The My Grades tool enables students to see their own, personal Gradebook. In this course, in the What's New block, you can see that the instructor has recently graded two of the students' activities:

The instructor can also add a link from the student's Gradebook page to the course's main menu:

When the student views his or her Gradebook menu, the student sees all activities that the instructor has designated as "graded":

Notice the first graded item, Where did you waste water today?. This item is a thread in the forum called Your Water Inventory. Blackboard enables you to grade forum postings, blog entries, and wikis. You can use these social tools in your course, and make them part of the grade. When the instructor graded this item, the instructor left a comment, which you can see in the right column of the preceding screenshot.

Note the Due Date column for the assignment, Take an Inventory of Your Water Usage. This Due Date appears on the course's home page, as shown previously in the screenshot of the course home page. The exclamation point in the green box, on this item's line, indicates that the student has finished the assignment and it is ready to be graded. In Chapter 11, Grading Students, you will see how to locate only those items that are ready to be graded.