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Ask Slashdot: Open Source Software To Manage Student Grades?

Posted by timothy on from the vi-is-all-you-need dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I have been assigned the task of finding a software package to automate the management of grades in a high school. It does not need to be a complete system, but rather just manage grading calculations and printing of report cards. The management of grades is currently done using spreadsheets. What are some open source options to handle this situation?"

12 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Moodle. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Moodle has a grade management tool that might be able to handle these requirements.

    1. Re:Moodle. by MoonBuggy · · Score: 5, Informative

      My kingdom for a mod-point. Moodle is designed to do exactly what you ask - it's admittedly not the absolute best piece of software I've ever used, and there are a few rough edges, but it does its job.

      The only real competitor is the utter monstrosity that is Blackboard, which I believe starts at $10k/year. For that low, low price, you get a piece of software which is slow, buggy, and has a web interface which manages to disable such revolutionary new browser features as 'the back button', and 'middle click'.

    2. Re:Moodle. by jwest · · Score: 5, Informative

      There's also School Tool - http://www.schooltool.org/ .

    3. Re:Moodle. by CuriousGeorge113 · · Score: 3, Informative

      FWIW, a few months back, blackboard purchased moodlerooms, which (I believe) manages the open source moodle project.

      Obviously, they played lip service to "We're committed to the moodle project blah blah blah..." But honestly, it's too early to tell what will really become if moodle. My guess is that it will morph into blackboard "lite" and they will use it to try and up sell you to their blackboard program.

        http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/blackboard-buys-moodlerooms-and-no-this-isnt-an-early-april-fools/4866

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    4. Re:Moodle. by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 4, Informative

      FWIW, a few months back, blackboard purchased moodlerooms, which (I believe) manages the open source moodle project.

      Moodlerooms is a Moodle hosting service, completely independent of the actual Moodle project. Regardless of what happens to Moodlerooms, Moodle will continue in develpment. Remote Learner is another Moodle hosting service, which I imagine would stand to pick up quite a bit of business if Moodlerooms tried to foist Blackboard on its customers.

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  2. Open Admin for Schools by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I wrote Open Administration for Schools, along with other school software, since I REALLY was tired of using spreadsheets to do calcs. http://richtech.ca/openadmin

  3. No matter how well you do... by Anne_Nonymous · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...prepare yourself to be hated by every one of your co-workers.

  4. Build it by KalvinB · · Score: 3, Informative

    Spreadsheets translate to databases which translate to websites easily if you just need some simple software for teachers to use.

    Alternatively, I'd recommend JupiterGrades.com

    http://jupitersis.com/

    It's about $5 per year per student. Kids can access it from home, parents have their own login. They can see what homework they're missing, how a homework assignment affected their grade.

    Sometimes it's just better to spend the little bit of money.

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  5. engrade by TheSecondUser · · Score: 3, Informative

    engrade.com is free. They make money from buying customer support and added features.

  6. Re:Google is your friend. by polebridge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are you recommending OpenGrade, then?

    To you and the others who imply "You must be incompetent because you could have just Googled it..." I'm guessing the OP actually DID google it, and was hoping that slashdot might be more useful than a simple google search.

  7. We're working on this right now! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    We're calling it GAKU Engine ["Learning Engine" from Japanese]. It's fully open source (GPL). Along with full school/course/student management features and full interface for students we want to integrate features so schools can easily extend and augment their educational offerings with free/open content and external services. We'll have a Kickstarter up soon too, untill then check out the (incomplete) PR site at: http://genshin.org/en/GAKUEngine

  8. the problem with JFGI is by RobertLTux · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How do you Google something without knowing what the proper keywords are??

    also it may be getting a consensus on what works/does not work/ is painful to use is what is the Big Point in this.

    in similar fashion RTFM has two problems 1 Y'all need to WTFM first 2 The Kama Sutra does not cover this topic (but is more useful than what manuals are written)

    a better way of saying JFGI is "Google needs |student information system GPL|"

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