Edudemic

Topics: android, android for academics, apps, Classroom Management, Grading, rubric

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First, I’d like to thank Edudemic for inviting us to contribute a guest post. My name is Andrew Cullison. I’m an Assistant Philosophy professor at State University of New York, Fredonia. I also recently started Android for Academics with Jon Nalewajek. We currently have four free Android Apps on the Market: Grade Book, Attendance, Grade Rubric, and Grade Ticker. I’d like to tell you a bit about each of our apps.

Gradebook
This app lets you completely manage your grades from your phone. The novel feature is that the data is completely stored in the cloud (in a Google Docs spreadsheet), so if you lose your phone you can keep someone from accessing your gradebook by simply changing your Gmail password. You can quickly grade assignments using our quick grade feature and assignment view. You can also blast out comprehensive grade reports to all of your students with the press of a single button.

Grade Chart
Grade Chart is a simple tool that generates a quick reference chart to help you determine the grade percentage and letter grade for all possible numbers of missed questions. Just enter in the number of questions and you’re good to go. This also has a cool bonus feature we’re experimenting with. Tap the rows as you grade your students and you can generate a graph that gives you a snapshot of how your class did on the assignment.

Grade Ticker
Grade Ticker is a simple tool, but it’s an enormous time saver. This is for professors who track grades by adding/subtracting points in the margins of a paper or essay. Keep this app next to you and quickly tap off the points as you go. When you’re finished, the grade is right there for recording. Suppose you have 90 exams. If you factor in the time it takes to go back and do the mental math (and double check it) after you graded an essay, you’ll easily save 2 hours. I know I did.

Attendance
This app lets you take Attendance with your phone, and like Gradebook it is designed to integrate with a Google Docs Spreadsheet. Simply point the app to your spreadsheet with student names and the app takes care of the rest.

Grade Rubric
If you grade using a rubric system, then you should definitely out Grade Rubric. If you don’t grade using a rubric system, you should definitely consider adopting a rubric method.  Grading according to rubrics is a remarkable time saver. It’s an easy way to give students great, detailed feedback, and with our app you can email them a grade report. Grading using a rubric also helps keep your grading consistent and fair during a long grading session.

Our rubric app lets you create rubrics that grade according to a traditional letter scale as well as any numeric scale you choose. We’re particularly excited about the new version of Grade Rubric, which we just released last week. With the new version you can create and store as many different rubrics as you want. You can also customize the number of rubric items and weight them differently. We’ve also introduced a slider scale for numeric rubrics that allows for items with higher number values. Perhaps the most exciting thing is that the free version now does everything the paid version does.

We’re constantly working on improvements to these apps, and we have more apps in the works. Check out our apps today, and don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions.