Teacher Tools: GradebooksNovember 22, 1999
Second in a series on computer tools for teachers.Every six to nine weeks teachers face one of their less
favorite tasks -- grades. If they're the diligent sort,
they've spent every evening of the grading period carefully
recording and averaging their students' scores. For the rest
of us party animals, grades mean at least a near
"all-nighter" of entering scores and marking report
cards. Fortunately, there are lots of very good software titles
that can speed the task of recording and averaging grades.
Used well, they can even help the dedicated teacher in
analyzing scores and improving instruction. Once you get
over your initial fear of losing your "gradebook," an
unforgivable sin in the education world, computer gradebooks
are really a blast. Careful backups and/or hard copies
(paper printouts) aren't a bad idea either! I grabbed a basic list of gradebooks from the Pure Mac
Software Teaching
Aids page and found a few other titles on ZDNet and
elsewhere. While at ZDNet, I did a similar search on the
Windows side and was surprised to see that there was near
parity in the number of offerings in gradebooks for both Mac
and Windows. Not surprisingly, many of the programs below
are cross-platform. Each of these programs has its own learning curve. I've
only used one of them extensively, but have taken a good
peek at all the rest and checked for compatibility under
System 9. (If they flunked the System 9 test, I omitted them
from this column.) For organization (and possibly
impartiality), I've listed the gradebook programs I've found
in order from freewares to the most expensive and in
alphabetical order within that organization. If you're
searching for a computer gradebook, I think you'll be able
to find one that suits your needs and budget from the
listing below. Freeware The venerable Eagle
Gradebook (287K) is a Macintosh-only freeware offering
by Rex Evans. It functions well on 68K and PowerPC Macs. The
author chose a spreadsheet appearance to mimic the
appearance of a traditional paper gradebook. While not
updated since 1996, I couldn't make the Eagle crash under
Mac OS 9 and the author states the program was targeted to
work on a Mac LC under OS 6.0.5 or later! ZDNet didn't like
it much in their review,
but I found it about average for gradebooks. First
Class Gradebook 1.5b5 (1950K) from First
Class Systems weighs in as a very attractive PowerPC or
68K offering. Built upon a relational database engine for
flexibility and speed, it also carries a database type
learning curve! The documentation is provided in a
well-organized and thorough PDF document, along with a good
tutorial. This one won't fit on a floppy disk for
portability, but it will do everything for you except brush
your teeth, once you figure it all out. Teacher's
Aide (84K) by Ryan Koopmans is another older, but still
functional Mac-only gradebook. The documentation is limited.
As the Read Me says, "Open the sample class and play around
with it for a rough idea of how the program works." Than'l Interactive
Design offers theGRADER
(1104K). This PowerPC only application is designed to be
simple and quick, but still store student information,
comments, assignments, and calculate percentages and assign
letter grades for an entire class throughout a course. I'm
so used to the spreadsheet format of electronic gradebooks
that I found theGrader difficult to use, but I think that
was just me! I also couldn't find a raw score setting or
view all students command in the application. The Grader's
strength is its interface window that doesn't overwhelm
those who'd prefer spreadsheets stay in the bean counter's
domain. Get out your checkbook or "the plastic!" Gradekeeper by
Daniel Ethier is a cross-platform spreadsheet type program.
The $20 shareware presents a standard spreadsheet view of a
gradebook that seems to perform adequately under System 9.0.
It's feature set is comparable to other gradebook offerings,
and it also offers a unique export function that creates an
HTML document of the gradebook. Both the Mac
(533K) and Windows
(479K) versions were quick downloads from Daniel's site.
Gradekeeper is accompanied by excellent documentation. Gradebook
Plus is one of the oldest and best known programs
around. I've used an older version (circa 1992!) of it for
years. It's the only computer gradebook I've seriously tried
for any length of time. I usually keep my gradebook files on
a zip disk and may enter grades at home on my beige G3, or
at school on my 7500/G3. I've been known to hook an external
zip to a Mac SE running System 7.0.1 and enter grades.
Gradebook Plus is available in both Macintosh
(402K) and Windows
(912K). The Mac version is compatible back through System
6.0.2! While the individual price of $64.95 may seem a bit
steep, the building version license is priced at a very
reasonable $229.95, with a discount available for
cross-platform site licensing as well. Misty City
Software's Grade Machine offers a lot of features and a
clean, easy-to-use interface. It should, as it weighs in at
a hefty $79 single user license or a $109 cross-platform
user license. Site license pricing is not posted on the
Misty City site. One of Grade Machines strengths is its
ability to report out its data to the Misty City sister
product, Grade View. Unfortunately, Grade View is offered
only for the Windows platform. Demos of Grade Machine are
available in both Mac
(3572K) and Windows
(2174K) versions. Making
the Grade by Jay
Klein Productions offers lots of bells and whistles to
the usual spreadsheet type of gradebook, including student
birthdays, calendar functions, and a really deluxe seating
chart. Demos are available for both Macintosh
(1 MB) and Windows
(2.1 MB). I had a devil of a time finding a price and a
place to order the full version until I check the included
MtG Product Brochure. Full versions run $99.95 with
discounts available for multiple copies. Of all of the offerings, only the Eagle GradeBook,
Gradebook Plus, Gradekeeper, and Teachers Aid are trim
enough to fit on a floppy. Of the eight gradebooks listed,
all still run under System 9.0 and will reliably perform the
basic function of calculating grade averages. Having said
that, I found myself appreciating my already-paid-for older
version of Gradebook Plus all the more. It's like a old
shoe. It fits and it's comfortable. If I didn't have an electronic gradebook already, I think
I'd have to make First Class Gradebook my starting point in
any search for an electronic gradebook. There is a
substantial learning curve involved, but as one
reviewer stated, "Two terms come to mind when describing
First Class Gradebook; Unlimited and bulletproof." And I
find a third term, "free," pretty hard to beat.
Help!In the next few weeks I'll be doing a column devoted
exclusively to "cheap or free" educational software. Got an
idea? Send it to me,
please! I can't guarantee I'll use them all, but will give
them a peek. New Roger Clary has released a new $10 shareware title,
Math
Wizard. My students and I got an early peek at this one,
doing some last minute testing for Roger just before its
November 14 release. I told Roger that my initial reaction
to the new math game wasn't all that positive. It just
didn't turn me on -- until my sixth graders kept asking when
we were going to test the program, again and again. So much
for my evaluation. Math Wizard presents four different areas of math
practice. Once I got over my initial software snobbery, I
found "What's Next?' to be excellent practice for the type
of items students frequently find on standardized tests.
It's definitely worth a download
(1419K) and test drive. I think I'll buy it. Oops! We had some major problems last week with the PDF
document links in the column Teacher
Tools 1: AppleWorks. Those problems have been resolved
and the links all should work well now. Webmaster Dan Knight
has also been kind enough to change View
from the Classroom to a larger size type so the author
can read his own stuff with his 50+ year-old-eyes! Thanks,
Dan! - [You're welcome. Steve helped me remember that
we're an aging population, just as my eye doctor reminded
me at my last checkup that bifocals aren't too many years
in the future. I'm slowly converting the entire Low End
Mac site to a slightly larger type size than I used to
use. dk]
Backup columns abound: I very briefly mentioned backups or hard copy backups
earlier in this column. I'm going to repeat myself on that
one, as I'm a survivor of having my electronic grade book go
down in a puff of uncorrectible disk corruption. When I lost
my gradebook, I was able to rebuild my grades from my lesson
plan book. which doubles as a temporary grade book until I
enter grades into the gradebook app, and from paper
printouts. As to backing up, Charles Moore's Backup
Basics, that appeared here on Low End last week, has
some valuable information on the subject. Dave Merten at
About.com's Focus
on Mac Support has a couple of articles on backups and
some of his recent, less-than-enjoyable experiences with
data loss. If that doesn't quench your thirst for backup
info, I did a couple of pieces last summer on the subject,
The
End is Near: Backup Now! and Orbs,
Storage, and a Legacy CD. You may think the three of us
all shared copy when reading the columns, but we didn't.
It's just that old bug-a-boo that data loss occurs to
everyone from time to time. What? No Rant? I know reading one a column like the one above might put
some of my readers into a near-diabetic coma from its
sweetness. For balance, I'll also add that the folks who
program commercial teacher gradebooks could use a course or
two in basic HTML design for their web sites. While a couple
of the freewares have no web site and you must rely on
Info-Mac or ZDNet descriptions, the shareware and other
freeware sites effectively impart a good idea of what their
product is and does. In stark contrast, the more expensive
commercial products have the most poorly designed and
executed web sites I've come across in any subject grouping
since I've been writing a web column. Finding the basic
product or demo download, registration or ordering
information, or even a minimal description of the product
required considerable effort. When an individual or company
asks $60-$100 for its product, I think the user deserves at
least a minimally informative and user-friendly web
site. Wow! If you haven't been there yet and have any curiosity at
all about the coming Mac OS X release, click your way over
to Mac OS Rumors Developer
Preview Gallery. Hurry! You need to get there before
Apple Legal does:-(. Send your feedback to Steve
Wood Recent Views From the ClassroomRecent Editorials at Low End Mac- Egg on my face, Dan Knight,
Low End Mac, 1/7. I rate my hardware predictions. At least I was
right about "something unexpected" and Steve Jobs not
leaving.
- The New Apple, Dan
Knight, Mac Musings, 1/6. By not showcasing hardware, Steve Jobs
is trying to teach us something important.
- Macworld 2000 Keynote
Address Special Report, Mac News Today, 1/5. We couldn't be
there, but caught it through the miracle of QuickTime 4.
- PowerBook 540c, a best buy,
Low End Mac, 1/4. The Blackbird series was Apple's best pre-PPC
machine, and the 540c the best value among them.
- The Best Macs Ever,
Dan Knight, Low End Mac, 1/3. "Apple has a tradition of great
computers...."
- New @ Low End Mac:
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