So, the online grading and attendance program we us in our district broke down last week, just in time for grades. See, a hard drive on the server at the company (not the district) crashed. Now, there are supposed to be back-ups and redundancies to prevent data loss. But a week preceding the crash, the software program started acting up, erasing whole classes of data for some teachers, perhaps related to the imminent hardware failure, not sure. But we do know that the backup system stopped working a few days before the crash. So, we were told that we were losing 48 hours of data previous from when we finished and verified our grades. The system would be up "soon" since they convinced the company to move our problem up the pipeline as a priority. Yesterday, in staff meeting we were informed that the data loss was worse than originally thought, and it went all the way back to the 10th of this month, instead of the 16th. Whoa. But, they were able to salvage some data from the last few weeks, but not anything the last few days we were putting in final grades. So, each teacher was sent a pdf file from what they did have on the backup system, for us to weed through and decide if any of it was helpful.
Now we had been warned the week we were finishing grades that the system was acting up, and there was no guarantee that once we loaded the grades to the district for posting, if it would work. So, we were encouraged to print back up copies of our grades. Still not having a working printer, I decided to save the final grades, instead of grade reports of every assignment, since I didn't want to tie up someone else's printer for hours. Now I know how to print a simpler report, that list the assignments by class instead of by student. I swear I looked and found nothing in the report section, then looked again, oh, maybe that's it! but too late. But I felt confident because I had saved the final grades for each student, and I knew that if worst came to worst, I could give them the correct final grade.
Well, then the email goes out on Monday afternoon, after we have all lost our data. Overriding the grade to reflect the correct final grade will not be allowed. We must check every single score of every assignment for every student we teach, or we could open ourselves up to legal liability. We must have every assignment accurately documented to backup our grades. Can I deviate for a moment to point out that when
I was in high school we
never knew what our final grade was until our grades posted. We tried to estimate in our heads based on the scores we received on our assignments. (And we didn't sue our teachers over the grades we earned.) We didn't have up to the date daily tallies so that we could calculate what assignments we could skip and still pass the class. Sadly, that is the culture that has developed out of the online grading system. Back to my story. Well, I had already passed out all the graded assignments from last term back to the students. I even threw away those papers that belonged to students who had transferred out. I told the kids not to throw away their assignments, but there are always a few who don't listen and do it anyway. (I even provide a binder in class for them to keep current and past work in, and give them a few minutes to organize their papers in their binders when I pass them out.)
Okay, so here's the good news: I hadn't turned off my laptop since the data loss, nor had I closed the grading program since I had finished my grades. That means that all the lost data was still on my desktop. Oh, I am so lucky. So, I ran reports (that report that I finally found) which allowed me to see what information was still present after the data loss, and compared each and every score for the term with the current faulty report. Then I recorded every loss, every discrepancy. Then I cross checked with the backup pdf, so that I only had to write down those scores that were missing from both reports. In other words, I had three different reports that I had to jump back and forth from. All of the late and makeup work turned in by students and 'death bed repentance' students (the kind that turn everything in the last few days of the term) had been lost, and those scores were scattered throughout the term. So, yes, every score, item by item, student by student. Yech! There were a few assignments that didn't show up on either the new or the backup report, so thank goodness I had the original scores still on my desktop, or we would have had real problems.
They finally had the program fixed and up and running by the middle of the day yesterday. I spent about 2 hours yesterday, and another 5 hours today, but my grades are now corrected and verified once again! They aren't due until Thursday, but I have a conference that day, so I needed them done early. Plus, I have to put together 2 days of lesson plans for the sub. It's always harder to write up plans that someone else is supposed to understand and carry out.
Trivia questions to follow. Right now I am sick of being on my computer. :P
