Throughout my time teaching I have switched quite a few time with different grading or spreadsheet programs. The 1st grading program was Gradequick and then EasyGrade Pro, however now our District has moved to an online web-based grading system called Pinnacle. I liked how the other programs provided the user with more flexiblity, especially EasyGrade Pro, as you could customize pretty much everything it had to offer. A web-based program sure has its limitations but as with any new program you are going to have some problems or bugs that need to be worked out. Excel is a program that is so powerful that most people do not even break the surface of what it all can do for us! Before we adopted SEIS, the Special Eduation Information System, I designed an Excel template that would keep track of the teachers individual caseloads and each sheet was linked to a master sheet that had an up to date total number of special education students at my school. I had this template placed on the server so everyone would have access through our intranet. Using database systems, such as Data Director to keep track of student data is essential and as educators we need to be able to look at this data and use it to help drive our instuction.