November 1999
Online Newsletter for Greater Essex County Computer Using Professionals

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One of the benefits of never throwing things away is that you always have a historical reference to things in the past.

I went back to look at the opening page of last November's newsletter.  The topic that month dealt with the new elementary school Electronic Report Card.  Can you imagine that anyone would want to talk about Report Cards?!

The mind forgets a lot of things with age, but Report Card experiences aren't one of them.  At this time last year, we were experimenting with the new, improved, and bug-free electronic relational report card.  It was version 1.0 and when you put it through its paces in a sample school, it performs marvelously.

Then the wheels began to wobble.  During the course of the year, there were numerous updates designed to address problems as they arose.  It seemed that the more involved a school's timetable was, the more chances the report card had to get confused and cause a problem or two.  From duplicate students to the infamous "this is the wrong teacher" message, we must have seen them all last year.  Fix 1.01, 1.02, the ill-fated 1.03, 1.04, 1.05, 1.05a all addressed various issues surrounding the use of the Report Card.

But, it was a year to grow.  I'm sure that the developers never expected that a piece of software would have been subjected to the abuse and attempts to be run universally as it was last year.  Finally, in September of this year, the new and improved version 2.0 of the Report Card was released.  This is the partner that we're dancing with this year.  A change in support for the Report Card Administrators is in place, with the capable assistance of the CAITs now focused on the hundreds and hundreds of classroom teachers doing their best to generate that perfect report card.

The fun doesn't stop this year with just elementary school teachers.  Their colleagues in the secondary panel will have their first go-round with a new report card in Grade 9.  Parents and students from Grade 8 have a year's experience under their belt with the Elementary School Report Card. They'll get to chase the implementation of the new Report Card as it works its way through secondary schools.  How things will ultimately shake down in secondary schools will undoubtedly be determined once a choice for a student administrative system is made.  The Ministry is not licensing a product for secondary schools as it did for elementary schools.

In the meantime, we continue to dance with version 2.0 in the elementary panel, hoping that there will be no repeat of the experiences from last year and work with a developing system in the secondary panel.  Regardless, Greater Essex County teachers send home the very best summaries of student classroom performances.

With the greatest of expectations, we hold our breath and wait for the next steps.