Grading Made Easy!

Teachers lead such busy lives, the last thing they want to do is sit down and manually figure out grades! That is why people have invented programs such as Engrade, which is an online gradebook. Overall, I found this program to be user friendly. I liked how easy it was to get started. Even though I teach, I made up a fake class for purposes of this assignment. First, I typed in the students' names and their ID numbers. Once I chose an assignment, the program gave me a choice of how I wanted to point value to be distrubuted. I decided to make all of my assignments out of 100%, but I like how you are given the option to do what ever point value you want to. This is great, especially for an elementary school setting where many of the assignments are not graded on a scale out of 100. I also thought it was great how the program automatically gives you an average for each student, plus an average for your whole class on that particular assignment. This program does not only do grades, but it gives you a calendar for assignment due dates, and there is a spot where a teacher can type in comments about a particular student. This makes it easier when report cards come around! Students are also able to see their progress on this site, which is always a positive. I believe students should never be left in the dark when it comes to their progress.
For my suggestions, I recommend that the students' last names show up in full on the screen. Some student's names are cut off because they are too long. Also, I feel that there should be separate boxes to type into when you are setting up your class list. Right now, you have to do your own spacing with the names and ID numbers. It would be more convenient if the site did this for you. For example, have a box to type in the student's first name, a box for the last name, and a box for the ID number. The appearance of the website could also be more colorful, or maybe you should be given a choice of the template you want to use. Right now the site's appearance is very boring.
It would definitely be useful for classroom teachers because it saves time when trying to figure out averages. Plus, it monitors a student's progress overtime so you can see growth. Lastly, the comments section will be a big help for teachers to jot down any observations about the students and it will especially be helpful during report card time. As I mentioned above, parents and students will benefit from this site because a student will be able to check his/her progress on a daily basis. Therefore, he/she can make appropriate improvements where necessary.