Grades 2.0 Read Me

October 20, 1986 Information about Grades - Alpha 2.0 Professor Jerry Keough Department of Mathematics Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA 02167 (617) - 552 - 3755 Note: This version of Grades "replaces" an earlier version of a grading program (called Grades 0.96) that I wrote that's been circulating since March of 1985. Although functional, I would not term my earlier offering very polished, not very Macintosh-like. I've since adopted much more reasonable ideas about what makes a good Macintosh program, and this new offering shows it. Unfortunately for Grades 0.96 users, it does NOT read data files created by that program. That was a design decision made (perhaps erroneously) at some point, but that's just the way it is. This program called Grades - Alpha 2.0 is, as far as I can tell, reasonably bug free. I use it extensively, as do about ten or fifteen colleagues. We haven't lost a data set yet, although during development we occasionally lost the last few minutes work. Grades - Alpha 2.0 is written for teachers to track a class of students. It maintains up to 20 grades for each student (a fixed limit that now cannot be changed), and allows the computation of weighted averages either in terms of raw scores or Z-scores based on those grades. Options to show or hide other pieces of information about a student (an "alias", such as a social security number, and a "grade" which can be assigned manually for record-keeping), plus the ability to select any subset of the recorded grades for averaging purposes (e.g., you can choose "only the tests", or "only the homework") yields a very useful utility. I've paid a lot of attention to Macintosh conventions (although not completely at this stage), so you should find the program easy to use despite this minimal amount of documentation. How to use this program: you should find this program very much like a spreadsheet program. You are allowed to type new names at any time by just clicking in the "new" name box and typing. Pressing return adds the new name to the class list. You create a column in which to enter new grades by choosing "Enter New Grade" from the Organize menu. If you choose "Show Alias" from the Columns menu, you can enter information such as a social security number for each student. If you choose "Show Grades" from the Columns menu, you can record a "semester grade", useful for record keeping purposes only. When you enter a new grade, you are asked to enter a.) a title for the new exam or test; b.) its maximum grade (must be in the range 0..9999), and a weight (a real number > 0 - see below). Having done that, a new col…