Today we had the pleasure of working with Cliff Waldie, a former teacher who has recently moved into an administrative role. However, Cliff has lost none of his passion for improving the lives of students and teachers, and he was beyond excited to share his favourite tool to do so with us.

So what was this amazing new tool? Well it’s called FreshGrade, and while you may have heard of it before (perhaps from a previous blog post) until you’ve gotten some time to play with it, it is hard to fathom how useful it really is!

Cliff gave us plenty of time to explore from both the student and teacher portfolios that are linked through FreshGrade. You see, FreshGrade links a student’s, teacher’s and parent’s portfolio together, so that all feedback is instant, gets to all concerned parties and everyone has access to the same information at the same time. Additionally, because it’s online it keeps a continual record of the student’s work that they can look back on throughout the year and examine their progress. From the teacher side it easily tracks your class, sends out assignments, (that the students can complete any way they choose and submit online), mark assignments (with any number of rubrics or criteria you can imagine), and add new students, projects and feedback at any time.

Far and away what makes FreshGrade so special is the real time feedback that you can provide. Because both parents and students are connected they can both see it, comment and we can find ways to improve together instantly.

Another huge benefit is that FreshGrade is very secure, and stores it’s data on Canadian servers so its FIPPA compliant, and nobody can view the student’s private information, everything is safe, and can only be accessed by those who have been provided the access key to that class or account.

Overall, it seems like such a versatile easy to use tool that I think would benefit both teachers and students. By bringing the parents in as well it helps create a larger learning community that supports the student in the ways they need it most, and enhances parent teacher communication so that cooperation rather than confrontation becomes standard.

I can’t wait to try this tool out in my own classroom someday, thanks for bringing the enthusiasm and tools for us to get to know this unique platform Cliff!