Thing #6

The tool I chose to explore for this post is called Learn Boost. This is an amazingly simple to use tool which allows teachers to track grades, attendance, etc. and share these with students and parents.  This works by creating individualized codes which can be printed and sent home or e-mailed to ensure security so that students and parents can only see their own information. 

The gradebook is simple and allows for customization to fit within your personal grading scale.  One of the best things about this tool is that it not only allows you to set your own scale (defining what range of scores constitute which letter grade) but that it allows you to weight categories of grades (e.g. quizzes, tests, homework) and does the calculation on the grades for you.  The attendance reporting is another fun aspect of this tool.  It allows teachers to create a seating chart, and from there mark students as being absent or tardy (students are listed as present by default). 

Finally, the site also allows teachers to create their own lesson plans and to save them in a portfolio for future reference, and claims to be working on a tool to allow teachers to search for lesson plans created by others. 

Any of these things by themselves would be an amazing advancement for a classroom.  Together, they may be a perfect tool for not only keeping track of students but, for letting students and parents keep track of what goes on in the classroom.