Grades

I have started working on my grades. Our marking period ends on Halloween, which is still a week away, and after that, we have a week or so to get our grades ready for the report cards. Nevertheless, I've started entering them into my computer so that I have less work when crunch time arrives... I use a program called ClassMate Grading Tool. It is basically a glorified Excel program, but the features have been modified to be especially helpful for teachers. For example, you can "waive" a particular assignment for a student, which is good when someone just could not be expected to complete a particular assignment (e.g., absent on the day of a guest speaker). It calculates the student's average without this assignment, rather than with a zero for the assignment. In Excel, I used to have to do that by hand. It can also generate reports of various kinds that are useful for teachers.

There are many interesting facets to calculating grades, both statistical and philosophical. However, I've been on the computer so much lately (due to blogging & grading) that I've started getting wicked headaches... so, I need to keep my posts shorter. It's nice that our bodies remind us from time to time that there's a whole world out there beyond the monitor!