Grade Machine’s creator, Misty City, closed and sold the program to Pearson, who then stopped work on and support for the program. So it’s up to the users of Grade Machine to help each other out. A new Google group is designed for peer-to-peer support for this wonderful grading program. You can find and join the group here: http://groups.google.com/group/grade-machine. If you are a user of Grade Machine, please join the group to help keep this software alive.

Since Grade Machine is no longer supported, we may start moving into operating systems (e.g. Windows XP, Mac OSX) that Grade Machine will no longer run under. Please add a comment to this post if you have installed Grade Machine on your operating system, and if you have been successful or not. This will help users who are upgrading their computers, or whose schools are upgrading their computers, to know if the program will work on their new computers.

I have successfully run Grade Machine version 6.9.5 on Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 3 (service packs are major upgrades to the operating system, and are generally a good thing to install because they often fix security holes).

The grading program I have been using for over ten years, Grade Machine, has been purchased by an educational conglomerate (Pearson), who will discontinue support for it effective August 31, 2008. Does this mean they will take down all the support pages from their web site, or just stop asking questions? It’s hard to know. I’ll post more here if/when I find out.

They have posted a “License editor” that allows users to generate the registration key required to re-install the program (you need the serial number from your purchase). The nice thing about this is that if you have your own copy (I do, since my new school doesn’t use GM), you can change the name that appears on the top of reports. Just enter your serial number, the name you want, and then re-register the program (use menu: Edit then Register). I just used this to add the name of my school to my name (I had not included my school name when I purchased it just in case I change schools later).

I have backed up a copy of the License editor you can download download from here. This is an important piece of software if you or your school opts to keep using Grade Machine and ever want to change the name on reports.

I have worked with several other grade programs over the years, and found Grade Machine to be one of the best (they all have their problems, but GM seems to have the least).

So, are you a Grade Machine user? Do you want to keep using it even after Pearson stops support? If so, add a comment to this post. If enough people post saying they want to keep using it, I’ll try to set up a place on the web where we can do pee-to-peer support when problems arise.

Updated August 2010: Here’s a great web site with plenty of resources for Grade Machine users: http://web.jccc.net/academic/staffdev/misty_city/software.htm, including download-able software and manuals.