December Newsflash
'Bubble sheets' out; grades entered online
When grades were due for the first District report card cycle in November, not only were the report card formats new, but teachers districtwide no longer had to turn to their infamous "bubble sheets" to complete them.
For the first time, all 12,000 District teachers were required to enter grades using an online computer program tailor-made for Philadelphia by the District's Office of Information Technology-a groundbreaking change for a district that has been plagued by technology woes.
Putting the report cards online for parents and students to access may not be far behind.
Under the direction of the Office of Curriculum, which was revising the report card format, the technical design team created new systems for teachers in grades 4-8 and 9-12, and revamped the system for grades K-3, whose teachers had already moved to online grade input in the fall of 2001.
The old system of completing report cards-filling in the blanks on grade and attendance "bubble sheets" to be scanned into a computer-was cumbersome, error-prone, time-consuming, and not cost-efficient, according to District Chief Information Officer Patricia Renzulli.
"Updating the technology into this web-enabled input process was really the way to go," she said, pointing out that this decreased turnaround time between entering grades and processing report cards.
The new system quickly won some fans among teachers, but others, particularly those using the high school program, have been fuming about their problems accessing the system.
The high school program was so easy to use, said Northeast High social studies teacher Donna Sharer, that it took just over an hour to input all the grades for her six classes, far less time than in previous years.
"I was able to do grades at home at my convenience. I did it late at night and had no problem getting on," Sharer said.
But some high school teachers said it was nearly impossible to enter grades during their planning periods because system access was painfully sluggish.
"If you try to input grades during the school day, it is very slow because a lot of people are using the system," Sharer acknowledged.
Renzulli conceded that daytime system access was "bumpy" for many high school teachers, noting that while as many as 6,000 K-8 teachers were able to access the system at the same time, mostly without difficulty, the large number of teachers trying to access the grade 9-12 program all at once created unforeseen problems.
The Office of Information Technology is working to fix this problem before the end of the next grading cycle, said Elizabeth Codding, who led the technical team that developed the new grade-reporting programs.
"We're doing performance-tuning right now, and we expect to be able to solve those problems before [the next] cycle," she said.
She added, "It's never one point
of failure. There are multiple things feeding into the response
time that you're getting."
Ultimately, the new grade-reporting technology is a step forward,
said Mike Biddle, a fifth grade teacher at Kearny Elementary, who
said the online grading program worked well for him. Biddle is currently
earning a masters degree in Instructional Technology at St. Joseph's
University.
"I'm glad to see that the School District is catching on to today's technology," he said.
Renzulli said several more projects are in the works to expand the use of technology across the District, including plans to extend online grade access to parents and students, establish an online IEP system, and implement a standardized technology curriculum for grades K-8 starting in January.
For more information on the online grading systems, contact Chief Information Officer Patricia Renzulli at 215-893-4246 or prenzulli@phila.k12.pa.us.