Re: Ideas from the north...

[Matt Wimer <matt@cgibuilder.com>]

On Wed, Dec 09, 1998 at 11:29:06AM -0500, Pierre-Luc Simard wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> You've been talking about making a gradebook for a while now... Nice 
> Idea but, do we realy want that to be visual? I meen, yes it's look 
> like it's more user friendly but when you come to think about it most 
> teachers don't want 10 windows open at the same time for the simple 
> reason that they don't need that. Let me explain...
> 
> I've been working in a secondary school in Quebec (Thats would be the 
> equivalent of grade 7 to 11 in the English system). We had until a 
> few months ago DOS box everywhere. we used WordPerfect 5.1 and a 
> gradebook system made by "Coba". Everything was texte based, worked 
> fine and most teachers understood how the thing worked (not to hard 
> to understand texte menus). you pressed F7 to print your grade book 
> and select your printer. Anyway life was easy and simple. After that 
> we installed windows version of software (we received nice Pentium 
> 233Mhz) that's when life got complicated. Theachers continualy got 
> muixed up in the 5 or 6 windows that opened when they start the 
> windows version of the gradebook. they entered often got mixed up in 
> the numerous windows that openned etc.
> 
> So anyway... The onlything that I realy wanted to say is: If you 
> REALY want to make the thing VISUAL at lest try not to make it to 
> confusing for the everyday-teacher.

I am currently working on one.  After a teacher opens a class,
all user actions only effect that class.

a visual interface doesn't have to be complex, and if the gui
is designed correctly the user never gets confused.

--matt wimer