On 6/14/06, Dan Hanks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Wed, 14 Jun 2006, Steven H. McCown wrote:
> I like this discussion -- civil and yet in disagreement...cool.
Indeed :-)
>
> Dan Hanks made the following basic points (summarized):
>
>> 1) parents can update what their kids have done
>
> This is not applicable to Boy Scouts, btw. Only Scoutmasters do this --
> with 1 or 2 merit badge exceptions.
>
Good point. However, it _is_ applicable for Duty to God and Cub Scout
tracking, in which parents can take a large role in the tracking. My
personal "itch to scratch" was a centralized system for DTG tracking.
I'd like to add that even in Boy Scouting, it's not *just* the
Scoutmaster that can and will update what kids have done. The
discussion so far almost seems to be based on the supposition that the
Scoutmaster runs the troop as some lone wolf, but that is entirely
untrue. He (or she, outside the church) has at *least* one Assistant
Scoutmaster and a whole Troop Committee, and in the church a whole
Young Mens Presidency and Bishopric, that will all be interested in
viewing boys' progress, and yes, updating requirements passed off.
Plus, the value of parents and boys being able to log on and view
their own progress is huge. If the data is all on the Scoutmasters PC
that won't be possible.
Even more, I could imagine a system (this is getting really ambitious)
where Merit Badge Counselors can enter when a boy has passed off
requirements for the specific merit badge they are working on. They
wouldn't need access to any other information about a boy, but just
that one merit badge.
The big value-add over Troopmaster or any other existing scout
software, besides what being Open Source adds, would have to be the
collaboration aspect. Keeping everyone on the same page was a huge
headache for me as scoutmaster.
Bryan
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