Make a Shortcut to PowerTeacher Gradebook

If your school uses PowerSchool for a student information system like mine does, you are probably familiar with PowerTeacher Gradebook.  It is PowerSchool’s online Java-based grading program.  At first, coming from EasyGrade Pro, I didn’t really like it.  There were fewer features, especially keyboard shortcuts, and so on.  However, the ease of being able to access and update my grades from any internet-connected computer has won me over.   The advantages and disadvantages of using an online gradebook can certainly be argued, but one major annoyance with this particular one is that it’s difficult to access quickly.  Let’s say a student drops by after class and says,

“Mr. Chiou, I was looking at my grades online, and I think you entered the wrong grade for the Awesome Project for me.”

So, you check the student’s grade.  Usually, you have to:

1. Launch your web browser.
2. Go to your school’s PowerTeacher website.
3. Log in.
4. Click on “Gradebook” from the side menu.
5. Click on “Launch Gradebook”.

That’s not exactly the quickest of endeavors, especially during our time-limited days.  But fear not!  Let’s cut down the steps and make it much faster.  To do that, we’re going to put a shortcut to PowerTeacher Gradebook directly on your computer’s desktop.

First, go through steps 1-4 above.  Then, right-click on the “Launch Gradebook” button.  This brings up a menu.  Click “Save Target As…” (or in Firefox choose “Save Link As…”).

Save it onto your computer’s Desktop.  The file that you save is a JNLP file, but it will work just like a shortcut to the PowerTeacher Gradebook.

That’s it!  Now, whenever you want to launch your Gradebook, you just have to:

1. Double-click on the “launchGradeBook” icon on your Desktop.
2. Log in.

Your username and password should be the same as for the PowerTeacher website.  Launching the Gradebook this way is much faster and much more convenient at the same time.  Now, if only the actual grading was this fast…

* Just a quick note, though: in order for this to work, you need to have launched the gradebook the regular way at least once.  Also, if the online gradebook is ever updated to a newer version, you will have to go back and launch it the regular way (in order to download the new version) once again before your spiffy shortcut will work.

Advertisement