Installing and Configuring Sunbird to download and view your student’s schedule and grades

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Overview

Mozilla Sunbird is a free program that will allow you to download and synchronize your student's courses, assignments and grades with the school district's student information system. Once you have downloaded your student's schedule/grades into Sunbird, it will automatically update your student's data every time that you open the program.

Technical Requirements

· If you are using a Macintosh computer, you don't need to install any additional software to use the calendar features of PowerSchool. Your Apple computer has a built-in program for downloading and synchronizing your students’ grades and assignments.

· If you are using a Windows computer, please follow these instructions to install Sunbird to download and view your students' schedules and grades. This system also requires that you use Mozilla Firefox as your web browser. You can find instructions for downloading and installing Firefox here:
http://www.firefox.com

For downloading your students’ grades to Sunbird, you must use Mozilla Firefox as your web browser. At the present time, downloading your students’ graded assignments into Sunbird does not work with Internet Explorer.

Step 1

Click this link to start the download the latest version of Sunbird: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/

When asked whether to save or run the file, choose run as shown in the following screen shot.

Step 2

When the welcome screen appears (shown below), click NEXT.

Step 3

On the license agreement screen (shown below), select the “I accept…” radio button and then click the “Next” button.

Step 4

On the Setup Type screen (shown below), select “Standard” and then click the “Next” button.

Step 5

After the program has finished installing, you will see the screen below. Click the “Finish” button.

Step 6

Now Sunbird will launch and you will see a screen similar to the screen shot below. You can click the red X in the upper right hand corner for now as we do not need to have Sunbird open at this point.

Step 7

When you login to PowerSchool (http://gcusd.powerschool.com) from Firefox (not Internet Explorer), you can now click on the "My Calendar" button at the top of the screen. You will see a screen like the one below listing your student's classes. There are two columns on this screen where you can download your student's calendars. One column contains ASSIGNMENTS ONLY and the other contains ASSIGNMENTS WITH SCORES AND GRADES.

Step 8

When you click on one of the "Subscribe" links in step 14, you will get a dialog box shown below. Click the "Open" button.

Step 9

The calendar will open in Sunbird and you will be able to see your students’ assignments and/or grades, depending on which type of calendar you downloaded. You will need to repeat steps 7 and 8 for each calendar that you want to keep synchronized in Sunbird.

Step 10

After you have imported all of your student's schedules into Sunbird, you will see the classes listed in the window on the left as in the screen shot below. On the calendar, you will see a list of assignments/tests and their due dates. You can double-click on each of the assignments to view your students’ grade for that assignment as shown in the screen shot below.

FINISHED!

Every time that you open Sunbird, your student’s courses and grades will be automatically updated.