teach1st
08-07-2005, 05:52 AM
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/education/12320582.htm
The easy joke about electronic grade books is that parents love them, students hate them and teachers are a little afraid of them.
After the punch line, though, the reality is more complicated, and it is changing education.
The software, which provides online access to student test scores, homework results and attendance, has been used for years in a handful of South Florida schools, where teachers and parents said it has had a profound impact on teaching, learning and parenting.
''If I wanted to create probably the greatest mutiny, I don't think there's anything I could do to have a greater impact than taking the electronic grade book away from the teachers,'' said Irwin Adler, principal of Herbert Ammons Middle, a Southwest Miami-Dade school that has used the program for six years. ``What they're able to do with it is monumental.''
Based on experiments at 59 schools in Miami-Dade and 35 in Broward, both counties have signed multimillion-dollar contracts to use the software districtwide. The grade books will be in every Miami-Dade public school by the end of the 2005-06 school year -- which begins Monday -- and charter and vocational schools will be added next year. Broward plans to use it in 72 middle and high schools this year, as well as eight to 10 elementary schools that will serve as models for a full elementary rollout next fall.
The two districts will become the largest ones in the country to fully adopt computerized grade books.
''The largest districts in the country are sort of the last adopters,'' said Brad Baird, a vice president at Excelsior Software, the Colorado company that sold the Pinnacle grade book software to both districts.
The software is not much to look at, little more than a spreadsheet, but teachers said it has dramatically simplified their lives by slashing paperwork that used to monopolize at least a few days every semester -- days the students would often spend on busy work while teachers wrote individual progress reports by hand.
Read more (http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/education/12320582.htm)
The easy joke about electronic grade books is that parents love them, students hate them and teachers are a little afraid of them.
After the punch line, though, the reality is more complicated, and it is changing education.
The software, which provides online access to student test scores, homework results and attendance, has been used for years in a handful of South Florida schools, where teachers and parents said it has had a profound impact on teaching, learning and parenting.
''If I wanted to create probably the greatest mutiny, I don't think there's anything I could do to have a greater impact than taking the electronic grade book away from the teachers,'' said Irwin Adler, principal of Herbert Ammons Middle, a Southwest Miami-Dade school that has used the program for six years. ``What they're able to do with it is monumental.''
Based on experiments at 59 schools in Miami-Dade and 35 in Broward, both counties have signed multimillion-dollar contracts to use the software districtwide. The grade books will be in every Miami-Dade public school by the end of the 2005-06 school year -- which begins Monday -- and charter and vocational schools will be added next year. Broward plans to use it in 72 middle and high schools this year, as well as eight to 10 elementary schools that will serve as models for a full elementary rollout next fall.
The two districts will become the largest ones in the country to fully adopt computerized grade books.
''The largest districts in the country are sort of the last adopters,'' said Brad Baird, a vice president at Excelsior Software, the Colorado company that sold the Pinnacle grade book software to both districts.
The software is not much to look at, little more than a spreadsheet, but teachers said it has dramatically simplified their lives by slashing paperwork that used to monopolize at least a few days every semester -- days the students would often spend on busy work while teachers wrote individual progress reports by hand.
Read more (http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/education/12320582.htm)