Every teacher should have their own genie

And by genie, I mean software developer.  Ben (our CTO who programs everything, does graphic design, etc.) and I meet every Monday (I teach full-time) to discuss changes and plans for the week.  Usually there is some feature we want to tweak or add from my own experience or suggested by a user (thank you!).  As a teacher, thinking of improvements to the software my students and I use is nothing new.  Those ideas go nowhere, but with DocentEDU it's completely different.  Here's an example:

Me: "A teacher asked if students could just enroll themselves in the class instead of her typing in their emails." (an older version of DocentEDU)

Ben: "Is that really a big deal?"

Me: "This teacher has around 200 students so it's a near impossible task."

Ben: "Oh, okay. I have an idea on how to do that, give me a minute."

I go get some more coffee.

Ben: "Check this out.  Students enter an 8 digit alpha-numeric code and then they are enrolled in the class"

Me: "Seriously?!  It's done?  That's amazing!  Can you add a button that makes the code really big so I can just show it on the projector in my classroom?"

He types what seems like far too few buttons to make this happen.

Ben: "Sure, like this?"

I have the same reaction as before.

Me: "8 digits is a lot, I know some of my students are going to mistype it and get frustrated, can we make it 4?"

He nods his head and POOF!

Ben: "Done."

That is why every teacher should have their own genie (software developer).