AttendanceFor the last few years, I have been using Attendance to keep track of my daily attendance needs. It is simple, clean, and it does it's job each and every time. Sure, there are many apps out these days that take attendance and even include photos of your students, but for simple task of knowing if a student is present, absent or tardy, Attendance is a quality application.

Attendance is a universal application for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It allows you to take and keep attendance records for your classes, meeting, or other events.

One of my favorite features of Attendance is that is quickly and simplistically connects to your dropbox account to sync information with the iPad version. This feature is wonderful because I often find that I am in the hallways taking my classroom attendance on my iPhone rather than my iPad. With just a few clicks, I can have a detailed breakdown of my students attendance emailed to me for further review.

When you first begin working with the application, you will be given several choices for inputting student contact information. Student names and class rosters can be imported into Attendance either by hand, by creating a simple CSV file, or by importing a group from your Address Book. Attendance will divide your roster by class. When you are ready to begin your class and take attendance, simply click on your class and you will be presented with each students name and a button where you can list your students as Present, Absent of Tardy. These fields can also be customized to fit the needs of your class. There is no limit to the number of classes or students Attendance will handle.

Attendance has several reporting features built into it as well. You can print, or email yourself a list by class, or by student of their attendance records. This report can be based on a select date range, or you can choose to report on the entire school year.

Student rosters are fully compatible and sync able with your Dropbox account. It is very quick and simple for me to keep a backup copy of all of my classes on Dropbox.

Features:

■ Multiple methods for importing names■ from a group in your Address Book■ pasting contents of a CSV file (email data and copy)■ importing a CSV attachment from your email (on iOS 3.2 and higher)■ importing a CSV file stored in your Dropbox/Attendance folder (see http://www.dropbox.com)■ from a CSV file stored on a web server■ manual entry of names via virtual keyboard■ use free trial version (or full paid version) of GradeA on a Mac to type in names

■ Unlimited number of courses and students per course■ sort students by last name or first name■ manually re-order students to match a seating order

■ Customizable attendance statuses■ defaults statuses: Absent,Present,Late,Excused■ can delete the defaults and add your own set of statuses■ each course/group can have its own set of statuses

■ Photo support■ automatically imports photo when importing from Address Book■ take photo on iPhone■ select photo from Photo Library (on iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad)■ optionally view photos next to name while taking attendance

■ Copy students from one course to a new course■ start a new course for a new term■ create a new course with same students

■ Notes for■ each course■ each attendance date for a course■ each student in a course■ each student per date

■ Optional TextExpander Touch integration for notes and composing emails■ requires separate purchase of TextExpander for iOS (available in the iOS App Store) from Smile

to get snippet expansion■ Email reports and compose emails to students

■ full spreadsheet report■ records for a day■ send email to all students in a course■ send email to students who are absent on a given day■ email individual attendance reports to each student

■ Backup your data■ backup/restore from your Dropbox account■ setting to email internal Attendance database (sqlite database file) to yourself■ place database file on a web server to import it back into Attendance

■ Choose random students■ choose individual students for answering questions■ create random groups of sizes 2-30 (and email group members to yourself)

■ Optional in-app purchase for transferring your data to other devices■ copy all data for the app between multiple iPhone OS devices over WiFi■ can also use free option to backup/restore to Dropbox to copy data between devices

If you are looking for a simple application to help you with your attendance needs, this is a great app worth looking into. For more information on Attendance, please visit their website at www.Dave256Apps.com

Attendance can be found online at the App Store for $4.99