One would think a simple gradebook program for educators would be one of the simplest programs in the world to write.
One would think a simple gradebook program for educators would be one of the simplest programs in the world to write. But I have now used three different ones in my career and they have been uniformly terrible. I'm talking can't-trust-the-math terrible. What on Earth is the issue?
Even Blackboard?
ReplyDeleteAnd digital lesson plan submission can be another nightmare.
ReplyDeleteI haven't used Blackboard. It's conceivable that it's better.
ReplyDeleteSo what would the requirements be?
ReplyDeleteIman Crawford, if you are asking because you'd be interested in writing one, I could give you some boring specs, back-channel.
ReplyDeleteI was asking to see what the complexity would be. Learning some new web development and a small real world app would be preferable to just making something up.
ReplyDeleteWell, a common problem is that the programs always feel pretty porous. You'll enter grades that disappear later. They don't update the math constantly, so you'll often see wrong averages. The manufacturers consistently bloat the features, but decades go by and they still haven't made sure that the basic math works. All most teachers really need is the ability to easily set categories of grades the percentages or points each categories, and percentages of each grade. And the interface shouldn't give you a headache. The current one I'm working on requires me to scroll all the way down before I can scroll over, so if I'm looking at a late-semester grade for a student early in the alphabet, I have to scroll all the way down, all the way over, and then all the way back up. There's no shortcut for doing so. It really shouldn't be rocket science, or it doesn't seem so to me. (I was joking about writing one, btw.)
ReplyDeleteWhen our middle school started getting more techie in the mid-90s we had things like GradeBook+ I think it was on stand alone Macintosh LCs and pretty intuitive. When network admins got more involved (I think we now have one admin whose sole responsibility is Power School) things got way more complicated. Nowadays there are even programs to submit lesson plans online with rigorous stipulations for them to be digitally core-connected to the NJ State Core Curriculum requirements. But I agree with you that grading programs are way more complicated than necessary.
ReplyDeletei'm seriously looking for a simple project. if you want to spend the time, think of some requirements. My concern is most applications get complicated because the task they are doing is more complicated than it appears. It could be gradebook programs fall into that category.
ReplyDelete