At the recommendation of another comment, I just watched the demo video for jupitersis. I was horrified. One unified solution for students, teachers, and parents to check grades, assignments, discipline, schedules, and more.
My objection is that there is something to be learned from the good old fashioned way. Students need to learn to write down or remember their assignments and keep track of how they're doing in class by themselves. Maybe that means a motivated student will build his own gradebook. Maybe that means other students will learn to manage a planner. And maybe other less dull students will develop a memory inside their brains. Whatever the means is, this classic exercise of remembering grades and assignments is a cornerstone of childhood education.
And then there's the discipline issue. A screenshot in that demo video showed a nice citation webpage with checkboxes like "[x] gum/food [x] violence [x] talking". This bureaucratic approach only serves to depersonalize discipline and prematurely convert youthful chaps into the office drones that many will become. When students act up, parents and teachers should be aware of it on a personal level, and monitor for any deeper issues that can be dealt with sensitively.
The discipline chart also had boxes for "[x] email parents [x] notify parents on login [ ] notify dean". The automation of informing parents is frighting. There's something to be said about the not knowing if the parents know, when a student gets in trouble at school. There is a healthy guilt associated with it, that can translate into a productive dinner table conversation. It also educates the student's human sensibilities -- he learns to gauge who is likely to inform whom, and at what time, and become sensitive to all the small human factors that make the world go round.
If anything, "solutions" like jupitersis only serve to raise children for a 21st century bureaucratic totalitarian society, which even if this is the state of the world, children should at least have their childhood.
As for the question in TFA, which I believe was about how teachers should manage their grades, each teacher should manage it by themselves. No need to subject teachers to any more needling paperwork. Some teachers like old fashion grade books with the nice rows and columns. Other teachers are Excel aficionados. Let the teacher do what's most organic to his or her teaching style.
Moral of the story: technology is not the solution to childhood education.
