Engrade.com - Web 2.0 Teacher Tools

Hello Everyone!

My name is Bri, I found this site looking for Web 2.0 teacher sites. I saw there's already a great list of tools here, and I work at Engrade.com so I thought I'd add it to the list.

Engrade’s mission is to provide a safe and secure place for teachers to connect with students online – to post upcoming homework, to exchange messages, to post scores and grades, and to track attendance. Currently the site has over 300,000 registered users from across the US and around the world, in all types of schools (public, private, charter, military), in all grade levels from elementary to college, teaching subjects from golf management to medicine.

Engrade offers teachers the ability to create class calendars where they can post upcoming homework, in-class events, and lessons. Teachers can attach files to calendar entries, include links, and even embed YouTube videos. Teachers can opt to include their class calendars on their customizable site (http://www.engrade.com/USERNAME) or they can require that students sign up using a secret Access Code to see the calendars. Teachers love this because students can no longer say “I didn’t know that was due today!”

For students that do register, teachers can send private messages to them in a safe, SPAM-free environment. Engrade only allows students to message with teachers who have provided them with the Access Code, that way teachers can confidently encourage students to sign up knowing that students can’t be contacted by unknown persons. This helps students and parents a lot because they have direct access to teachers after school to get homework help and ask questions about upcoming events, and it eases the concerns for teachers created by other social networks.

Engrade also offers teachers a very easy to use and a very customizable gradebook. We designed the gradebook to be extremely flexible so it can adjust to any teacher’s preferences – it includes features such as a customizable automatic grading scale, manual grade override, weighted assignment categories, extra credit, excusing a student from an assignment, and the ability to drop the lowest score from a category. For added convenience, the gradebook grid uses AJAX to operate just like a spreadsheet – all teachers need to do is click on a box and type a number to change a student’s score.

Students and parents can sign up and see their grades online in real-time. Engrade provides teachers with an individual secret Access Code for each of their students. Once a teacher gives the code to a student, the student (and/or their parents) can sign up and privately see their class grade, assignment scores, attendance, citizenship, and upcoming homework online in real-time. The grades are completely private – each code only shows the grade for that specific student.


Thanks!
Bri
www.engrade.com