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"We currently teach multiple courses for a total of 12 or 13 different lab classes. Each class has 50-60 students and can have up to two or three graded assignments in a given day. Paper grading takes too long and transferring thousands of grades to our computerized grade forms has huge potential for human error. Grading with a spreadsheet, even on a tablet, becomes too slow with so many rows and columns. So we made Green Gradebook to solve our problems. "Our plan was to create a gradebook app that allowed for large or small student and class numbers while minimizing the time it takes to enter a grade for one assignment. Ideally this would speed things up for us as we walked around the room grading!" Mobile access for grading has some real advantages.

"Apple is upping its bid for its hot-selling iPad to be a teaching device, with an update today to its iTunes U app that allows any teacher to create a private course. "The new features, aimed at K-12 teachers who use iPads in the classroom, allow teachers to create up to 12 private courses. Within each course, teachers can point students to curriculum across lots of different (mostly Apple-powered) media such as iBooks, textbooks, apps, videos and Pages and Keynote documents." But there is no student information system or gradebook included, and you can't converse with students. Might be useful for mini-lectures.

"LearnBoost empowers teachers and schools with a free all-in-one classroom tool. You can manage your classroom, track student grades, create lesson plans, mark attendance, view reports and more!" Very similar to Engrade. Offered in a dozen languages as well. Nice tutorials. Links to other Google apps, such as Calendar and Docs and Spreadsheets. Mobile able.

"Teachers who want to put web 2.0 technologies to work for them can find many different free options online. There are tools for creating online classrooms, social networks, student podcasts, web-based flashcards, elearning modules, and much more. Here are 10 free web 2.0 tools for teachers to try in the classroom this year." The first of these, Engrade, looks like it would be useful as an online assignment calendar, gradebook, IM, and progress report system.

"Engrade unifies all of the people, tools, data, and curriculum in your schools on one user-friendly platform. " And it's free. Includes gradebook, attendance/seating chart, admin reports, access by smartphone, messaging to parents, and security.

"In our continuing mission to provide you with the best online classroom management tools, we've added dozens of new features. We hope you enjoy these upgrades and that they help you as an educator." This wiki includes a short training video and a link to sample flashcards.