Keeping track of it all- specifically grades, and not going overboard

[battlemaiden]

In front of me I have J. Campbell's Transcripts Made Easy, and three tabs open on my computer to Homeschool Tracker, Planbook, and Edu-Track. My mind is melting. :confused:

 

I'm a paper person. I like forms to be printed out and filled in with my pencil. I'm a planner, but not a lesson planner. I like my little spiral Teacher Plan Book. All I really want is something that I can enter the course, the grades on quizzes, tests, labs, and papers and then have it weight those grades and spit out a report card at the end of the quarter/semester/year.

 

Can't I just do that with excel? Or do any of the above mentioned computer programs allow for just course and grade entry?

 

I think I may be missing some benefit to these systems, because I can NOT imagine having to enter all that information. I've seen someone on this board swear by it because she has multiple grades to track, but I'll have 5 grades next year and I can't imagine entering all that information.

[Mad Jenny Flint]

Don't do it!

 

I have Edu-Trak. I will be using it for my transcripts because I love the way it makes them look. That said, all of my grades are written on paper from Donna Young's website- graphed out 36 weeks, 180 days, 7 or 8 subjects. ON PAPER.

 

Edu-Trak does not weight grades. I was feeling very overwhelmed about entering all the data only to have un-weighted grades, so I asked about it at last year's local hs convention (they had a rep there): the woman I spoke with said, calculate your grades and put in the final result. Voila. Done.

 

So, I have not actually done this yet. I am apprehensive as well. But please, for the love of Mike, don't enter every little number in those boxes at once; you will have another brain melt.

 

However, if you also have the full version of Homeschool Tracker, I have heard that that program does weight the grades. So, I guess if you wanted to put in all the little numbers that way, you could. If you really wanted.

 

I will be doing the Edu-track transcripts, and I will let you know how they come out within the next week or so (we are in finals week right now).

 

Good luck with whatever you choose- and please post back, I want to hear what you did, what you used, and how you did it!

[elegantlion]

Not that you necessarily want another online option, I've used Engrade a little last year. It's free and I liked how easy it was to input grades and weight them. I much prefer to do lesson planning on paper, but this program was easy to use.

[choirfarm]

I have homeschool tracker and only started using it when my oldest was in 8th grade as a trial run for high school. I barely used it for my then 6th grader and I don't keep grades in elementary, so I don't use it for my youngest. To me, at that age, you keep doing the skill until they get it.

 

This past year I successfully did it for my 9th grader and did pretty well except for history and English for my 7th grader. I make it easy. For Chemistry I had reading worth 10 percent, labs worth 20 percent, practice problems 15 percent, module summary 15 percent, exams worth 40 percent. I gave quarter exams 200 possible points. Now this is how you do it easily if you don't want to use those already done in homeschool tracker. (You do know that a lot of courses are already done like Apologia Chemistry, Physics, TT or Chalkdust math, etc in the homeschool tracker group, correct. You just download and go.) But if you want to do your own, this is the easy way. After you create a lesson plan for let us say Chemistry you add a lesson. You choose your subject, course, as well as the activity like reading. Then hit copy. Hit auto- incriment button. Then for leading text I choose custom and put module if I am doing science. I start with 1 and end with 16. Then I hit Ok and I have 16 items with reading. I repeat with labwork, test, practice problems, etc. It takes me about 5 minutes to create the course. I don't bother including exact page numbers or anything. As I said, I actually use the ones that are in the homeschool tracker files. The only ones I make up are for TOG and it is so fast. I don't enter what they actually read. That is on the syllabus.

 

I like it because it keeps me honest. It does the grades for me and prints out a report card, transcript, etc. I actually kept track of attendence this past year which I have never done. WE had 179 days. Fine. As I said, I only do it religiously for my high schooler. I liked how I could print an overview for each semester so they could see that he had 9 tests, 15 labs or whatever.

 

I have a calendar where I pencil in where I think we will be in general terms: Module 1 or TOG week 25, Chalkdust 9.5 etc. I check it off every so often so I know if we are on target or ahead or what. I type up a syllabus for my created classes, but for Apologia or Chalkdust, they just work on it every day. I don't really have lesson plans per say. They have a paper planner that they have to fill out every day. (It has a whole week on one page.) Yes, I know that homeschool tracker could do it, but I don't input everything. I have bare bones grades. I don't feel like they need a grade for reading chapters 1 -3 or pp 5-7. If they finished the novel, they get a 100 for reading, and then whatever grade they earn on the essay or whatever.

 

I hope that helps.

 

Christine

[EKS]

Not that you necessarily want another online option, I've used Engrade a little last year. It's free and I liked how easy it was to input grades and weight them. I much prefer to do lesson planning on paper, but this program was easy to use.

 

I use Engrade too. It is much easier than Homeschool Tracker because it just focuses on organizing grades rather than all assignments so you just input what you're going to grade.

[Photo Ninja]

Excel works just fine for keeping grades and for making a transcript.

 

I didn't make report cards because they really were not necessary. Do you have a requirement to make those? I just recorded the grades in Excel, and really, for high school, a transcript is necessary, but a report card is not. But you could make a report card in Excel, if you wanted to.

 

I see no reason why you can't continue to use paper for your daily records and plans, then enter test, etc. grades into Excel for the final grade.

[Quiver0f10]

Excel works just fine for keeping grades and for making a transcript.

 

I didn't make report cards because they really were not necessary. Do you have a requirement to make those? I just recorded the grades in Excel, and really, for high school, a transcript is necessary, but a report card is not. But you could make a report card in Excel, if you wanted to.

 

I see no reason why you can't continue to use paper for your daily records and plans, then enter test, etc. grades into Excel for the final grade.

 

:iagree:I use excel to keep grades and transcripts. I don't do report cards.

[choirfarm]

I'm just making one so I can use it for good grade discounts for car insurance and for other discounts retailers give for good grades.

 

Christine

[StillStanding]

:iagree:I have used this free program for my co-op classes and it is very easy to use.

 

Not that you necessarily want another online option, I've used Engrade a little last year. It's free and I liked how easy it was to input grades and weight them. I much prefer to do lesson planning on paper, but this program was easy to use.

[angela in ohio]

Too funny. I have samples of Edu-Track, Homeschool Minder, and Homeschool Tracker Plus on my laptop right now, trying to figure out the same thing. I have always made my own Excel spreadsheets and then written in my plans and grades. I really want to keep hours for some subjects, so I'm trying to figure out which one will do that AND be easy to use. :confused: For the first time, I'll want to print out student assignment lists for two oldest dc, too, and so I have been lured by software. :001_smile:

[Guest Cheryl in SoCal]

I have Edu-Track and HATE it. I tried to use it for a couple of months and it sucked too much time, and didn't weigh the grades. I use Excel to keep track of grades. I write an Excel workbook for each child with a worksheet for each course. It keeps track of what is done and tallies the semester (or quarterly if not in HS) grades. I LOVE it!!!!

[Rhea]

<snipped> I really want to keep hours for some subjects, so I'm trying to figure out which one will do that AND be easy to use. :confused:

 

For keeping track of hours I use Excel. So simple, and since we know we have a minimum to meet, when dd enters the amount of time she spent, it's formatted to show how much time she still needs to log by the end of the semester. We also turn these in and with Excel it's easy to print out the log.

 

I have Homeschool Tracker Plus, I've just never spent enough time with it for it to become easy. ;)

 

Rhea