Engrade

Engrade is a free, online gradebook.

I know, I know: your district probably already has a gradebook for you to use, and it probably works just fine. But there are some perks to this one that I wanted to tell you about...and you can decide for yourself which one you'll use...

 First of all, Engrade is totally free. Obviously, it costs your district NOTHING. I'm not sure about schools in your area, but here in the south, the budget is T-I-G-H-T! Schools are trying to cut back on things in order to keep enough money in their checkbooks and enough teachers in their classrooms. I have now officially taught at two different school districts, and both of those districts used a different online gradebook. Both had their pros, but both also definitely had their cons. One of the major cons I saw was that it cost so much in licensing fees! And I'm one of those people who doesn't quite understand the point in paying for something you could get for free. :) Engrade is FREE, folks! I can't imagine how much school districts would be saving if they'd just switch to a free gradebook. (So, uh, teachers: you might get some brownie points if you bring this website to your admin. :)

Second, it has a lot of cool features. Obviously, you can enter your students and classes as you see fit. Students get a specially generated username and password and can access their grades any time, from anywhere. I checked into multiple teachers at a school using it, and it looks like the student only has to sign up for Engrade ONCE, and then other teachers just add that student to their class. So, yes, it might be time-consuming to add all of your students, but it's a one-time deal.

There are several grading options. You can weight your grades however you'd like, and the gradebook calculates everything automatically. You can generate reports for individuals or across your classes, and see averages, as well.

Here's where it gets interesting: it almost acts like a classroom website! Teachers using Engrade can add FILES to each class's gradebook. That means you can post your syllabus for each class (or classroom expectations and supply lists, for you elementary teachers) right next to the students' grades. Furthermore, you can add wikis. Now, I'm not a big wiki fan myself (mostly because I don't really understand how they work), but if you are, this might be a huge perk for you. I've seen lots of classroom websites that are made entirely of wikis, so if you're using Engrade as your gradebook, this pretty much eliminates the need to maintain that overall classroom website.

Now for my favorite part: the teacher can create flashcards and quizzes to attach to any class(es). Students can log on to study via the flashcards, which is great. All the flashcards are teacher-made, so the student is always guaranteed to have the correct answers and be studying the correct material. It's like a study guide that you don't have to print! I love the quizzes even more, though. Students already have a log-in username and password, so they're going to be on the site, anyway. But if the teacher creates a quiz and assigns it to a class, each student logs on and takes that quiz online. They're multiple choice, which kind-of stinks in some ways, but all the standardized test questions are multiple choice, so maybe it would give your students good practice. In any case, as soon as the quiz is submitted, Engrade automatically grades the quiz and puts it in the gradebook in the appropriate place! ...Are you serious?! This blew my mind. I think keying in grades is so time-consuming! And while grading multiple-choice question assignments isn't TOO bad, it definitely saves you some time if the program grades it for you. I am IN LOVE with these features.



At the first school district I was in, they paid for a scantron machine and scantron cards for exams. It was a beautiful thing. But I found out that these items were fairly expensive. At the second school district I was in, they did not have scantrons for teacher usage, so I graded everything -- MC or not -- by hand. At this school, I taught 6 different classes per day, so that could equal quite a bit of grading! But if you use Engrade, you don't have to pay for expensive scantron equipment, and you still get the same benefits.

One more thing that's really neat about Engrade: AllThink Lessons. The teacher can create mini-lessons for her class (or classes) and upload them to the gradebook. They can include documents, videos, pictures, and/or include a quiz at the end of the lesson. Basically, it's an all-online lesson that ends with a short assessment. So if you have students that are absent, you could still reach them with that day's lesson at home. If your school participates in "eDay" (online school for one day), this could be a great method of sharing information with your students and then testing what they know afterwards.

If your school is already using another gradebook system, you might have some trouble if you're the only one in your building that wants to use Engrade. I admit that it would make it difficult for the students if their grades were posted on multiple websites. But if you could reel in some more teachers and/or convince your administration to use this as a district-wide option, you're set! I don't think it's any more complicated than the gradebook systems I've used at my past two schools (in fact, I think it's easier because it comes with an FAQ section!), and as far as I can tell, it does the same or MORE than those costly systems.

Check it out for yourself!