Great article by John Nichols!
Several years back I did a little consulting for a local elementary school that was exploring technology for classroom management. Most of the teachers were creating word processing documents with AppleWorks and using the district e-mail client (FirstClass), but they were not very excited about anything with the words "learning curve" attached. My wife (Lynne) and I got them started by creating simple forms for lesson plans (AW draw layer), central stores orders (AW spreadsheet), and student management files (AW database). Once they understood how the Macintosh could help them and make classroom management easier, they were hungry for more. Lynne and I demoed every available gradebook program before settling on EasyGrade Pro. With a minimal learning curve, we quickly got the tech-savvy teachers to pilot the software, and subsequently train their teams. And what a great value! The site license was around $300 (single user license was $50). If I recall correctly, the OSX site license upgrade was $15 (covered shipping and handling--free updates for life).
Now the district is looking at a site license for "Terms" or something like that, which includes a gradebook package. Here's hoping it works as well as EasyGrade Pro (or maybe EGP will offer an export feature!)
Several years back I did a little consulting for a local elementary school that was exploring technology for classroom management. Most of the teachers were creating word processing documents with AppleWorks and using the district e-mail client (FirstClass), but they were not very excited about anything with the words "learning curve" attached. My wife (Lynne) and I got them started by creating simple forms for lesson plans (AW draw layer), central stores orders (AW spreadsheet), and student management files (AW database). Once they understood how the Macintosh could help them and make classroom management easier, they were hungry for more. Lynne and I demoed every available gradebook program before settling on EasyGrade Pro. With a minimal learning curve, we quickly got the tech-savvy teachers to pilot the software, and subsequently train their teams. And what a great value! The site license was around $300 (single user license was $50). If I recall correctly, the OSX site license upgrade was $15 (covered shipping and handling--free updates for life).
Now the district is looking at a site license for "Terms" or something like that, which includes a gradebook package. Here's hoping it works as well as EasyGrade Pro (or maybe EGP will offer an export feature!)
