In this day and age, we take for granted that we can reach out and — electronically — touch someone at any time.Want to take a trip to Japantown with friends? Text message them and you are bound to meet up before the 38 line comes. Need to work on a group project? Your peers have already set up a Facebook group. But for some students, checking grades and assignments is not so easy, as, unfortunately, some teachers do not take full advantage of the school’s SchoolLoop site.

In 2009, the San Francisco Unified School District introduced SchoolLoop as a way for various groups in the district’s community — students, parents and teachers — to communicate. The Web site is often used by students to check their grades online and e-mail work and questions to teachers. Teachers can post documents, grades, links, homework assignments and even calendars on SchoolLoop, allowing students to access assignments they may have missed, track their grades and pinpoint areas for their academic improvement.

However, because not all Lowell teachers use SchoolLoop consistently, many students miss out on these opportunities. Knowing grades before the end of a quarter gives students valuable time and incentive to improve grades. Although many students often get individual assignments back in class, grades, based on acculminated credit, are more elusive. However, SchoolLoop makes grading more transparent. The site is an extremely useful tool for students to track grades and assignments, and so the site should be used more frequently.

Students would find it helpful if teachers posted grades on SchoolLoop every two to three weeks. All teachers already submit grades to the SFUSD every six weeks via SchoolLoop. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to ask that teachers update the site every three weeks as a de facto progress report for students. In fact, it might make the teachers’ lives easier by providing a jump start on the end-of-the-grading-period crunch.

Posting grades for students to view can redirect valuable class time solely for teaching. “Instead of taking class time to call students up and tell them their grades once a quarter, I can just tell them to check SchoolLoop,” Health teacher Lisa Cole said.

Teachers should also take advantage of SchoolLoop’s news bulletin feature. The size of our school makes it difficult to diseminate school-wide announcements, especially now that the weekly paper bulletins are no longer given out to students. But on SchoolLoop, a teacher or administrator can publish an announcement that can be viewed on the sidebar of all students’ SchoolLoop portals, thus facilitating communication by concentrating school announcements in one place.

All teachers use SchoolLoop to some extent to check their district emails and post quarter grades, but some only utilize its capabilities in a minimal way. An informal survey with several teachers, past articles from The Lowell, and other students’ past experiences reveal several reasons why more teachers do not use SchoolLoop. Some teachers find it too time-consuming, difficult to navigate or are concerned about possible glitches with grades. Others use an alternate Web site or system for the same purpose or have a grading system they are familiar with that cannot be integrated into SchoolLoop. Others find a face-to-face conversation with students outside of class more valuable than viewing grades online.

It is understandable how these factors might deter teachers from using SchoolLoop more frequently. After all, the process of editing calendar events is tedious and time-consuming. If a teacher were to put assignments up for Monday through Wednesday and wanted to push each one back a day, he or she have to edit each assignment individually and click through dates to reschedule it. A more efficient way to reschedule them would be if SchoolLoop allowed users to drag events across a calendar, similar to iCal.

Perhaps if SchoolLoop was simpler and more user-friendly, more teachers would use it. The site could be improved by making it easier and faster to fix mistakes and post grades and assignments, such as an easier-to-manipulate calendar similar to Google Calendar. The design of the site would be more useful if teachers could have a pop-up box for creating assignments on the master calendar, or even just drag assignments to change the date, rather than being redirected to a separate page each time they want to connect the new events page to the master calendar, according to Technology Committee chair and chemistry teacher Bryan Marten.

In 2008, SFUSD signed a $233,000 contract with SchoolLoop (see the article published Sept. 9, 2009 ‘New school technology implemented’ on www.thelowell.org) that does not expire until 2013. The total cost for everything, which includes the site, hardware, infrastructure and information technician trainers, was about $2.1 million. The site continues to accept feedback year-round, according to assistant principal of student support services Michael Yi. Therefore, teachers should take full advantage of the district’s investment in SchoolLoop by using it to increase grade transparency and facilitate communication with students. Although SchoolLoop is not as versatile — or fun — to use as Facebook or your cell phone, it remains an extremely useful tool for school.

A version of this article first appeared in the Nov. 4, 2011 print edition of The Lowell.