Grading Online with Engrade

    One of the tiresome and boring jobs of educators is computing grades during card day. Add the fact that grade conscious students (and parents) want to see their performance most of the time even before that day. Filtering in Excel or any other spreadsheet seems a likely solution and of course programming your own in C or any other language could help but problems occur when many student ask it at the same time.

    Big universities started posting their grades on their own web servers but how not on small schools and that include high and elementary schools who could not afford their own dedicated server. Besides setting up and maintenance is more of their problem.

    Engrade.com is a free online service that lets you, as a teacher input your assignments (quiz, exams, homework, etc.) and set the percentage equivalence of each. Students and parents then see the results, including the items they missed so that they could make-up for them. Computation is also straightforward, you just set the parameters and the program will do the rest.

    Teachers could also input comments for parents to read and do the necessary guidelines. And if you fear that your data might be deleted, there is an option for you to export all your grade books to CSV files, which you could easily import in your spreadsheet program

    I have used it and privacy wise, it is better. The student/guardian could also access the site anytime and anywhere, provided they have an internet connection. Engrade, in my tests also is 99% up, it was down once because of some update they had in their program. Due to this upgrade, it just assure us that it will stay and serve for the future years to come.

    So now if you are a teacher register and have the benefits, and if you are a student, tell your teacher to go to engrade and watch the tutorial.

Browsing Windows 7 shares on Windows 98SE

Windows 8 must be in beta anytime soon but most businesses are still in Windows XP and some schools, believe it or not, have Windows 98 still. Connecting Windows XP and Windows 7 is easy but not with the older Windows Operating Systems. When you go to the address bar of Windows 98 and type

\\WIN7COMPUTER

a message box appears stating that a network error or somewhat similar.

In our situation, those few Windows 98 PCs still need to access things on my desktop or on to some other Windows 7 machines used by the other teachers. Don’t tell us to ditch Windows 98 or the really antique computers because, the school has a very tight budget, which could also be true to other schools.

But to remedy that, you have to know the share directory of the items in windows 7 then access it using the run command \\your_pc_name\folder. I for one shared a directory named YearIII for a specific class on my computer named MOTHER-PC. I can open that in Windows 98 by clicking start | Run then type

\\MOTHER-PC\YearIII

Windows 98 will automatically open an explorer window containing your shared files.

I know there are other solutions like setting up an FTP, but that is definitely cumbersome to fellow educators who are not Information Technology graduates and teach Computer subjects.

Introduction to Programming (Dev C++ and Turbo C)

    Turbo C had served us in our school days. Of course you project that you will also be using that in your teaching and hence the students will be forced to use that. I of course used the same tool, since it is a free download in the internet. Microsoft Visual C++ comes with a hefty price, besides, it is not suitable in our setup where we have slow computers.

Dev C++ under Windows XP

    Our requirement requires an Integrated Display Environment (IDE) since I will be teaching starters so leaving it is not likely. But as we all know, the free Turbo C is a 16 bit program and could only be run in 32 bit operating systems (No longer compatible with XP, Vista and 7 x64). I successfully made it work with Windows Seven x64 through Dosbox (at home) but we know its not a real or possible solution. Hence one remedy is to ask the administration to buy a license of Turbo C++ or Microsoft Visual C++. That is my thinking until I learned of the open source way.
    I looked around and lo and behold, Dev C++, we are now using the program. Yes, why stuck yourself in old 16bit program when others (better) are available for free.
    You can download Dev C++ at sourceforge or by clicking here.
    We are requesting the developers of the said project to continue, since its development seemed to have stopped last 2005. Until then until another free one will arrive, Dev C++ is the solution.

Papers and Word Processing (WordPerfect, Word, and Writer)

WordPerfect X5

It is easy for others to ditch one tool for the other, but not for teachers. Many of us when trained to one product tend to stick to it until we retire. I for one was introduced to many other word processors. My first introduction was WordStar 6 when I was in high school, it is a great tool I told myself then amazed with WordPerfect 5.1. The menu system and shortcuts of WordPerfect won me over and used it for all my works and papers that time.

Then came college and now a professional, I used Microsoft Word almost every time and had seen its development. I missed the straightforward way of the two DOS-based word processors and had to find a fix of the outlines, styles, footnotes that do not stay on their places and crazy tables of Microsoft Word. Many will agree with me that when they are corrupted they seem unfixable. It is really annoying. (More problematic in 2007 since I have a bad time importing them and fixing them in another product). Then came word count, totally stressful. It is reporting the wrong number and you have to remember to always use your own macro and not the crazy built-in count feature. But you have to live with it since it was the only choice, for us, in the market. No one really thought that WordPerfect was alive by that time.

Then came a time that while browsing for Word fixes on the internet, a user suggested WordPerfect 11. He said just import the document in WordPerfect, hunt the errors in reveal codes, fix those codes and save. I then looked for it and yes, WordPerfect was indeed alive and in fact reached its twelfth version. I tried to find a store that sells the product, but alas, no one. Two workers in a store even made a quizzical look stating that WordPerfect is ancient and said I am lost. They were showing me Microsoft Office 2003 box instead as if stating that I am a novice. I told them that it could be ancient but it’s still alive. To prove my point I asked them to search for WordPerfect Office 12 on the internet and see for it themselves. One indeed tried and soon both apologized.

Luckily I stopped to a newly-opened shop and a box of WordPerfect 11 was on sale. Maybe on-SALE since no one knows it. Hence, I bought it  very cheap.

I used it and glad that I can switch to the old look and at the same time retrain for the newer GUI. It’s a godsend, no more crazy footnotes, tables, and outlines. It is great, straightforward and useful Grammatik. Everyone in the office I work treats Word's Grammar useless anyway. I installed it at home and well also at work. Anyway, I think it abides with the license since I can't use the two computers at the same time.

Time passed, I don't know if it’s the first one or I am using a superior word processor. I tend to work with it until the time ends. I cannot upgrade to the newer version since, it’s no longer available. No store in our place is selling it. I cannot also buy online since, I had a bad experience with credit cards and swore not to ever use one again.

The need to upgrade for security as they say is driving everyone mad. WordPerfect Office 11 seems not much stable in Windows Seven. And since our office is now shifting to Linux, as they said, we had to learn a new program, OpenOffice. Its menu layout is similar to WordPerfect, so with some of the tools, its not as bad as Word in the things I mentioned. Who would want to use the mouse every time you need a tool? And who cares about the new ribbon if it’s only the new thing that is there (bugs are still there though not as prone as older versions). True you can customize your keys, but not as good as WordPerfect or OpenOffice. One really nifty feature, we in the office were surprised is WordPerfect’s tables. It is like having your spreadsheet built-in and not rely on Quattro Pro or Excel.

OpenOffice Writer is good, really good and the best thing it's free. It is, however, slow in older machines.

But as of this time, I as an educator, swore, the best still for word processing especially on academic projects is WordPerfect (and yes still stuck with version 11 comparing to 2010 as they let me tried for a month), followed by OpenOffice Writer. Word in writing papers is still (and could be forever) a joke.

Yes, fellow educators, those errors you usually have in the above-mentioned areas are not your doing. It’s MS Word’s.

Programs and Links Mentioned in this blog:
Corel WordPerfect
OpenOffice.org's Writer