The deadline for applications for schools to become official "SchoolTool partners" was on November 30th. More details of this program are here:
http://www.schooltool.org/about-schooltool/releases/schooltool-project-seeks-partner-schools Just to recap, I felt that we should limit this to a small number of schools (four in the Northern hemisphere, four in the South), so that we con provide a high level of (primarily remote) support with our limited resources. If I was more ruthless, I would have used this as more of a marketing opportunity and widely solicited as many proposals as possible, but I couldn't justify coaxing 150 people to spend a few hours applying for one of four slots. So I limited my promotion to the SchoolTool mailing list, website and the Debian-Edu list, and I think we've got a fine selection of schools without wasting too many people's time. There were 12 candidates from seven countries. 10 from the Northern hemisphere. Five from the US. This doesn't count schools working with the Shuttleworth Foundation in South Africa, so the relative lack of candidates from the Southern hemisphere isn't a problem. The selection process felt a little perverse, because while this project generally exists to serve schools with little technical support, for this initial year of testing we need schools with a high capacity to support their own deployment and communicate effectively with us over email and IRC. The selection of schools in the Northern hemisphere ended up being quite straightforward, so I feel comfortable announcing those here. I need to talk to folks at the Shuttleworth Foundation before making a final decision about schools in the Southern hemisphere, and at that point I'll issue a press release, etc. I want to thank everyone who took the time to apply. Here's an introduction to the selected schools. I know more about some than others, but I'm going to be learning a lot more about all of them soon. SchoolTool Partner Schools 2005-2006 (Northern hemisphere) ========================================================== High Tech High, San Diego, California, USA -- http://hightechhigh.org ---------------------------------------------------------------- High Tech High is our flagship partner. HTH is actually a group of two high schools and one middle school serving a diverse population of 1500 students in urban San Diego, California. They are what's called "charter schools," meaning they are publically funded by administratively independent. High Tech High is very well known and well regarded for both its design and its use of technology. If they can successfully deploy SchoolTool across their schools this summer, it will be an immense boost to SchoolTool's credibility in the US. They have a long-standing interest in using an open source SIS, and two years ago they worked with Tim Mansfield to develop a spec for an open source SIS, but the subsequent development never happened. We've got their spec now and use it as a reference for SchoolTool development. They are currently using the PowerSchool SIS from Apple, including a gradebook client. High Tech High will probably be the most difficult of our partners to serve. They're the biggest by far, they've got years of data to migrate out of their current system, and they've got high expectations. It is a good challenge. Science Leadership Academy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA -- http://sla.fi.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Science Leadership Academy is a new public high school opening in partnership with the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They will start next year with the 9th grade class and add a new cohort every year until they've got a full 9-12 school. It is part of the Philadelphia School District (not a charter), but has a mission to innovate (and is the sibling of the Microsoft "School of the Future"). The principal of SLA is Chris Lehmann. Chris is a former technology coordinator, teacher and administrator at The Beacon School in New York (http://beaconschool.org). At Beacon, Chris was a pioneer (and an inspiration to me!) in not only using open source software, but writing applications and teaching students to write applications for their school, including a web portal to facilitate communication with parents and assessment tracking applications. As principal of a new school Chris won't have time to write code (he's a PHP hacker anyhow), but his experience will be an invaluable resource for our team. SLA will start small and doesn't have any legacy systems, so that's good. We will probably have to share data with some of the city's systems, however, which should be a challenge. Chris is particularly interested in developing more portal features and Moodle integration, so he should push us in interesting directions. Smith Leadership Academy, Boston, Mass., USA -- http://www.smithleadership.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Smith Leadership Academy is a public charter school serving "middle school" aged students, meaning grade 6-8 or roughly age 11-13. Our contact at Smith is Keith Donaldson, a math and robotics teacher with extensive experience in IT. I decided to squeeze Smith as a third US school (bringing the Northern hemisphere total to five) due to its proximity to myself and Stephan Richter. Like High Tech High, they are currently using PowerSchool, so that should help us figure out the migration issues. St. Ives School, Haslemere, Surrey, UK -- http://stiveshaslemere.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- Breaking from our pattern of urban public secondary schools in the US, St. Ives School is an independent day preparatory school for girls aged 3-11, with about 150 students. I'll just quote the next bit from their application: "The school's deputy head, Miles Berry, will be the principal technical contact. Miles' academic background is as a Cambridge mathematician, but he's been involved with school IT for over ten years, and is the school's information systems manager. Miles has led the way in the UK in the use of open source server software in prep schools, and has implemented reliable and secure IT infrastructure at St Ives and in his previous post. He is a Member of the British Computer Society and sits on the Society's Schools Expert Panel and e-learning working party. He is a MirandaNet Fellow and sits on Becta's technical and practitioner learning platform stakeholder groups. He has conducted academic research on school management information systems for an MBA in educational management, and has been commissioned by NAACE to write an article on school MIS for the February '06 edition of their Computer Education journal. Miles has recently been announced as the winner of the 2006 Becta ICT in Practice award for primary teaching, in recognition of his pioneering use of the Moodle virtual learning environment to support the primary curriculum. A summary evaluation of this work is available online at http://www.worldecitizens.net/ftp/Primary%20VLE.pdf. Whilst not, yet, a Python expert, Miles has some skills as a web-designer and is a quick study; he would be happy to make some small contributions to SchoolTool development work." Sounds good to me. Currently they are using a hodgepodge of databases, spreadsheets, paper and Moodle to manage their data. Ecole primaire La Futaie, Watermael-Boitsfort, Belgium ------------------------------------------------------ La Futaie is a primary school in Belgium where longtime SchoolTool mailing list member Nicolas Pettiaux's children attend and where he handles IT and teaches some computing lessons. Nicolas has actively promoted the use of free software in schools for over five years (since the old seul-edu days!), including implementing a thin client system at La Futaie. _______________________________________________ Schooltool mailing list [email protected] http://lists.schooltool.org/mailman/listinfo/schooltool
