' names individually, or by clicking on the name of the custom field in the Groups tab and entering the data for the whole team there. Finally, to include the Batting Average on the report card, include the Baseball Team group when customizing the Report Card. It's that easy!
3. Another advantage of groups is that reports can be generated to include only students that are included in a certain group. You can then print out report cards for members of the Baseball Team only.

Delete a Group

To delete a group, click on the name of the Group. The click the Delete Group link. The "Delete Group" link is located to the left of the Save button at the bottom of the main window.

Custom Data Fields

A group can have Custom Fields associated with it. For example, the Baseball Team group can have custom fields called: Uniform Number, Position and Equipment Issued. To add a custom field:

1. Click the "add" link to right of the "Custom Data Fields for this Group" heading.
2. Enter the name of the custom field (for example "Position").
3. If you want the custom field to have pre-defined selections in a pull-down menu, check the "Create pull-down menu" box. If you want the custom field to have a free-form text box associated with it, leave the box unchecked.
4. To add a pull-down menu choice, click on the add link to the right of "Pull-down menu choices" For example, for the custon field Position, the following pull-down menus could be added: Pitcher, Infield and Outfield.
5. To enter data for a certain custom field either:
   1. Click on the name of the custom field in the Groups tab (you may have to click on the Group name first.) The Custom Field will then appear indented below that group.
   2. Select a student in the Students screen. The custom fields associated with groups that the student is in will appear. For example, if you click on a student who plays baseball, the custom fields Uniform Number, Position and Equipment Issued should appear. If the custom fields do not appear, ensure the student is enrolled in the Baseball Team group.

Delete a Custom Field

To delete a custom field, click on the name of the custom field in the Groups tab (you may have to click on the Group name first.) The Custom Field will then appear indented below that group. Select the custom field and then click on the "Delete Custom Field" link at the bottom left of the main window. The "Delete custom field" link is located to the left of the Save button at the bottom of the main window.

Maximum to Display

This sets the maximum number of student and classes to display in the left navigation column. The default number is 30 and the maximum is 50. You may want to adjust this setting if your computer monitor is larger or smaller than normal.

School Name & Address

To input or edit the school name, motto and address, click the School Name & Address link (the school logo is added in the Reports tab). Then customize the information as necessary. The customization settings are:

• Name: Input the school name here.
• Motto: Input the optional school motto here.
• Address: Input the school address here.

Schedule

Year

Every school must be associated with a year. Select the start and end dates and press Save. Note that a school year must be shorter than 370 days.

Terms & Subterms

Every school year must have at least one term, for example: First Semester. To add a term click the "add term" link to the right of the Terms & Subterms heading. A school can also have subterms, such as First Quarter, Second Quarter and Final Exam. To add a subterm click the "add subterm" link to the right of the Terms & Subterms heading. The term dates can overlap. As well, the subterm dates can overlap. Subterms are useful for reporting purposes and also if you want to calculate a Term grade from a combination of Subterm Grades. For example, the First Semester can be calculated as a combination of 40% First Quarter, 40% Second Quarter and 20% Final Exam (teachers would set up those percentages in their Gradebook | Grading Options screen). An example of just some of the term structures you can use is:

• Two Semesters, subdivided into Two Quarters.
• Two Semesters, subdivided into Two Quarters and Final Exam.
• Three Trimesters.
• Four Quarters.

To edit a term, click on the name of the term and adjust the name, start date, end date and press Save. To delete a term or subterm click the "delete" link to the right of the term or subterm name.

Periods

Your school must have at least one period defined. To add a period click the "add period" link to the right of the Periods heading. Enter the name of the period and the start and end time. The start and end times for a period are important if you calculate Average Daily Attendance by using the number of minutes a student is in school. Check the box if you want to take attendance for that period. If you only take attendance once a day you can select only one period during which to take attendance.

To edit a period, click on the name of the period and adjust the name, start date and end time and press Save. To delete a period click the "delete" link to the right of the period.

Day Schedules

Day Schedules are set to define the collection of periods (and associated times) that meet during the day. Typically, the Default Schedule includes all the periods you have defined with those periods keeping the default start and end times (although this arrangement is not required). You can then add other Day Schedules such as Minimum Day, for example. To add a Day Schedule, click the "add schedule" link to the right of the Day Schedule header. Type in the name of the new Day Schedule. For the Minimum Day you can eliminate certain periods by clicking on the "remove" link. You can also adjust the start and end times of the periods. The adjusted period start and end times you make here will only apply to that Day Schedule, not to the period overall.

You can also make "MWF" days with certain periods and "TuThu" days with other periods. You can then alternate them by scheduling them in the Monthly Calendars & Holidays setup area. To set that up:

• Create 5 "Day Schedules". Name them Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.
• Go to Monthly Calendars & Holidays. Mark Mondays as Monday Day Schedule, Tuesdays as Tuesday Day Schedule, etc. on the monthly calendars. You will need to click on every day in the calendar and change the schedule in the pulldown from the 'Default Schedule' to the Monday Day Schedule (or Tu, Wed as appropriate.)
• Create a MWF period. Then add the MWF period to the Monday, Wednesday and Friday Day Schedules.
• Create a TuThu period. Then add the TuThu period to the Tuesday and Thursday Day Schedules.
• Then, in the Classes tab, choose MWF period for the MWF classes, and TuThu period for the TuThu classes. Then, attendance will only appear for the correct days.

Days of Week

You can add and remove days of the weeks as appropriate for your school. Click the "remove" link to eliminate a weekday from your schedule. Click the "add" link to add a weekday to your schedule.

Monthly Calendars & Holidays

To assign certain Day Schedules to certain days, click the "month/year" link. The click on a date in the calendar. Assign the desired Day Schedule to that date. Please note that by default the Default Schedule is automatically assigned to each school day. So you don't need to assign a schedule to every day if they all use the Default Schedule.

To assign holidays where school does not meet during the term, click the "month/year" link. Then click on a date in the calendar and mark it as a holiday.

Grading

School's Final Grade Scales

School's Final Grade Scales are the grades that appear on your reports cards (unless you choose "percent" in the Classes tab as the Final Grade Scale.) You can use the traditional A, B, C, D and F grades or you can make your own system, such as 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, or Pass / Fail. You can add as many different grade scales as you like. For example, you can have A through F for your high school students, and O, S, and U for your elementary students.

To edit the grades, click on the grade itself, make an edit and click Save, or delete it.

To create a new Grade Scale, click "add grading scale". To add a Grade Type within that new scale, click the "add grade" link on the bottom of the new scale. Then assign the following parameters:

1. Grade: Enter the grade here as it should appear on the report card. By default the grades are A+, A, A-, B, etc., but you can use almost any type of symbol.
2. Description: Enter the (optional) description of the grade. For example, the description for "A+" could be "Excellent".
3. Calculated: Check the box if the grade is calculated. If the grade is assigned, uncheck the box.
4. Minimum percent: Enter the minimum percent a student needs to get this grade (the maximum grade will be set automatically by any other grades you create, or by 100%).
5. Earns credits: Check this box if getting this grade will give students credits for taking the class. For "A" this would be checked, for "F" probably unchecked - few schools give credits (credits) for failing a class.
6. Include in GPA: If unchecked, the class would be "excused" from GPA calculations (0 out of 0 possible.)
7. GPA value: Define the value of this grade for GPA calculations (e.g. A = 4.0, B+ = 3.3, etc.)
8. Honors GPA value: Define the value of this grade for GPA calculations (e.g. A = 5.0, B+ = 4.3, etc.) for Honors classes. Honors GPA values are typically higher than for normal classes.

Additional Options:

1. Default Final Grade Type for New Classes: Choose the final grade scale that is selected by default when you create a new class. Please note that you can change the final grade scale after you create the class, so you're not locked in to this default value.
2. Rounding Places for Final Grades: To round percent grades to whole numbers, tenths, or hundreths, enter 0, 1, or 2.

Graded Skills

Graded skills are additional parameters upon which a class can be graded. For example, if you teach an elementary Math class, and you want to give an overall grade for Math, but also want to grade Math on additional paramters such as: Multiplication, Division, and Word Problems, create three Graded Skills called: Multiplication, Division, and Word Problems. Then go to the classes screen and assign those three Graded Skills to your Math class. The overall grade for Math will be calculated from all the class assignments, but you would manually assign the Graded Skill grades for Multiplication, Division, and Word Problems. The final grades for Math and all its associated Graded Skills will appear on the report card for an elementary style report card.

Attendance

Marks

You can add and remove attendance types. By default, the attendance type are: Absent, Absent Excused, Tardy, and Tardy Excused. To add an attendance type:

• Click the "Add Attendance Mark" button in the top left orange rectangle.
• Name: Enter the name of the attendance type.
• Excused: Check the box if this attendance type is considered excused.
• Record minutes: Check the box if you need to record minutes. For example, recording the minutes that a student is tardy for a period.
• Optional Code: Enter a shortened code here. For example, for Absent Excused the Optional Code can be AE.
• Attendance Type: To calculate Daily Attendance and to properly display in reports, all attendance types must fit into one of four categories:
  • Present
  • Absent
  • Tardy
  • Early departure

Daily Calculations

Most schools will use the default Day Attendance calculation. However, if your school uses half-day attendance or another day attendance category, those categories can be set up as well. To add a half-day attendance mark, click on "Add Day Attendance Calculation" in the upper left orange reactangle. Choose the name (for example Afternoon Attendance), the possible results, and the time span for that new Day Attendance Calculation. Then click "Save", and add the relevant rules. The possible settings are:

• Name: Enter the name of the day attendance calculation. Some examples are: Day (default for most schools), or Morning Attendance and Afternoon Attendance.
• Possible results: Check the boxes for the possible attendance results. To add more possible results, click on Setup | Marks to add (or delete) marks.
• Time span for calculation: Possible settings are:
  • The entire day: Attendance category applies for the full day.
  • The periods: If attendance category covers only certain periods (for example Morning Attendance could cover only First, Second and Third periods.)
  • Classes with a start time between: Designate the time period that would include the start times of classes included for the attendance calculation. For example, Morning Attendance can include periods that start from 8:00 to 11:30.
• Rules to calculate mark: The day calculation is determined by a set of rules (if there are no rules set, teacher marks for individual classes would not convert to a day mark.) The day calculation is determined by the first matching rule from the top down (if two rules match, the top one wins.) If the rules are in the improper order, delete them, and enter them in the proper order (there is no option to move them up or down.)
• The default daily calculation rules are below (if necessary, change them to fit your requirements):
  • Rule 1: To earn a(n) Tardy Excused mark, more (or equal) than 1 mark(s) must be a(n) Tardy Excused.
  • Rule 2: To earn a(n) Absent Excused mark, more (or equal) than 1 mark(s) must be a(n) Absent Excused.
  • Rule 3: To earn a(n) Tardy mark, more (or equal) than 1 mark(s) must be a(n) Tardy.
  • Rule 4: To earn a(n) Absent mark, more (or equal) than 1 mark(s) must be a(n) Absent.
• Rules can be determined by three parameters:
  • Number of marks: This is the setting in the default rules. For example, if you want teachers to take attendance during one period of the day, and have that one mark determine the student's status for the whole day, use the default rule above. Alternately, if attendance is taken in multiple periods during the day, you can set the day attendance to be determined by 2, 3 or more marks per day.
  • Percent of marks: If a student is enrolled in six periods of the day, and four teachers mark a student absent, then the student would get an absent (if this setting is 50% of marks). If the setting was 80% of marks, then the student's day value would be Present.
  • Percent of time: ThinkWave can determine the percentage of time a student was in school. Minutes tardy are taken into account, and subtracted from the minutes present. If the school requires a student to be in class 50% of the day to be considered present, set the rules to: "more or equal to 50% of the time".

Staff/Admin Precedence

Since both teachers (staff) and administrators have the ability to enter attendance, there must be a priority for whose marks take precedence for ADA calculations and for reports. The possible settings are:

1. Both Admin and Staff values; Admin takes precedence: This is the default setting. In this setting teachers' attendance is counted unless an administrator has overriden it. For example, if a student is marked Absent by a teacher, but subsequently the student is marked Absent Excused by an administrastor, Absent Excused is the value considered correct for the ADA calculation and reports.
2. Both Admin and Staff values; staff takes precedence: In this setting, the teachers' values take precedence. For example, if a student is marked Absent by a teacher, but subsequently is marked Absent Excused by an administrastor, Absent would still be the value considered correct for the ADA calculation and reports. However, if there is no teacher mark at all, but there is an administrator mark, the administrator's mark does count in that case.
3. Admin only: In this case only the administrator's marks are counted. The teacher marks are either not entered at all by teachers, or if the marks are entered by teachers, the marks are "for information purposes only." In that case the administrator would need to repeat all the teachers' marks by entering them in the Administrator Mark section.
4. Staff only: In this case only the teachers' marks are counted. The admin marks are either not entered at all by administrators, or if the marks are entered, the marks are "for information purposes only." In that case the teachers would need to repeat all the administrator marks by entering them in the Teacher Mark section of their gradebook.

Account

Purchase Subscription

To purchase a subscription click here.

School Owner Functions

Lock & Unlock

To lock a year so no changes can occur, put a check next to "Lock" and click "Save". Locking a year may be helpful to prevent changes to previous years' data.

Additional Administrators

If you would like to give access to ThinkWave 3.0 to additional administrators, click the Additional Administrators link and then click "Add". Then provide the Access Code to the additional administrator. Since there is no report with the Additional Administrator Access Code, you would need to provide the Access Code manually. Then, if the Additional Administrator already has a ThinkWave 3.0 account, they can add the view by going to their Dashboard tab and clicking on "Link an Additional Account". If they do not have a ThinkWave 3.0 account they should:

1. Go to ThinkWave.com and click on "Login" and then: First Time: Start Here.
2. Create a Login and Password.
3. Enter the four-part, sixteen digit Access Code to connect to their administrator data.

Manage Online Access

To allow or deny access online for teachers, student and parents, check or uncheck the appropriate boxes. This function may be useful if you want to rollover data to start a new school year before the end of the current school year and you would like to limit access until the setup for the new year is done.

Rollover

The rollover is used to:

• Roll back data to previous years to input historical transcript data.
• Roll forward data to start a new year.

During rollover:

• Students are moved to either the previous grade level or the next grade level (depending if data is being rolled backward or forward)
• Courses, Groups and Custom Fields can be copied.
• Many settings are copied.

To complete a rollover:

• Click "Rollover". Then choose a rollover direction. Choose backward to enter historical transcript data. Choose forward to start a new year. Note: You do not need to wait until the end of a school year to roll backward or forward.
• Edit the names and dates of the new terms. To edit them, click on the name of the year or term. Then change the name of the term or adjust the start and end dates of the term and click "Save".
• Select the grade level students should be copied to. If a student is graduating, select "Do not copy student".
• Select the custom fields to copy. Note that custom field data that only applies to specific grade levels is not copied since typically students move up or down a grade level during rollover.
• Click "Finalize". Browse through the newly created year to ensure data was correctly copied. Then certify the rollover to open the new year for data entry. If there are errors, cancel the rollover and redo the rollover again.

Import & Export

Import Students

To import students prepare a text file with student names and associated demographic information. Each column of information should be separated by tabs, semicolons, colons or commas. Delete the top row containing the names of the data fields. Then select the grade level you want the students to import into. If you want to designate the grade level later, select "Do not assign grade level". Choose the data delimiter you are using, and paste your student data into the Import Data box. Click "Save".

Use the pulldown selectors to choose the data fields to import the columns into. If after clicking "Save" there are errors in the data file, you can scroll down to the Import Text box at the bottom of the page and correct the errors inside the box. There is no need to click "Back" in the browser to open the previous page. Click "Save" again, and if the data is correct, click "Finalize Import".

Export Attendance Marks

To export a text file that includes all attendance taken during the whole year, click the Export Attendance Marks link. The export file will include a list of all attendance organized by the following columns of data: Date, Class, Student, By (attendance taken by), Value (attendance value), Minutes (for tardies) and Comment.

Export Grades

To export a text file that includes all grades given during the whole year, click the Grade Archive link. The export file will include a list of all grades organized by the following columns of data: Class, Term, Student, By (grade given by), Skill, Percent, Grade and Comment.

Export Custom Field Data

To export a text file that includes all custom field data collected during the whole year, click the Export Custom Field Data link. The export file will include a list of all custom field data organized by the following columns of data: Group, Custom Field, Student and Value (data in that custom field).

Videos

Custom Fields for All Students

Custom Fields for One Grade Level

Custom Fields for a Group of Students

Custom Fields on Report Cards

Edit Year, Term & Subterms

Edit Periods

Simple Schedules

A/B Schedules

MWF Schedules

Special Day Schedules

Monthly Calendar and Holidays

Enter Old Transcript Data

Rollover to New Year

Student and Parent Access

Teacher Access

Additional Administrators