Get Grades Done: the joys of Org's simple power

[Devin Prater <r.d.t.prater@gmail.com>]

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So, I’ll try to not turn this into a novella. I am a “Technical Assistant”, and I teach at an adult education sort of trade school. This probably sounds normal, but the only sort of catch is that I am blind, and so are  many of my students, the rest having some vision loss.

So, I have to find workarounds for just about everything I do. I teach Assistive Technology, which is basically how to use tech as a blind/visually impaired person. We have our courses on 😣Moodle😣, because apparently no one has created a learning system that deals with directories and config files for those who do best in that environment, instead of freaking databases, and web interfaces even fatter than I am. I do hate web interfaces, and web interfaces wrapped in “apps” too. It shouldn’t be an app if its built on web tech. Yes, you too, Electron!

Anyways, I have some manual tests I do. I have the questions in an Org-mode file, with checkboxes I can check or leave unchecked. Up until recently, I went down the list and graded them manually. But I thought “Now wait, can’t the computer do this for me? I mean, Org-mode is so powerful, why not make a Lisp thing that does that for me?” So, being a very beginner programmer who still finds it daunting to move my blog from Jekyll to Hugo—I’m almost done with that—and can only print stuff with Python, that didn’t work out so well. I’ll have to actually read through the Elisp Intro to get better at that.

Then, I thought I’d look into the Org manual and see if there was a way to “count” checkboxes. And there is <https://orgmode.org/manual/Checkboxes.html>!  So, I can just put [%] on the heading where I want the grade, and my goodness, it works! I no longer have to manually grade the assignments! That saves so much time for me, and now I just wish the world was in Org-mode so I could just manage everything else through its power as well.

Now, I do wish I could share these “self-grading” performance tests with others. I’ve tried exporting one to HTML, but the grade doesn’t seem to update automatically like it does in Org-mode. And no, other teachers around me are *not* going to switch to Org-mode, let alone Emacs, for this. So, does anyone have any ideas for how this can be shared? I don’t know any Javascript or anything.

So, thanks so much to the Org maintainers, and the community that keeps Org alive. It’s allowed me to write and share so much, and soon I’ll be using it even more with Hugo.

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