By Tess Whittet
Staff Writer
Mira Costa held two Aeries training courses for the office staff on March 10 in the Costa computer lab, where they received training on how to create and edit class schedules for the upcoming year and to manage attendance.
Aeries is a student data management software that provides customer service such as conferences, workshops and training. According to Costa guidance counselor Jennifer Wildenberg, Aeries will help with time management since it will take fewer buttons to get to a screen.
“I have heard that it’s a much easier program to use and a lot of processes which are harder in this system are going to be more streamline and easier in the new system, so I am looking forward to it,” Costa attendance clerk Shubee Gokarn said.
Counselors and administration attended the first two and half hour session in the morning. They focused on how to use Aeries to manage student class schedules, adding and transferring new students and teachers, editing student data and managing master schedules and bell schedules.
Aeries Student Information Site
“Aeries has been working with us so that we can fine tune the counseling portion of it, such as the things that we need to do every time a student walks in,” Wildenberg said.
The three hour second session took place in the afternoon. Office staff and administrators were taught by an Aeries educator on how to view school calendars, enroll new students, manage absence codes, verify and identify teachers who have not posted attendance and print attendance reports.
“It was nice to see what features they have and the comparative processes between what we have now and what we have to do in the new system,” Gokarn said.
Costa previously used Aeries until 2012, when the school switched to the Learning Management System Powerschool. According to Wildenberg, Costa was going to switch to a higher version of Aeries but didn’t know if the school had the bandwidth to go to that version, leading them to explore the LMS Powerschool instead.
“Fortunately we had Aeries here before so for a lot of people it will be like getting back on the bicycle again,” Costa principal Dr. Ben Dale said. “It will be very familiar to them and I think they will be pleased by all the updates made in the time that we have been away.”
Mira Costa was driven to switch back to Aeries from Powerschool because of the recent difficulties with student transcripts and it’s unreliability, according to Wildenberg. Students have been unable to see current and past grades and transcripts using Powerschool.
“It will blink on and off quite a bit and is never stable enough when you’re entering grades and it will mess them up so you will have to re-enter them,” chem teacher Dan Bartlett. “It doesn’t ever do what I want it to do and I don’t think the math interface is as precise as it should be.”
The Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Trustees approved the transition last year at their November meeting. Costa will be changing from Powerschool to Aeries on July first of 2017.
“I think it is easier to navigate for teachers and I believe that it is more reliable, the unreliability of powerschool was just unacceptable for us, we just couldn’t live with it,” Dr. Dale said.
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