My exciting project for this semester is high-school geometry. In addition to learning useful everyday terms such as orthocenter, I found out that students in our local public high school can check their grades in real-time via iPASS. In addition to showing grades on recent assignments, the web-based software helpfully forecasts the ultimate grade for the class. This forecast can change after any individual homework assignment is turned in or after any quiz. A student taking five classes, therefore, can log into iPASS almost every night and see a potentially different forecast report card. The software is pitiless. Though declared failure is rare in our snowflake society, after a disastrous quiz taken in September the iPASS system will calmly forecast an F for the semester.
[Back in 1999, we built a module of the ArsDigita Community System to manage the education side of the MIT Sloan School. Demonstrating the awesome creativity that happens when MIT graduates collaborate, we called this the “Education Subsystem”. The software could show the grades students had received on recent assignments, but not provide a forecast of the ultimate semester grade. We never considered the anxiety-producing potential of a system with real-time grades!]
Based on the meritless system of the new economy, it might as well forecast your entire life after a disastrous quiz.
Not that it matters so much, but iPASS is what we call our automated tolling system for tollways in Illinois.