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Dr. Tom's Independent Software Reviews
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ThinkWave Inc. was established in 1997, and incorporated in 1998.The company is based in Sebastopol, California. ThinkWave's product line includes the here reviewed award winning ThinkWave Educator grade book software which is designed to easily collect and calculate daily results. This software can optionally be combined with Grades Online, a secure Online platform where you can publish grades and other classroom information and allow parents and students to keep track of their standing in class, get a list of their current assignments, and download or view handouts and other reference material. ThinkWave Web Educator is a web-based alternative grade book software with reduced functionality compared to the desktop product. However, it still includes the most important features of a grade book and cooperates with Grades Online. Finally, ThinkWave Administrator makes it easy to manage attendance and grades school wide.
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Fig. 1: ThinkWave Educator - Home Screen:
This is the first screen you see after you start the program. The tabs within the black bar just below the menu provide shortcuts to the most important functions and screens of the program.
The main panel below summarizes the events of the day, upcoming assignments, and your top students. In addition, you can directly access Grades Online through both the daily events screen and the tabs bar.
Please click on the image for a closer look!
ThinkWave Educator is an easy-to-use grade book that helps teachers to manage tests and assignments, as well as attendance, and create reports. The software features:
- An intuitive interface which makes it easy to get started.
- Flexible grading options include letter, percentage, points, pass / fail, complete / incomplete, curve grading, late markdowns, and even allows you to customize grade types. This accommodates to almost all grading patterns imaginable.
- Powerful reporting features include summaries of student performance, attendance, and allows you to customize your own reports.
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Fig. 2: ThinkWave Educator - Assignment Type Weighting Screen:
This part of the Grading Options becomes accessible after selecting the Classes screen, and clicking on Weighting. It allows to customize how much different assignments contribute to the overall grading and can be customized for each class independently.
Please click on the image for a closer look!
ThinkWave Educator Gradebook with Grades Online
- ThinkWave Educator CD ROM + 1 year Grades Online
Manual on CD (no printed manual). $79.95 - ThinkWave Educator CD ROM + 1 year Grades Online + Printed Manual $89.95
- ThinkWave Educator Download + 1 year Grades Online $69.95
ThinkWave Educator Gradebook (without Grades Online)
- ThinkWave Educator CD ROM
Manual on CD (no printed manual). $59.95 - ThinkWave Educator CD ROM + Printed Manual $69.95
- ThinkWave Educator Download $49.95
Grades Online Subscription
- One Year $35.00
- Two Years $55.00
ThinkWave Administrator
- Request a quote for your school directly from ThinkWave
ThinkWave Web Educator
- One Year $35.00
- Two Years $55.00
Other Products
- ThinkWave Educator Trial CD ROM / Additional CD ROM $9.95
- ThinkWave Educator Printed Manual $15.95
- ThinkWave Administrator Trial CD ROM / Additional CD ROM $9.95
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Fig. 3: ThinkWave Educator - Test and Assignments Screen:
The Tests and Assignments screen is designed to easily enter assignments, quizzes, and tests that you have given or plan to give to your students during a given class. The Record Results screen is the default screen of this dialog and allows you to enter the grade that each student received. You can also add individual comments for each student's performance on the assignment.
Please click on the image for a closer look!
The ThinkWave Educator satisfied all my personal needs and everything I could possibly imagine anybody to have for a gradebook software. There was only one major concern and that is an issue only with the online extension of the ThinkWave Educator. The current Grades Online is not on a secure server and does not encrypt sensitive student data. However, data on the server is solely
identified by code. This is similar to how teachers sometimes publicly
post grades on the door of their classroom with student names replaced
with random codes.
Concern the desktop version of ThinkWave Educator, I found only a few minor shortcomings and I would recommend the following to the manufacturers:
- It would be helpful if you could sort and group students into grades and classes so that they can be easier selected and added to another class.
- In the moment there is no explicit saving function. Once you close the session, anything you did is saved by default. I think it would be better to allow manual saving rather than saving everything automatically. This can help prevent accidental alterations of the data.
- There is no global Undo function. This is actually a rather serious lack.
- It would be helpful for the setup of new classes if present classes could become templates and can be copied and pasted into new classes including all assignments, attendance categories, and maybe grades.
- I would also like to see more customization options in nonacademic grading. As an example, it would be nice if you could add timeliness of work or other customizable categories.
- In the moment there is a high inflexibility to change even closely related grading regimes after you setup a class and already entered data. This results in loosing all entered information. This should be a little more user-friendly.
- For some purposes it would be great to visualize data using a graphing module.
- In the moment, updates are provided as full 40 MB+ downloads. Please consider providing patches instead that will only change the renewed features on the client's machine.
- Only student information can be imported in delimited text file format - however, it is presently difficult to import more than just the names of the students. There are, furthermore, no options to Import parent information and other data that have to be added manually. Please provide interfaces for all such external data in the most common formats such as MS Outlook.
- Finally, I had some issues with the non-academic grades. If attendance is set to absent or excused it should automatically lock participation and attentiveness and not expect any data entries. It should, in addition, at least in the case of excused absence not influence the individual and overall weighted nonacademic grade.
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Fig. 4: ThinkWave Educator - Results Screen:
You can also choose to enter grade results in the Grid View, which resembles your paper gradebook.
Please click on the image for a closer look!
In conclusion, the ThinkWave Educator is a highly flexible and powerful tool for all gradebook needs of public and private school teachers at least in the US school system. It might even be suitable for college teachers as well. If present in localized versions, the software is even flexible enough to satisfy the needs of most school and college teachers anywhere in the world.
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Fig. 5: ThinkWave Educator - Web Screen:
You can also choose to enter grade results in the Grid View, which resembles your paper gradebook.
Please click on the image for a closer look!
System Requirements:
ThinkWave Educator: Pentium or higher processor,Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT 4.0, Windows 2000, XP, Internet Explorer 4.01 SP2 or higher (included on CD ROM version), 32 MB of RAM minimum, 20 MB available hard-disk space, eventually CD-ROM drive, VGA or higher-resolution monitor with more than 256 colors, optional Internet connection to use Grades Online feature.
Grades Online: students and parents need a standard internet browser such as
Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox to access Grades Online. Browser must support secure socket layer (SSL) encryption and cookies. Students and parents can access Grades Online from home, school, work,
or even public libraries.
Company Information:
ThinkWave, Inc.
P.O. Box 2418
Sebastopol, CA 95473
phone: 707-824-6200
Fax: 707-824-6201
E-mail:
sales@thinkwave.com
URL: http://www.thinkwave.com/
- GradeQuick (at present not reviewed): http://www.gradequick.com
- Gradekeeper (at present not reviewed): http://www.gradekeeper.com
- Easy Grade Pro (at present not reviewed): http://www.knowplay.com
- Class Mate Gradebook (at present not reviewed): http://www.classmategrading.com
- Master Grade (at present not reviewed): http://www.maxium.com
- Track My Grades (at present not reviewed): https://www.trackmygrades.com
