Grademate

I have not posted an update on this blog in quite some time. The end of the school year is a busy time for all teachers, plus we are moving to a new town and a new job.

I will switch from being an elementary teacher to being a secondary generalist.

In preparation for my new assignment, I wanted to establish an online gradebook.

I have three sites bookmarked on Diigo. The most popular of the three is Edmodo. 361 people have Edmodo bookmarked, versus 43 for Engrade and 8 for Grademate.

Usually, when I am choosing software or an online resource, I opt for the most popular choice. So, I went to Edmodo first. However, Edmodo is not what I thought it was. It is not a site to keep track of grades; it is a private message board which can be utilized by teachers to communicate with their students. Edmodo is popular, I believe, because it allows students to send assignments to their teacher. Also, it is very Web2.0, with the ability to embed a variety of media.

Next, I tried Engrade and Grademate.

They both look about the same and offer pretty much the same services. I decided to go with Grademate for subjective reasons. I like the style and feel of it.

I still have some exploring to do, but for now, I think I might use Grademate for grading, in conjunction with Edmodo for sending and receiving assignments.