On 11/1/05, Nicolas Pettiaux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 2005/10/15, Tom Hoffman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Refining the overall scope of SchoolTool 2006 development, > > particularly in reference to support for 6-8 semi-formal test sites. > > Remember the target for a solid beta for this is April 2006. > > > > SchoolTool 2006 will include: > > > > The current calendaring/scheduling/resource management features (with > > further refinement and improvements, of course). > > > > More rigorous workflow based facilities for enrollment, promotion, > > adding courses & sections, and other interstitial bits of the > > underlying business logic of student and class administration. > > > > A very complete web-based attendance system. > > this is indeed very important. IMHO It should be very simple to use to > allow the teacher to use it at the beginning of the period to call the > students and register the absence directly in the system. > > What will be the statistical capabilities, if any are already > forecasted, of this system ? (this is important to know before the > implementation, to be sure it will be possible to extract the > important data). Will it be in particular possible to extract these > data, for example in a cvs format, to be imported thereafter in a > spreadsheet, the presence of each student by period every day ? > Further satatistical analysis could therefore be done either in the > spreadsheet or better be programmed to be proposed as options included > in schooltool.
Actually, this seems like the kind of thing that we don't have to decide now ;-) As long as we've got the data in our database, we can add new ways to import and export it fairly easily. I'm not sure how many tools for really rich data analysis will make it into SchoolTool 2006, but I think that will be a major goal for SchoolTool 2007. > These statistical information are the ones that would be used, in such > schools as mine for example, to send to the parents, every week, a > report of the attendance of their child (especially if he/she has many > absences). This could also be automatized: product an automatic report > every week for the children having more than N number of absences in > the past week a report to be sent by mail or email. An add-on feature > could be to prepare the email so that one human being sould just have > to check the mail before it is actually sent. Yes. > > A simple web-based gradebook for keeping "traditional" > > point/percentage based scores. This will not have a huge number of > > features, but should be straightforward and reliable with an nice user > > interface. > > this is important too. > > In France, there is a free software currently in developpement, GEPI > (see http://gepi.mutualibre.org/). It is a php/mysql application, that > is first designed as a gradebook and that will also include a absence > tracking system. > > The gradebook allows to print the "bulletin" (the official document > that is given to the student and his parent, following a schedule that > depends on the school but that is approximately either once every 2 > months or 4 times a year). > > This "bulletin" contains either numerical values or alphanumeric ones > (A = very good, >= 18/20, ...), but also some verbal comments by the > teachers ("eg: "you should focus on ...", "do you homework more > regularly ..."). These comments are compulsory in some schools to help > better the students to improve. > > I proposed last year to the developpers of GEPI to contact the ones of > Schooltool to consider some cooperation, but thay told me that they > have not a lot of time, do not use the same technology and also (if I > remember well) ... speak little English (that was a main problem). > Maybe we could try again to consider some cooperation, at least on the > functionnalities. Knowing that some companies in France are really > active with zope, they could be interested in proposing to the schools > a system based on zope. > > I volunteer to do the link if you want. Well, not to seem unfriendly, but it does seem to me that there's not much collaboration that can be done between projects using different programming languages (at this point in development, at least). I'd like to know their functionality in more detail in case we wanted to copy it, but that's not really the basis for a collaboration :-) > > Also, we anticipate CanDo being integrated into the core SchoolTool > > distribution as competency/outcome/standard based assessment tool. > > I think that a system to track the acquired competencies of the > students toward some required competencies (what is now done on paper > in Belgian primary schools) could be really interesting. Yes, CanDo is a very interesting project that will hopefully have wide applicability eventually. > One point that the schooltool system MUST provide is a very easy > backup procedure that allows to *both* store the backup data on the > machine of the person (administrator) using the browser (so that he > can take these crucially important data with him) or on a dedicated > location (for example locally on the server or better also by ssh on a > remore machine). This backup and the corresponding restore (done as > test that the backup is working prefectly well) should be automatized > also (eg: done every night, or every wekk ...) Yes. This is something the CanDo team has been working on as well. --Tom _______________________________________________ Schooltool mailing list [email protected] http://lists.schooltool.org/mailman/listinfo/schooltool
