Keeping the books in check!

Hello again! Once again I have been introduced to many new websites this week! As you can see in my last post I used Glogster for my last assignment. I looked around a few sights before I tried this one out. Needless to say, I LOVED it! I spent a few hours playing around with the site before I created the final poster. I had a lot of fun playing around with all the materials they give you to put on your piece of work. I will be using that again. So, I signed up for yet again another new website. I better start keeping track of all these things I am apart of before I forget! Engrade is a free website where you can create your own grade book. I don't have my own class so I had to create my own. I didn't know making fake names could be so hard! Anyway, I loved this website! I can't imagine the ones that you have to pay for, since this one is free and is so nice. I think one of the things that I was worried about going into teaching was keeping track of the grades. When I think of grading, I always think of my teachers having their books and pencils, doing the math averaging out the grades. I am not the best at math so knowing there is something out there that will help do the grades makes me very happy. There are many things I liked about this website. I like how you can say what weight of the grade each assignment will be. It is nice you have the option to create each category and say how much each is worth. Another thing I love is when you score the students it gives you the chance to put down if they are excused from the assignment or missed it. I also love how it gives you the class average for every assignment that you grade. It is also great that there is a calender and attendance option. It helps the organization of assignments, also lets you have everything in one place. Having something like this online is very helpful for a teacher because it gives them that much less paper to keep around. It seems like it would really help the desk clutter! I really could not think of a thing that I did not like about this website. That also may because I never had to go through having my own class and a grade book.
Some features that might be cool on this website are options for different color. It might be easier to be organized when you can group things in color, use different fonts, etc . It might make it more interesting. Another thing I would consider changing is the attendance. Maybe have a different setup so it is easier to read. When it is in columns like that all the days seem to collide together. I would probably have more suggestions if I had experience using grade books, but I do not. This website looks pretty amazing to me!
I feel like this software is good for teachers because it seems like it makes grading easy. This site is very easy to navigate, and when you put the students and their id numbers in, it is very simple to put the grades. How the software automatically averages out the grades for each assignment is very helpful for the teacher. This software is a really good organizational tool. Having a grade book, attendance sheet, and calender all in one website makes is easy for teachers. Instead of having more paperwork then they already have, this eliminates some of the clutter off of their desk!
One of the best features of this website is the parent/student access. It is nice that parents are able to go on the website and see how their child is doing. By monitoring their child's work, they are able to know what the student needs to work on at home, and they get to see if the student is doing their homework. I think it is also a great way of communication. It is a good way to keep in contact outside of class if the student has any questions. It also does not give the student excuse that they did not know they had homework due!
Overall, I loved this website. I can not even imagine the sites you have to pay for. They must have magical powers to out-d0 this one!