2019 Conference Sessions
- Course offerings may vary once all session registrations are received. Sessions with less than 10 registered, may not be offered.
- Please read descriptions carefully and check with your District PS Administrator if you are unsure if the course is applicable to you/your school.
- Wellness sessions will be limited to max 2/person.
- Course Criteria will give you information regarding experience level, grade level and type of session, if you aren't sure what your level is, click here.....please read carefully.
|
Course Description
|
Course Criteria
|
|
Creating Letters in PowerSchool
Have you ever wondered how to create or personalize Form Letters in PowerSchool so you can send professional looking letters to your parents or students that don't have you typing individual data onto each one? This class will be an introduction to Form Letters within PowerSchool. We will go through basic data codes and how PowerSchool data fields can be accessed and utilized to create custom looking letters. Examples: No Birth Certificate Letter and Customized Parent Portal Letters. This course will touch on basic html coding, but is not an html course. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes 
|
|
Digital Student Records in PASI
Digital Student Records is one of the biggest projects facing school divisions within the province. The challenges of scanning, uploading, managing and ultimately using these digital student records is imposing. Yet it is also super exciting when you truly start to realize what it allows a division to do! This session will give users a close look at...... - How digital student records work within PASI - How digital records can immediately start benefiting students and teachers - A close look at several of the different approaches which school staff can take as they start down the path of uploading records to PASI - A discussion about the "Integrated" vs the "Non Integrated" paths - what is similar, what is different, and how might the results of these decisions affect the end users - Tips and tricks to help schools manage their records in PASI once they have begun uploading them to PASI |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes 
|
|
Direct Connect (PASI) - Demographics and Student Enrolments
All Student Enrolment and Student Personal data elements are transferred to PASI directly from PowerSchool. This is a great opportunity to become familiar with the terminology associated with PASI functionality in PowerSchool and to work through some of your core alerts! Also going into PASI via PowerSchool to take a look at PASI school enrolments and audit trail. How to find the school that the student was at and who made changes in PASI. |
User Type: Staff responsible for PASI Student and Enrolment submissions.
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Hands On Session 
|
|
Direct Connect (PASI) - Courses and Marks Core Alerts
Student Course Enrolment and Marks are transferred to PASI directly from PowerSchool. This is a great opportunity to become familiar with the terminology associated with PASI mark functionality in PowerSchool and to work through some of your core alerts! and take a look at PASI via PowerSchool to see course enrolments and status. |
User Type: Senior High Course Mark Registrars only
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: Senior High (10-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Hands On Session |
|
Direct Connect (PASI) - Courses, Marks and Credentials
Learn the fields and the steps needed for courses and marks to go to Alberta Education directly from PowerSchool. This information session will help you walk through the entire process of BULK courses and marks upload and individual courses and marks upload to PASI via PowerSchool. Ask questions regarding your own data etc. and take a look at the new Credential tab (coming soon). |
User Type: Senior High Course Mark Registrars only
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: Senior High (10-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes 
|
|
Direct Connect (PASI) - DER Process - New Credentials
Learn the fields and the steps needed for the creation of Diploma Sittings and Student Diploma Registration to go to Alberta Education directly from PowerSchool. This information session will help you walk through the entire process of sittings and diploma exam registration upload to PASI via PowerSchool. Ask questions regarding your own data etc. |
User Type: Senior High Course Mark Registrars only
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: Senior High (10-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes 
|
|
DDE for 7-12 with Pivot Tables in Excel
For Junior and Sr High: Do you struggle to get the data you need from PowerSchool? Then this is the class for you - An Introduction to PowerSchool DDE Tables and Exporting. DDE allows users to locate, view, and export data using PowerSchool fields and tables. We will cover the most common tables in PowerSchool and discuss what is related to what. We will look at the most common ID’s needed to get the correct data from these tables and then we’ll explore a couple of ways to massage the data in Excel and create an exciting Pivot Table! NOTE: This will be a hands on session so you will need your own laptop with Excel (Version 2010 or newer) or Google Drive |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: Intermediate to Advanced School / Grade Level: Junior/Senior High (7-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Hands On Session 
|
|
Elementary Round Table & Best Practices Sharing
In this session we will have a round table discussion about what works, what doesn’t and how individual schools have handled various aspects of the elementary and middle school years. We will discuss and share trade secrets from experts and fellow PS users including copying master schedules, dependent sections, importing pictures, co-teaching, Quick exports, Student Field Value updates, option classes, timetabling, attendance taking and more! We will share stories of how we have learned to manage tasks, what works, what doesn’t. Bring your questions and tips & tricks to share with everyone. |
User Type: Elementary Admin Support
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: Elem & Junior High Levels (K-9) Session Length: 90 Minutes Interactive Sharing Session |
|
JH Round Table & Best Practices Sharing
In this session we will have a round table discussion about what works, what doesn’t and how individual schools have handled various aspects of the junior high and middle school years. We will discuss and share trade secrets from experts and fellow PS users including copying master schedules, dependant sections, importing pictures, co-teaching, Quick exports, Student Field Value updates, option classes, timetabling, attendance taking and more! We will share stories of how we have learned to manage tasks, what works, what doesn’t. Bring your questions and tips & tricks to share with everyone. |
User Type: Junior High/Middle School Admin Support
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: Junior High/ Middle School (6-9) Session Length: 90 Minutes Interactive Sharing Session |
|
High School Round Table & Best Practices Sharing
In this session we will have a round table discussion about what works, what doesn’t and how individual schools have handled various aspects of High School. We will discuss and share trade secrets from experts and fellow PS users including Flex scheduling, Header classes, attendance, co-teaching, concurrent enrollments, course and section set-up, AB ED/PASI requirements and more!We will share stories of how we have learned to manage tasks, what works, what doesn’t. Bring your questions and tips & tricks to share with everyone. |
User Type: Senior High Admin Support
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: Senior High (10-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Interactive Sharing Session |
|
Outreach Round Table & Best Practices Sharing
Outreach Schools offer a very special program that is sometimes difficult to manage. In this session we will share the practices from our outreach programs and compare what is working and brainstorm for things that are not. Please come prepared to share your experiences with a positive attitude on how to make things better. |
User Type: Outreach Admin Support
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: Outreach SSession Length: 90 Minutes Interactive Sharing Session |
|
Feel the Power of Enterprise Reporting
This session will provide an overview of PowerSchool’s Enterprise Reporting functionality. Learn how to leverage all of the amazing features of this reporting tool to save you and your co-workers hours of time. This session will review many of the built-in reports and touch on how to create your own enterprise reports. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Hands On Session 
|
|
Google Gmail/Calendar/Forms/Drive
In this session you will be trained in the basics of using Google Mail, Calendar, Forms and Drive. It will cover topics such as Inbox layout, composing, replying, attachments, and several other functions to assist in your day-to-day use of Google Mail. It will also cover Calendar creation, viewing, sharing, adding events, reminders and notifications, and several other functions to manage your schedule. Additionally, you will be trained in the basics of using Google Drive, Google Forms and Google Docs. This session is recommended for staff with minimal Google experience. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: Beginners School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Hands On Session 
|
|
Google Sheets
Are you new to Using Google Sheets, trying to switch from Excel to this new thing or you have heard that your District will be changing over and you want to know what this is all about? Here you will learn the basics of Google Sheets as well as some of the Google Sheets VERSUS Excel discussions that the "Pro's" are talking about. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: Beginners School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Hands On Session |
|
Helping You Help Your Parents - Troubleshooting Parent Portal
Helping parents understand Parent Portal can be difficult when you don’t get to see it yourself. In this session we will go through the functions and features of Parent Portal, helping you to understand the information being viewed by parents. We will also show you how to help parents resolve issues with creating an account, password issues and how to add or remove students from their account. A great session for tips to make it easier to help parents and to troubleshoot common problems. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes |
|
How to Survive your First Year(s) in a School Office
Are you brand new to your Administrative Assistant position? Do you sometimes feel like you have been thrown into the ringer, surrounded by Power School data, PASI alerts, CUM files, AB ED Audits, newsletters, websites, school fees and field trips? Have no fear! This interactive session for Admin Assistant Newbies is geared towards helping you focus on surviving your first year in the office - even when bombarded by teachers & staff, hurt & sickly children, angry/needy parents, snow days, and the worst of all evils... the jammed photocopier. Join 2 Administrative Assistants from big & busy Pre K-Grade 3 schools who managed to live to tell the tale of their first years behind the desks as they share their own tips, tricks, fails & for-warnings for making it through your own first years. Through humor and down to earth honesty embracing the lens of reality, this session will leave you feeling capable of not only surviving but thriving in your first years in the school office! |
User Type: New(ish) Users
Level of Experience: Beginners School / Grade Level: Elementary (K-6) Session Length: 90 Minutes 
|
|
PowerSchool for Newbies
Moving to a new SIS can be overwhelming. This session is designed for those who are recently new to PowerSchool. We will cover how to perform basic searches, understanding the menu’s, navigating between students, personalizing your PowerSchool, basic reports, etc. We will also discuss where to go for further help and resources, and many other topics for the new to PowerSchool user. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: Beginners School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes |
|
PS Tips and Tricks
Tips and tricks you may not have known or used before. We will share processes and How-tos that we use in our districts to make our life easier (at least in PS). Having guidelines and consistency helps keep our data integrity high and our errors and alerts low. We will show you some simple trouble shooting steps for basic PS and PT issues. If you have a Tip or Trick you would like to share with others, bring it along. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes |
|
PowerScheduler - Best Practices for Navigating the Scheduling Season
Do you help or would like to be more involved with PowerScheduler and preparing for the next year? Do you want more familiarity with the challenges and options available? Scheduling is a critical part of the school year that can take many different forms, and present many different challenges depending upon your school environment and scheduling goals. Join us for a thorough review of the various milestones that occur, starting as early as when you plan what courses you are offering next year and ending with student timetables in hand and ready to go. |
User Type: Junior and Senior High Admin Support
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes 
|
|
SCM Tools (Customization)
SCM Tools began as an initiative between Brian Wynder at Elk Island Catholic and David Lorenson at Red Deer Public, who initially used it as an easier way to store and manage grades. The goal of the SCM Tools is to simply obtain control and visibility over the grades stored and reported to PASI. It turns School Course Mark submission into a smooth workflow with contextual, relevant reporting and tactical edit functionality. Over time they came up with additional sets of useful reports until it became a fairly cohesive and powerful suite of reports and functions, all tailored towards enabling a district to have firm control over the status of course mark submissions. Brian will discuss the features and benefits of this wonderful customization. He will also be able to answer your questions if you are already familiar with this great addition to Alberta PowerSchool. Please check with your District PS Administrator to ensure your district has this customization available in your PS as it isn’t a traditional PowerSchool feature. |
User Type: Senior High Course Mark Registrars only
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: Senior High (10-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes |
|
Teacher Portal and Overview of PT Pro
Are your teachers using PowerTeacher Pro but you have no idea what that looks like? Are you still creating class lists and student reports for your teachers? In this session we will give you a look at what PowerTeacher Pro looks like from the admin side and show you the many tasks a teacher can do to make their job and yours a little easier. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes 
|
|
Where Oh Where Can They Be?
Being able to find and work with a group of students is an integral part of an Admin Support's job. In this session we will go through searching for groups using basic and advanced searches as well as discover some of the "hidden" searches with in PowerSchool. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: Beginner to Intermediate School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Hands On Session |
|
You've Got the Power...to use the Data
PowerSchool holds so much data and learning to export this data then turn it into something meaningful is very powerful! In this session PowerSchool data will be exported and brought into Excel to manipulate. You will leave this session being able to use many functions such as: Sort, Filter, use basic Formulas, Find/Replace, etc. This session is for those who have very limited or no experience in Excel. NOTE: This will be a hands on session so you will need your own laptop with Excel (Version 2010 or newer) |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: Beginners School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Hands On Session 
|
Wellness Sessions
|
Guided Walk Lake Trail
For those of you wanting to enjoy the fresh air and beauty of our great conference location, a guided walk along the lake is the session to choose! For a little extra wellness, a guided walking guided meditation will be added for the last 30 minutes or you may choose to explore on your own. What to bring: weather appropriate clothing and footwear, water bottle. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: All Fitness Levels. Session Length: 90 Minutes Wellness Session 
|
|
Meditation
In our fast paced world there are times when our mind, body and spirit become overloaded. In this session we will take time to discuss the benefits of Meditation as well as do a guided visualization and meditation. Spending time with yourself is a great way to offset some of the overload. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: All Levels. No experience required. Session Length: 60 Minutes Wellness Session |
|
Yoga Flow
Spend 75 minutes in a beautiful mountain setting in the blend of Yoga, Pilates and Tai Chi What to bring: yoga mat, water bottle and workout clothing. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: All Levels. No experience required. Session Length: 75 Minutes Wellness Session |
|
Zumba Gold
There are lots of ways to burn 800 calories...Zumba is just more fun! The Zumba Gold format uses very easy to follow, low impact dance moves and will have you smiling, shaking your booty and sweating to music from around the world while burning off some of that great food we have at the conference! Get your groove on and dance your stress away and let it move you! What to bring: water bottle, small towel and running shoes. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: All Fitness Levels. No experience (or coordination!) required Session Length: 75 Minutes Wellness Session |
|
Zumba Gold Toning
The Zumba Gold Toning format uses light weights to tone muscles and get your heart pumping! This 75 minute session you will smile, shake your booty and sweat to music from around the world. Specifically engaging muscles using Toning Sticks, this workout is a low impact/cardio session with lots of good stretching to finish off. What to bring: workout appropriate clothing, water bottle, small towel and running shoes Toning Sticks will be provided. Max 30 participants |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: All Fitness Levels. No experience (or coordination!) required Session Length: 75 Minutes Wellness Session |
Vendor Sessions
**Please check with your District PS Administrator to see if these are applicable to your district.
These sessions are geared toward those users that currently use the software.**
These sessions are geared toward those users that currently use the software.**
|
Intellimedia - Dossier
Dossier a powerful education management system that provides insight into student performance to help inform strategies to better meet unique needs of each student. Dossier Inclusive Education improves management and tracking of Individual Program/Education Plans resulting in significant time savings and effective collaboration of resources. Dossier Student Learner Profile (SLP) brings together a collection of literacy, numeracy and other assessments and benchmarks including provincial achievement tests (PAT) to provide a powerful view to the current performance of an individual student, as well as trends over time. SLP informs the practice of teachers working to support individual student learning based upon key indicators. Leverage Dossier to analyze key data such as enrollment, attendance, achievement and assessment against specific demographics and student characteristics. Improve reporting through multiple dashboards to enhance decision-making and planning processes. Dossier CRM provides access to integrated student data to identify students requiring support in coordination with a school’s collaborative response to intervention model. Conduct team meetings to identify and discuss the needs of multiple students, with all notes, actions and interventions determined then saved into individual student profiles. The module enables resources to collaborate and track student progress across the interventions employed. Workflows are supported through the ability to assign actions to team members including automated email notifications. |
User Type: All Users currently using Dossier
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Vendor Session |
|
Intellimedia - School Engage
SchoolEngage is all about cutting out paper and simplifying the exchange of information between home and the school. With a single login, SchoolEngage makes registrations, forms, events and payments easier for everyone. The flexibility of the system ensures each district can tailor it to support their processes to maximize ease of use for parents and reduce administrative burden for staff. |
User Type: All Users currently using SchoolEngage
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Vendor Session |
|
Official PowerSchool Update
Come hear all of the exciting news on what is happening at PowerSchool and all of the latest news on PowerSchool SIS. Some of this information is too secret to put in this session description, so you will need to attend live to hear it for yourself. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Vendor Session |
|
PowerSchool Community
A demonstration of PowerSchool Community for supporting your entire board - Mastery In Minutes, Distance Learning, Forums, extensive PS Knowledgebase, Enhancement Requests, etc. Learn how to become a PowerSchool Champion and gain knowledge and respect among your peers with the PowerSchool Role-based Certification Program. |
User Type: All Users
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Vendor Session |
|
PowerSchool Enrollment
Let’s face it if you are still using a paper enrollment process, your students’ guardians are tired of filling out paper registration/enrollment/re-enrollment/ annual update forms and your staff is tired of re-keying all of that information in to PowerSchool. It doesn’t have to be this way. Come to this session to learn about PowerSchool Enrollment. We will cover: Registration Dashboard - Explore the various tools, options, and functionalities. Workspace Basics - Using Tasks Explore the various Workspace Tasks available for your use. Get a sneak peek at the new self-service forms to help you streamline your enrollment operations. This session is for current customers of PowerSchool Enrollment as well as attendees looking for a solution to streamline enrollment. |
User Type: All Users currently using PowerSchool (Enrollment) Registration
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Vendor Session |
|
Rycor Online Forms
Learn about the new features and components that enhance Rycor Fee Management for you and your school, from improvements in Advanced Integrated Forms to the development of an easy-to-use Point-of-Sale system. These updates are focused on saving you and your staff time by streamlining the process of collecting, digitizing, and reporting information gathered from parents, as well as supplying an alternate, simplified method for collecting in-person payments during special events, such as at sporting events or shows. Come find out just how quick and easy it is to implement these for your school! |
User Type: All Users currently using Rycore Fees
Level of Experience: All Levels School / Grade Level: All School Levels (K-12) Session Length: 90 Minutes Vendor Session |
