Keep private notes about students

Providing a personalized learning path for every student means tracking more than just grades. Teachers have to understand their individual needs, interests, and circumstances, which can be difficult when dealing with 20+ students. This information can be recorded in a separate document or spreadsheet, but that can be cumbersome. Echo can help.

Use the following approach to keep private, course-long notes about each student in the Echo Gradebook.

At the beginning of the course, create a Journal activity (How do I add activities with the Course Editor?).

In the Journal description, ask students to post entries about their experience with the course on a regular basis.

Each time a student posts an entry, it is posted as a notification in the To-do List; you can open them from there or find them in the Gradebook.

1. The entries open in the Grade Editor/Activity Grader; you can keep notes about each student in the Private Note field in the bottom right hand corner of those screens.
2. Click Save Draft; you can return at any time to revise and add notes.

Teacher needs

• Where can I keep a running record of the information required to get students additional help or accelerated placement?
• Can I use Echo to keep student-specific notes for use in parent-teacher conferences?
• What if I need to track special accommodations for a student?

Tips

• By attaching your student notes to a course reflection journal, you can easily record your own answers or reactions to their needs.
• To ensure the privacy of the notes, collapse the Private Note field when opening the Journal activity in front of students.

Echo is constantly being improved based on the feedback from users and we strive to keep our documentation up to date.  If this document doesn’t match what you are seeing in Echo, please let us know.