I've been using OD4Contact to manage student information and parent contact documentation for almost a year now. I'm very visual, so I appreciate the way it is formatted.

Because I am in a "continuous progress" district, and my team rotates groups of student between 4 teachers, I have a home room, a math class, and a communications class (lang. arts and remaining subjects). With each group having 20 to 26 students, each teacher sees around 60 students a day and throughout the year. That's a lot of record keeping. Most of these students remain with us from Kg. through 2nd grade, so a contact management program like OD4Contact is very practical. Even though the fields for entering information are geared more to business management, I simply choose the most important information I need and place it in the data base fields that are similar or in the ones that will place the information where it is most visible on screen and when printed out. Generally, I need to be able to enter the student's name, ID#, date of birth, the parent or guardian to contact, where they can be reached, and the dates and summaries of each contact throughout the year. Since this all gets turned in at the end of the year, OD4Contact's visually-pleasing and easy to read format are an advantage.

Record keeping can be tedious and frustrating. Getting to know new software can also be tedious and frustrating, and updates in any software program can come with bugs to be worked out. Just read through the "user discussions forums" of some operating systems and software programs. My own experience has been that throughout the year with OD4Contact, the people of Objective Decision have replied within 24 hours or less to my crash reports and emails sent directly to them with a genuine effort to work through any problems I may have, whether they are "bug-related" or just user error on my part.

Sometimes it's a matter of understanding each other, too. I became very frustrated when version 2.5 was first released because I tried to exchange my license key, which was not the right procedure, and when I tried to purchase the update with its new license key, I couldn't get the program to recognize me as a the owner of a previous license, which would allow me to buy the update at an adjusted price. After many tries that failed, I sent the company an email expressing my frustration. I'm sure they felt just as frustrated with me. I kept checking back and rereading their product information, though, because I really didn't want to start all over with some other program. Within 2 or 3 days, I read that a bug had been fixed to get the program to recognize owners of earlier versions and that the instructions for updating and exchanging license keys had been clarified. I tried the update again, and soon OD4Contact was up and running again.

Until the day comes that my district chooses a program or develops one that helps its teachers manage student information and parent contacts, I'll stick with OD4Contact. That's not because it's the only contact management program I know; it's the best one I know.

Susan S.