My Engrade Experience

I really like the engrade site. I keep my grades for my class on an excel spreadsheet, but unfortunately I have not been able to organize it so that it would calculate the grades for me. It is pretty much like a regular grade book without the pen and paper. At the end of each quarter I have to sit there and figure out grades for all my class. With Engrade as long as you enter all the grades and their weights correctly it will give you the weighted averages and can save lots of time when it comes to report cards. Also, it takes some of the human error out of the calculations, it calculates it for you. The only thing I did not like about it was that you can not see all the grades at once. You have to move from screen to screen. If you want to double check yourself it can add some additional time. However I do not think it is a big deal. I also liked that you can keep attendance on the site as well. That is one less thing, again, that you have to figure out come report card time. Instead of sitting there and going through attendance records you can look right on the site.
However, the best part was the calendar. As a teacher we send home with our students, assingments, quiz dates, test dates, and project due dates. However, we never know if they make it home or not, till we get an irrate parent calling asking why a report you gave them a month to do, they think we only gave the student a night to do it. With this site, you can add these to your calendar and give parents the ability to log in and see it. This will keep some of the "surprises" that occur during each quarter to a minimum. Also, parents can check grades right on the site. When my students fail a test or quiz, I have them get their parents to sign it. And a couple of times I have come to find out at the end of a quarter, that the student is signing the parent's name. This could eliminate that problem and make it easier for parents to stay involved in what is going on in school.
Something that I think could improve the site would be an area for general messages. This would allow you to interact with parents and let them know what is coming up in class. It will allow parents to stay more involved as well, you could have the parents aware of the assignments that will be due in the future, before the students even know. The only negative of that, is some parents could get overzealous and have their student start the project before you have the chance to explain exactly what it is your want done in the project and what they will be grade on.
I personally think that parents and students will both like this site. We live in a world where more often then not, both parents work fulltime and do not have time to call or to come to the school to know what is going on. This allows the parent to stay involved while at work or late at night when they finally have a time to sit down and think about these things. For students should they lose the due date for a project they can check right online. Also, how often does a student walk up to you and say what is my average this quarter????? Now they can check their progress on their own.