.KEYWORD tinyred
.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Teachers can go back to school with Tiny Red Book
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY Heather Wardell has found the perfect teacher’s pet. She reviews Tiny Red Book, Palm OS software designed to help teachers keep track of students’ performance, grades, and attendance.
.AUTHOR Heather Wardell
September. Time to go back to school. Groaning and sighing all across the world, some of it even from the students! This teacher, however, is really looking forward to getting back into her classroom and seeing her students again. Knowing that I have Tiny Red Book ready and able to keep track of my students’ performance, grades, and attendance just makes me even more ready to go.
Tiny Red Book (at http://www.tiny-red-book.com) is, quite simply, a program that all Palm handheld-enabled teachers need. This one program incorporates a very customizable grade book, attendance tracking, and a place to track student behavior. It has a small footprint on the handheld (only 133KB), easy data entry and editing, and a nearly foolproof way to access your data on the desktop.
.H1 The old paper grade book
If the old paper grade book was good enough for generations, why not now? Because Palm OS grading software, when done right, simplifies a teacher’s life. Students’ grades can be calculated on the spot, making impromptu parent-teacher conferences far easier. Comments about student behavior, attitude, and performance can also be stored safely away right when they occur to the teacher–no more trying to remember the comment until paper and pencil present themselves.
When I first found Tiny Red Book and downloaded the demo, I must admit that I was doubtful. The description of the program certainly made it sound wonderful, but the price seemed too low to be realistic. How could it cost only $25 to do everything for me except actually decide on the grades for the students?
The demo lasted for thirty days. Less than two weeks into it, I was hooked.
.H1 Tiny in size, not in functionality
Installation of the demo version was simple, requiring only one program file and one library file to be transferred to my Palm handheld. As a lot of Palm OS software these days seems to dump ten or more files to the organizer, this was a pleasant change.
I have the very bad habit of never reading a user manual unless I am completely stuck, so I immediately launched into playing with the software. I entered each of my cats as a test student. I played around with giving them grades and attendance records (that Ninja is quite the slacker!), and then performed a HotSync operation before continuing. Figure A shows my Cats’ class and their attendance for August 14.
.FIG A Tabitha and Nigel came to class on time, while Ninja was more than five minutes late.
After the HotSync operation, I was looking at some information in my Memo Pad application when I noticed some new memos, all with titles including the letters "TRB." I investigated and discovered that the memos appeared to be the data that I had entered!
Now it was time to read the manual. The user manual (available online at http://www.tiny-red-book.com/screenshots.html) shows that you can, in fact, enter data through the Desktop application rather than directly through Tiny Red Book. As I have a Microsoft Word file with all of my students’ names, I spent ten minutes copying and pasting so that I had all 165 students in Tiny Red Book. This is a huge benefit of this application, as students can be easily added to or removed from classes, or moved from one class to another, if necessary. Memos are created in the Unfiled category but can be moved into any category without affecting the program. However, the class itself must first be created in Tiny Red Book or manually added to the "Classes" memo. Otherwise, the program cannot recognize the memo as being data.
.H1 Day to day use
I have a Bond Latch (see the review by Claire Pieterek at http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200103/bondlatch001.html), and I wear my Palm handheld around my neck at school. I’m the computer teacher, so I can get away with looking slightly more nerdy than usual. Others might want to store the Palm handheld in a pocket between uses.
When a class arrives, they come in, sit down, and start work on a small assignment. While they work, I tap on their class in Tiny Red Book and then on the Attendance button. I can quickly indicate whether a student is away or just late (and how late, as well).
In computer class, we often don’t complete an assignment in one day. However, I still want to know how well the students are working from day to day. Before Tiny Red Book, I tried on several occasions to create a record-keeping system for myself, but it was always too cumbersome for regular use. With Tiny Red Book, I give each student a grade in the Daily Grades section as I move through the classroom, and I find it very easy to remember to do, since the Palm handheld is around my neck. Figure B shows the daily grades screen for my three felines.
.FIG B Here is the daily grades screen for the first day of school of my three felines.
Tiny Red Book also allows you to enter grades for homework, major grades, tests, and "other." What it does not allow you to do, at this point, is to attach a name to a given grade. For example, if my Grade 7 students hand in an essay on January 14, I’d like to be able to tag the January 14 major grade with a note that says "essay." This is minor, though, as my lesson plans make it clear what project produced the grade.
Each class can have its own weightings for the types of grades. My Grade 1 students, for example, rarely have assignments; most of their grades come from their daily work. So, the daily grades category is weighted 80 for them, with 10 for major grades and 10 for tests. My older students have heavier weighting on their tests and major grades. Tiny Red Book allows this to be changed from any student in a given class, and the changes apply to the entire class. Figure C shows the weighting screen, which is also the summary screen for a given student.
.FIG C the weighting of the various grade types is shown on the right-hand side of the screen.
The screen in Figure C is the summary of Ninja’s performance over the year, including his grades and attendance. On the right-hand side of the screen is the weighting of the various grade types, which can be changed by tapping one of them.
You can attach notes to students as well. The one downside I’ve seen to using the Memo Pad as data storage is that the notes feature is somewhat inflexible. You create a database of notes (up to fifty), and then attach them to a student.
Those fifty notes are available to be attached to any student, so they need to be kept somewhat generic. My notes database from this past school year is shown in Figure D. As you can see, I still have quite a bit of room left to add new notes.
.FIGPAIR D Here is my notes database from this past school year.
.H1 Report card time
Lars Lewejohann, the creator of Tiny Red Book, has also made a Microsoft Excel template for use in extracting the data into a human-readable form. To use it, you simply copy one memo at a time into the Excel template, and press CTRL-A. A macro runs and fills the appropriate tab of the spreadsheet with the information. Figure E shows one of my classes (with all of the names changed) and their attendance record for the term.
.FIGPAIR E Here is the attendance record for one of my classes.
This picture also shows one of the helpful hint windows included throughout the template.
The template figures out what kind of data it has received by looking at the top line of the memo that has been pasted in. If you don’t paste in this line (as I didn’t when I first tried the template–did I mention that I don’t read user manuals?), the template tries to figure out what it has received, but it doesn’t generally do very well. With that line included, it does a great job.
.H1 Excellent support
Tiny Red Book was originally created in German, and some of the menus and language show that they don’t come from a native speaker of English. All of them are easily understood, however, and the occasionally unusual phrasing does not get in the way of using the application.
I emailed Lars soon after purchasing the program to find out whether there was a desktop version. He sent me the Excel template (which was in German only at that time) and offered me whatever assistance I might need in making it work. I have since contacted him several times, and I always receive quick, friendly, and helpful responses from him.
.BEGIN_KEEP
I find that the program fits well into my own teaching style and routines. I don’t need to change my own methods to use it. In fact, the program is so flexible that I think an individual student could also use it to keep track of grades in various classes.
Tiny Red Book is truly a teacher’s best friend in the classroom. I have never yet had it crash, none of my data has gone missing, and my students’ grades and information are always immediately available to me whenever I need them. Teaching is certainly not an easy job, but Tiny Red Book can make it much more efficient. Let’s go back to school!
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Tiny Red Book, visit http://www.tiny-red-book.com.
For more information on Palm handhelds, visit http://www.palm.com.
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.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
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