http://www.engrade.com/
It was easy to sign up and create an account. You can even watch a short demo, which was provided instructions on how to create your account and was very easy to follow.
Here is a snapshot of my gradebook, attendence and calendar.
Once you sign up you can create your classroom. It is broken into sections. The first section is class information. You can enter the class name, school year and grading period (by semester trimester etc). The next section is students. You can then put your students name and gave them an access number. This number is a secret and only you and the student will know the number. The next section is the grading scale. You can select how to grade students in your class. Engrade provides several common grading scales such as by 10 % A=90 B=80 or by 8% A= 92 higher B=83 and higher etc. You can also customize your own grading scale. The next section is the assignment categories. You can enter categories into which you can organize assignments such as tests, quizzes, homework, participation, etc. You can also chose if you want your assignments weighted. If you click no then the assignments are weighted equally. If you click yes then you can customize your own grading and percentages. You can also chose if you want to drop the lowest score. The last section is options. You can choose how you want to view grade book. You can sort by students, assignments, round student percentages and if you want to show students percentages in reports. You are now done creating your classroom. You can also create another classroom. Elementary teachers only have one classroom for those who teach middle school or high school you have multiple classrooms for each individual class.
When you are done creating your classroom you can then click on each individual classroom to input grades. You can then add assignments. Enter the assignments name; category and how many points are possible to receive. It is easy to fill in the grade. You can also enter if a student is excused from the assignment with an e or missing the assignment with an m. It is also very simple to change the grade if a student was absent you can just click the box and change the grade. You can even put if the assignment is extra credit and you can add points for students who did the assignment and it will not affect the grade of the students who did not do the assignment.
Some extra features of Engrade that a teacher might find beneficial are the: calendar, attendance, citizenship and student/ parent access. The calendar allows the teacher to post when assignments are due and what day a test is on. The teacher can also track a class’s attendance. The teacher can mark is a students is absent or late. Under the feature citizenship the teacher can comment and write a brief description of how the student is doing in class. The teacher can also communicate with parents and students. Students and parents have access to this software. Students can sign up and see their grades using the code the teacher provides for them. This is a nice feature for students and parents to see how they are doing in the course. They can see what assignments are missing, when tests are coming up etc. Parents can also monitor their child’s schoolwork, can see when they are absent, if they are late, if they are missing homework assignments etc. Some other options are the teacher can also print the gradebook, print individual student reports and you can even export this information into an excel spreadsheet.
Here are some suggestions for Engrade to make it easier for teachers. One suggestion is to view more assignments per page. You can only see eight grades a page. Engrade should make the columns smaller allowing more grades per page. Another suggestion is that when inputting assignments it would be nice if you see a calendar so you know what date the assignment was due.
Overall, I think Engrade is a great tool to use in the classroom. The software is free easy to use and easy to sign up for. It saves the teacher the hassle of having to figure out grades. Students and parents can access the software as well. When the report cards come out the parents can’t complain when they have the opportunity to see how their child is doing. Students can see grades so if there is a discrepancy say on a grade the student can show their work to you and you can easily fix their grade. Even for students who do not have access to the Internet at home you can print out the student report sheet for them to take home. The only downside to using this program is that you would have to be updating your gradebook everyday because parents and students can access it at any time.
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