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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Balky Zangle Jangles Teachers' Nerves, Delays Grades

Courier Staff Report

Problems with the New Haven school district's new Student Information System, called Zangle, frustrated many teachers' attempts to post semester grades Monday, a student-free workday set aside for teachers to submit grades and prepare for today's start of the second semester.

"I've had enough of Zangle," said Language Arts teacher Indira Chakrabarti this morning, after a frustrating day of dealing with the on-again, off-again, slowpoke computer program, which was supposed to make submitting grades easier when it was implemented as the district's new student information system at the start of the year.

As a result of the problems, which administrators say are now resolved, the Monday afternoon's deadline for teachers to submit grades has been extended to Thursday.

"We will then run confirmation reports on Friday and mail report cards next week," Vice Principal Matt Smith wrote in an email to the faculty this morning.

In the throes of the computer problems Monday, Smith told the staff "the Zangle problems plaguing us are distict-wide, and Chris Hobbs [the school district's technology expert] currently has the Zangle vendor working on it. However, in light of the fact we have lost so much time, we will be initially extending the grade submission deadline 24 hours, to Tuesday night. Obviously, if the problem is not resolved quickly, we may have to extend it further."

Some teachers were appreciative of the extra time, but not of the day-long frustration. "It is now 3:00 and Zangle is still not working.Thanks for the extension till Tuesday but when during my work day will I get it done," wrote one, "We should get some type of compensation for all the extra hours we will be putting in beyond our work hours to do first semester grades."

Another wrote: "I have just literally wasted the better part of five hours trying to work with Zangle and I am fed up. I have curriculum and disaster preparedness work to do and I am going to move on to that. This means that I won't be likely to get the grades and attendance done in time to print out the required hard copies today and will have to try to do it tomorrow morning, unless I find a vast reservoir of hidden patience between now and then to attempt Zangle again today. I am sorry if this causes problems but my time is just too valuable to wait for the bugs to be worked out any longer."

Posted by courier at 05:29:55. Filed under: News

Comments

so much for making things easier, why the heck did they switch it in the first place. They fired more teachers and didn't hire anymore, meaning everyone is already used to the old grading system. This program is a pitiful attempt by the school administration to "make things easier"

Posted by Loganer at Tuesday, January 27, 2009 15:19:16

zangle.. zangle.. zangle.. good try changing our system, bot its not good at all. one cool thing for parents is that they could c students grades, well that wont work either. so wuts good about zangle form my perspective from wut ive heard about it? its not cool. and we need a cool system 4 these 4000 students, and about 500 staff. oh man!! fix it!!!!!!!!!!!!!! aaaaaah. i wanna know my grades! they should give out sheets 2 everyone or email them, of what they got o finals, # out of # and then the grade they got 4 the class. cuz we work SO hard 4 finals, but we never even know how it went! we want 2 know after all the sweat and tears! itd be great if we could jus c the test 2 c wut went wrong and wut was good, i know people cheat 4 the next years, but chnage the final, idk, but we should c wut we did, or we'll never learn! fustrating. :)

Posted by ikki at Wednesday, January 28, 2009 15:41:07

****

Posted by Fucker at Monday, March 29, 2010 16:31:21

F U C K

Posted by fucker at Monday, March 29, 2010 16:32:19

I HATE zangle!!! I keep trying to log in to see my grades with the pin and password that we finally got. You have to go in in-person or they won't give it to you! We're busy people! Worst of all, the website just repeats, "PIN is invalid"... I liked it much better when they handed out progress reports or posted grades in the classroom! I have to wait until the end of the semester to get my report card, and before then I haven't the first clue what my grades are! They should switch back to their old grading system. This one has way too many flaws. What's the point of allowing students and parents to access their grades at all times if it's impossible to log on with the information they've given us?!

Posted by Saya at Thursday, June 10, 2010 18:35:41

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