Tonight at home i successfully began my markbook. I have an opening introduction page, a template and an instructions page. With the help of Macro i also created buttons on the introduction page titled "new class" and "instructions"

The new class button enables, when clicked, the creation of a new sheet which has been predesigned. This includes student names and their marks. It also calculates mean, highest mark and lowest mark. This part still needs to be edited to ensure it will be more helpful and can be edited by the user as well.

The instructions button enables the instructions sheet to be opened. This would contain instructions on how to sue the markbook so that users are able to use the markbook and hopefully not have any issues with using it. The instructions still need to be added in.

In todays lesson we spent the first half of the lesson listening to Mr.Cavill talking about macros and how we can use them in our individual project to make our markbook.

From the internet website:wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
the definition of a macro is:
a single computer instruction that results in a series of instructions in machine language

With the use of macros to help in the creation of the markbook, we are able to create a new class button. It makes the creation of the markbook more complex but easier for the people who are going to use the markbook.

In my markbook we have to include
- Introduction page
- Template page
- Instruction page

With a number of codes created by the macro and experimenting around hopefully i will be able to create a markbook that people would be able to use easily.

researching macros and how to use them:

a website i found that tells me how to use and edit a macro in excel is:
http://www.taltech.com/support/sw_tricks/exmacros.htm

A PDF about with an introduction to the use of macros in excel :
http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/its/info/guides/39Excel2003Macros.pdf

In todays lesson i learnt how to use a macro and how to use a combination of different buttons in excel which would make using excel to create a markbok easier.

note:
(this would when creating a new class allow users to edit the name)
edit macro
sheets("template") .Copy After:=Sheets (3)
ActiveSheet. Name = InputBox ("Give name")

Today in the lesson i began with creating my markbook in excel. I added columns for first names, surnames, student numbers, assessment marks and grades. I used the Excel markbook PDF to work out what to do in the creation of my markbook so far. Each column has been fitted with an autofill which shows the top 10 and the specific marks that students receive for an assessment.

In todays lesson i just slowly read through the PDF excel markbook and created my markbook so far based on that. So far my mark only incorporates a single class but hopefully when I am completed it will be able to incorporate several classes which would be able to adapt if there are different numbers of students in a specific class. This would eliminate issues of using markbooks which have been made precisely to fit only a particular amount of classes and a number of students in that class.

Also there are several websites also which help inc reating a markbook on excel that i would also use to create my markbook rather than just mainly using the PDF excel markbook to create my markbook.

Today i began looking up and researching for individual project assessment task 2.
This individual project is about designing a prototype of a teachers markbook.

1. Research and document some of the system design stages as appropriate for the project
Here are some of the research i found on the characteristics of a teachers markbook that i will need to include in my own prototype of a teachers markbook:

• needs to have the names of students or ID numbers
• contain marks of the students for each assessment task that they complete
• needs to contain a series of easy caluclations (common statsitical functions such as average, max, min, sum )
• needs to be able to be printed in a number of ways
• provide a number of ways data can be seen (graphs)

Traditional System Development Approach

Understanding the problem: The aim is to design a prototype for a teachers markbook which enables teachers to access students marks. Once accessed the students total marks, maximum and minimum should all be shown. For a class - the highest mark, the lowest mark and the average score in assessment tasks should also be shown. This allows the use of markbook to create a teachres job to become easier. All it requires is simple access to the markbook and everything should be shown.

Planning: In the planning process, i plan what type of columns I will use and what should be placed in the markbook. The things i plan to place in the markbook are:

• students names of a class
• a number of assessment tasks which include each students marks
• contain a number of calculations for each assessment task. (average, max and min)
• contain a number of calculations for each student (total, grade)

This lesson I also began with my Gantt chart. This will be done and posted up next lesson.

Today in the lesson we were infromed of a new assessment. An individual project. We are going to create our own information system.

So to start off with researching i searched about markbooks.

This is the info I found from the board of studies website about the motorised markbook that is mainly used by school teachers abd schools.

These are the feuatures of a motorised markbook:

-easy calculation of complex student assessment tasks through simple selection of all common statistical functions. No complicated formulae to enter, you just enter the names and marks and let Motorised Markbook do the rest

-statistically accurate ways of combining, weighting and transforming student test and assignment marks quickly and easily for HSC and SC grading

-scaling options such as respecifying the mean and standard deviation of a test, scaling to a new maximum mark, moderating a set of tests based on a common test, multilinear mapping and assigning of Alphabetical Grades (based on user defined cutoffs)

-a wide range of printing options which can be applied to individual classes or linked groups of classes. These include alphabetical class lists, traditional markbook pages of selected tests, student rankings, individual Student Profiles ideal for parent interviews, frequency distribution tables and scatter graphs for detailed test analysis, attendance sheets to match school term dates and more

-routines for calculating student estimates

-a class rollover feature for moving classes from one year to the next, and importing and exporting class names and tests

-online help and a detailed manual with tutorials

-free school-wide network/multi-user licence on registration of purchase.