Welllll, Whaddaya Know?

At our school district we've had a new grading program for about three-ish years. What is really great about this (as opposed to manually calculating averages like I did in the Dark Ages before I moved to the US) is that it's linked online and parents and students can check their grades. There is never any surprise about grades as they are always accessible online. Yes, there are some parents/households that don't have internet, but they are welcome to check on our computers in the Media Center and there's always the public libraires.

This has been working fairly well. It's even set up so that an email gets sent when a teacher updates the grade book. Today, we were shown how to add calendar items and notes we'd want parents and students to know about. It's really easy, but I never knew how to do it before so I never did.

Today, I entered in a few important dates for the rest of the year (only 19 school days to go!) and then happened upon this awesomely cool feature: EMAIL! I can send out an email to every family on my student list! Ooooohhhh! The possibilities are endless! What I love is that I can send out a mass email and cover my butt about assignments etc. Awesome!

Sooooo...I sent out an email reminding students and parents that I would accept late/overdue work until this Friday. That any work that had not been submitted by then would be given a zero. Amazingly enough, withing five minutes of sending out that email, I had two parents reply, checking on what they could do to help their children or whether their children were missing any assignments.

Amazing.