Spirit School Network version  by Harvey Brown

The network version of Spirit School looks the same but is set up to allow many simultaneous users.  You need this version if you have the Classroom Attendance or Classroom Marks modules, which allow many teachers to work with attendance and enter marks simultaneously.  A program called Spirit School Server runs all the time on one computer and servers out the data to the users.  There is no extra charge for the network version.

Spirit School is facing a crisis with Alberta Education's PASI initiative due to begin operation in 2013 or so.  I have decided not to take Spirit School into this new era because the security requirements are technically very difficult for this old programmer and the cost of implementing it in my development system far exceeds the revenue from my half dozen customers.   This obviously affects the value of the software and should anyone wish to begin using Spirit School in the next few years, prices are negotiable.

Classroom Attendance Module ($100) Teachers can access the attendance records really conveniently; they see the attendance record from the previous periods and just click on a student to move him from the "present" to the "absent" list. There is a letter code for each of 8 periods - P for present, L for late, etc so PPPP-???? indicates present for the morning, attendance not marked for the afternoon.

Classroom Marks Module ($100) Teachers can enter report card marks and comments straight into Spirit School from their classrooms over the school network.

Email harvey at softwarespirit.com (replace " at " with @) for more information.

Recent Changes

• Changes to Grade Level of Achievement from Alberta Education:  "A slight change in the file specifications has taken place this year. You will find that the Grade Level of Achievement Fields now contain three new codes; AT (At), AB (Above), BE (Below), the NA' if not available remains the same. These codes will replace the actual numeric codes (01-12) that were used in these three  fields in the past."  Changes have been made in Alberta Utilities to accomodate this change and you must download it before submitting your GLA file in June.  (Jan 14)
• Changes to Marks module and ClassMarks program so lettergrades can be entered directly. SServer changed as well. (April 23)
• Bug in lettergrades feature (June 23)
• Scheduling "swap" button did not work (June 26) (both SServer and SSchoolNET must be updated)
• version 1.2 update: new family data fields so an "updater" program must be used to update your student data.  Extra email fields, longer phone fields, new notes and some things for future use have been added.  The family data has been incorporated into the student data so you no longer have to "choose a family" for each new student.  Course data is now dispensed by SSServer for better multiple user performance. There is a charge for this update - your school name will not appear on your printouts until you purchase a new ID file for your school.   (August 22)
• Nasty bug in the server program - family data and course data did not save!  (Aug 27)
• Bug in scheduling and family printouts when doing the whole grade - it gets the family name wrong (Sept 1)
• Bug in SServer.exe - student data was not saving very often and was subject to serious data loss in a crash (Sept 7)
• Bug in displaying family email addresses - dad's address got replaced by mom's.  (Oct 21)
• Bug in lettergrades - setting got overwritten sometimes. New button on report card page to set all classes on the report card to lettergrades (Nov 26)

• Bug in handling student with a finished diploma exam course with no final mark - affects transcript, diploma list and cum display.  Credits were counted and the average on the cum display was incorrect.  Now the course is ignored in counts and calcs.  (Jan 14)
• Trouble with end-of-year Finalize and Promote.  Promote is still not perfect; it requires that both Spirit School and SSServer.exe be restarted after promote is done. (Aug 18)

• individual comments in ClassMarks sometimes did not save.  Made a change to update the stored comment every time a key is pressed in the text box.  Also added "save" and "load" buttons so teachers can save the comments locally on their computers in case there is a failue.  (Jan 30/2010)

Click on the underlined links just below.  Windows will ask you to choose a location on your hard drive or desktop. 

Download Update12, the program for updating your student data from version 1.1 to version 1.2 (August 22, 2008)
Run Update12setup.exe to unzip Update12.exe into your Spirit folder.  Make a backup of the Spirit folder just in case.  Run Update12 to change the format of your student data.  Update12.exe will not be needed again.

Download SSchoolNet and SServer (1020 kb, updated Aug 18, 2009)
To update, close SSchool and SSServer, run the downloaded program, SSchoolNet12.exe, click "unzip", "ok", "close".

Download ClassAtt (284 kb, updated Aug 22, 2008)
run the downloaded program, MakeClassAtt.exe, click "unzip", "OK", "close".

Download SKutilNet (332 kb, updated Aug 22, 2008)
run the downloaded program, MakeAButilNet11.exe, click "unzip", "OK", "close".