Techheads think everything should be accessible on the internet, including student grades. Give parents a password and they can look up their child's grade any time they want.
The problem comes, of course, when that convenience comes up against the limits of technology security. What's to keep a hacker from destroying or changing grades?
And what if that hacker is the student himself?
I don't even store my grades on my school computer. I store them on removable media. If parents want to know grades, they can email me and with a few keystrokes I can send them complete details of their student's grade. It seems a small price to pay for my peace of mind.
As long as the official records aren't accessible from the net, I don't see what the problem would be. The teacher can keep their own backup copy on a flash drive and post the grades online, that way if the computers are compromised then an official backup is still available and unchanged.
ReplyDeleteWe have online grades. We are required to post weekly at the very least. And in addition, we STILL have to send out printed progress reports every three weeks. Parents still claim not to know their kids are failing. It won't help, it's annoying when it goes down and for some classes it results in constant second guessing over every single grade.
ReplyDeleteWe're required to use Aries for our gradebook... however, I always keep a backup copy on my flash drive. (Our gradebooks have also been known to randomly move backwards in time, causing several weeks worth of data to disappear.)
ReplyDeleteWhile some parents never check, and are shocked when little Johnny fails again (even though paper reports are sent out at the traditional times), many at my school do keep tabs on it.
Especially the helicopter parents, who flip a gasket if you don't post a grade within 2 hours of entering in the assignment. Even if you just assigned it as HW, and it's not due until the next day. Or the parents who email every 20 minutes because Lisa is getting 99.95% instead of 100%.
I completely agree with every word Ellen K typed. Here, here!
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