Easy Grade Pro - an Awesome and Powerful Electronic Gradebook Program

In the first few weeks of school, I've had dozens of students move on and off my rosters. If I had been dutifully writing every student's record in a paper gradebook, it would be a mess right now. Thankfully, my school purchased a district license to Easy Grade Pro. No pen and paper for me.

Easy Grade Pro is a powerful database program designed to record student grades, performance, and attendance. Gradebook creation is streamlined with constant prompts. Updating the gradebook with new assignments is quick and easy. A variety of thorough grade reports can be printed with the few clicks of a mouse.

The only drawback to the program lies in its complexity. For a novice user, its many options can be intimidating. It certainly takes a little time to master all of its features.

Getting Ready - Setting Up the Gradebook

When you first open Easy Grade Pro, it gives you a prompt: open an existing gradebook or create a new one. Creating a new one is a pretty simple, streamlined process.

First, you choose a file name. Then, you are prompted to add a section for each class you teach. Finally, you type in all of your students and add them to the appropriate classes. Voila! The basic gradebook is created. The process is fairly quick - it's only limited by the time it takes you to type in 80-100 names.

Once this is done, you get to explore the options. In "Class Options," you'll find a few settings you want to customize. One is the categories and weights for grades. You can create up to fifteen categories for grades and assign each category a specific weight. You can also set up your grading scale and your preferences for rounding.

If you're going to use Easy Grade Pro to track attendance, you can go through the calendar and mark the beginning and end of the marking period. If you check off the days when school is closed, those dates will be automatically grayed out for you in the attendance chart.

Adding Assignments and Grades

Once the book is updated, you'll need to add assignments and grades. A good measure of the efficiency of a gradebook program is - how long does it take to enter a new assignment for all of your classes?

Easy Grade Pro makes the process pretty simple. First, you click the Add Assignment button and choose the details (assignment category, max points, etc). Once you've added the assignment to one class you can go to the "Copy Class Data" window and copy over as many assignments as you want. When you click on a class, all of its assignments show up. Highlight the ones you want to copy and highlight the classes you want to copy them too.

All of the assignments are listed in a score chart, and you enter grades by typing the appropriate scores into the chart. You can add personalized footnotes to assignments - like a note that an assignment was late. You can also double click on a score and type in a personalized comment.

Summaries and Reports

Only weeks into the first quarter, it's time to send out progress reports. You can use the various summaries and reports to see how your students are doing.

In the Summaries window, you'll find a few overall summaries. You can see a chart with the grades for the whole class. By clicking on a grade - like 'C' - you'll see all of the students who are getting a C. This is helpful for quickly identifying all of the students that are getting D's and F's.

You can also print out a detailed score report for each student. It will provide a breakdown of grades by category and a line-by-line report of each assignment the student did or did not turn in. With a few button clicks, you can set it up to print out one of these reports for each of your students in a given marking period. Assuming you have enough paper in the printer, you can walk away and come back to find all of your reports done.

Other Miscellaneous Features

There are a few other nifty features to keep in mind.

You don't need to remember to save your work. The database saves every bit of data that you enter. Every time you quit the program, it prompts you to save a backup copy. You never need to worry about forgetting to save your work and losing a students' grades.

Your gradebook can be password protected. This is useful for security if you leave the gradebook on a public computer - like the one in your classroom.

You can color code the grades of different types of assignments. Not necessary, but eye-catching and fun. It helps to visually divide homework, classwork, etc. into distinct blocks.

You can add custom information fields for students - to track addresses, phone numbers, etc.

You can install the program onto a palm pilot or pocket PC. If you do, you can set up the program to auto-sync and provide an extra backup.

Downsides

Although Easy Grade Pro is a terrific program, it's not perfect.

Its biggest drawback is that it is so powerful and complicated. There are tons of features and options. There are multiple ways to view reports and summaries. It will probably take you a few hours to browse through the program and figure out what it does. You can just enter your grades and get going in a few minutes, but you won't master it the first time out.

I'm also not entirely impressed with the printing. When printing a score or attendance sheet, there is no option to set the margins of a page. In landscape mode (which fits the most assignments or dates across), only twenty students fit on a page. This is fine if you have small classes. I would like to be able to squeeze 25 students on a page.

The program is also a bit costly. An individual license now costs $48 - a bit steep for a single teacher. They do offer site licenses, though. It may be worth pleading with your administrators to purchase this if they haven't purchased a similar program.

Bottom Line

Easy Grade Pro has all of the functionality that you need. Don't be afraid of its many features - you just need to commit a little time to learning it. It is lightyears beyond a traditional paper gradebook, and once you try it out you won't want to go back.