Terminology

School Desk uses a handful of terms to structure your school. The most critical terminology is listed below.

School Year

All School Desk schedules exist in a school year. You get to define the start and stop of your school year. Whether you choose to run a more traditional school year with a summer off or run a school year all year long, School Desk gives you that control.

Grade Level

Each student is part of a single grade level in a school year. All courses are assigned to the grade level. If you have students that are learning at the same level, all material is updated once for the grade level instead of copying for each student.

Course

A grade level is made up of courses. Courses are whatever you want them to be. You may have courses like “Math” and “Literature.” School Desk doesn’t limit the kinds of courses you can create. Need “Cooking,” “Keyboarding,” or “Dance?” No problem.

Also, courses can be shared across grade levels. Do you have similarly aged students in different grades but sharing a subject like “Art?” School Desk handles that too.

Task

A task is the item that appears each day on your schedule for whatever courses run on that day. A task can be graded, or not.

Student

The student is the star of the show. Each of your students is enrolled in a grade level. The student has a schedule that is tailored to them and tracks individual progress.

Resource

Any materials related to a course are called resources. Resources are your textbooks, workbooks, multimedia, or any other content that you wish to track with a course’s history.