The FoxTale of Baseball

FoxTale is our academic information management program here at George Fox, famous for its clunkiness. For years we’ve been strongly encouraged to keep our grades on FoxTale because it gives our students a good way to see how they’re doing in class at any time. This semester I’ve vowed to comply: I am doing my grades entirely in FoxTale.  So Sunday afternoon I worked three hours grading papers for 30 of my students and entering their scores into FoxTale and writing individualized comments explaining why they’d scored as they did.

When I was done, I hit return… and FoxTale sent me to its log-in screen. My heart sank.  I logged back in to FoxTale.  All of my grades and comments were gone.  I had to go back and start again.  I swore a little. I almost cried.  I wrote a plaintive note to one of my technology mentors about how I didn’t have time to spend another 3 hours recreating my grades and comments.

I am having a flashback today. My Wolverines lost a week’s work all at once, and they don’t have time to do that work again. I want to swear. I want to cry. I want to write a plaintive note to someone…