The export and import functions of the EIEP allow you to save student records, painlessly update your version of the IEP system, and exchange student records with other educators and service providers or and transport IEPs back and forth between home and school. The exported files can be moved on a floppy disk or other removable media, or can be e-mailed them to others or to yourself, as attachments.
Instructions for exporting student records can be found on pages 5-9 of the Visual Step-by-Step Guide for the EIEP. There are links for downloading the Guide on the www.iowa-iep.org home page. To view the Guide, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader or another application that allows you to read PDFs. If you do not have such an application, there are also links to download the Reader on the www.iowa-iep.org home page.
Once you have exported your files, you will have a set of five text files that hold the information contained in all the students whose records you chose to export from the student list. The five files are:
ExpCust.Txt
ExpGoals.Txt
ExpIEPs.Txt
ExpServ.Txt
ExpStnts.Txt
All five files are needed if you intend to save the records as a backup, carry or e-mail the records home, or share the records with another educator or service provider. How you handle and store the files is a matter of personal preference, but the following suggestions may prove helpful.
Immediately after exporting the student records, go into the Iowa IEP folder and make a new folder for storing the records. Since you cannot re-name any of the five exported text files without having problems importing them back into the EIEP system, putting the exported files into a separate folder is the best way to make sure you don't accidentally over-write the files the next time you export or import text files into the "Iowa IEP" folder. Move the five text files into the new folder, and give the new folder a name that makes sense to you and that reflects its contents, such as "StudentsAll021015", with "O21015" being a six-character way to add the date to the name ("02" is the year, "10" the month, and "15" the day). One advantage of including the date in the folder name is that it reduces the likelihood of confusion among folders. Another advantage of using this method of including the date is that when the folders are viewed in alphabetical order, the dates are also in order, with the oldest being first. If you have only exported the records for one student, the folder could be named something like "SusieSmith021008". If you are sharing the records with someone else, you might want to include your own last name or first name or first-inital-last-name in the folder name (e.g., "SSmith021008TJames). See the notes on importing for additional suggestions**.
Backing up student records
To back up your student records, you can simply choose "select all" when you export a set of student files. Put them into a folder, as described above, put them in a location on your hard drive that you wish to use for backup, and store a copy of them on floppy disk or other removable media, on the network server, or elsewhere. If you would have loss of data on your hard drive, you can then download the newest version of the EIEP and import the stored student records into the EIEP system. One major advantage to backing up this way is that it takes very little space (usually less than 100K), whereas copying the entire EIEP system as backup takes quite a bit of space (close to 10MB, which is 10,000K, or 100 times the space required to store the exported text files alone).
Sharing student records with other educators and service providers,
or transporting them from one computer to another
If you plan to share records with another educator or service provider, you can then give the other person the entire folder rather than the set of five exported text files.
If you plan to send the folder and its enclosed text files to someone else or to yourself via e-mail, it is recommended that you first compress, stuff, or zip the files. There are applications that will do this, most of which are shareware, such as WinZip, DropStuff, or ZipIt. If you or your school district have purchased Stuffit Deluxe, it also will stuff the files. The reason this is a good idea is because some e-mail applications will take the contents of an attached text file and send them as an enclosure, with the text in the body of the message, rather than a separate attached document. This is not a format that you can use to import the information into the EIEP system. The person receiving the files will need a means of expanding the files, and the decompression applications are more likely to be available as freeware. However, it might be best to find out what application(s) they have available, to be sure the person can open the compressed files upon receipt. One way to be sure is to stuff the files as a self-extracting archive (".sea"), which does not require any application for decompressing. Your compression software may or may not provide this type of option.
When you import the files, it is probably best to put the entire folder you have created into your "Iowa IEP folder". There should be no other text files out loose in the Iowa IEP folder when you get ready to do this. Then launch the "Iowa IEP" application, go to the "other options" menu from the "main menu", and click on "import". If there is no text file in the folder named "ExpStnts.Txt", the EIEP will ask you where to find the file. You can then use the menu to navigate to the appropriate folder, and click on the "ExpStnts.Txt" in the correct folder. If there is a set of text files in the "Iowa IEP folder", that is the set of records that the EIEP will automatically import, without asking you the question.
There is more information on importing in the Visual Step-by-Step Guide, on pages 9-11.
**If you are carrying files home to work on them, or exporting files on more than one student that you or someone else plan to work on and then export again, there might be less cause for confusion if the students are exported one by one, each set of records being put into a separate folder with the student name and other identifying information before the next student's records are exported. Then you will have the option at the time the import is performed of choosing to view only the newly imported single student, and you can go directly to that imported record and change the student name in some way that clearly identifies it as the new import, such as by adding the date and/or the service provider's name to the end of the student's last name. (For example, "Smith021015TJames" could be Susie's last name, for the time being). The student name can then be changed back after you have deleted the old copy of the student's record or exported the revised IEP to send back to school or to the service provider who sent it to you. If deleting out-of-date student records gives you the heebie-jeebies, then you will definitely need to have a strategy for identifying the old vs. the new set of student records, or you will court the disaster of working in several copies of the records at once and not knowing which is the newest copy.
