RE: [school-discuss] Web-based IEP application

["Laffey, James M." <LaffeyJ@missouri.edu>]

Ken,
Sounds like a great idea. While reading your message I was wondering to what extent the IEP application should be situated in a process of discussion, maintaining documents, etc.  I'm just guessing (since I have never done IEPs) that they are things that you develop overtime and include several people, including parents, teachers and specialists.

If so ....you might look into how your application could be developed as part of an existing open source intranet system, that might provide file sharing, discussion boards, chat tools, etc.

There are several good, usable system that you might explore.

You could look at our web page sns.internetschools.org to learn about ours, but there are others as well that might help you build a powerful system.
Jim Laffey




> ----------
> From: 	Ken Russell
> Reply To: 	schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net
> Sent: 	Thursday, April 11, 2002 12:10 PM
> To: 	schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net
> Subject: 	[school-discuss] Web-based IEP application
> 
> Hello Schoolforge people,
> 
> Our organization (Northwest ESD #189 in Washington state, USA), and several 
> school districts within our service region, are beginning a project to 
> develop a Web-based IEP application.  The "IEP" (Independent Education 
> Program) is a U.S. federally mandated (although state implemented) set of 
> policies for special education students. Our goal is to have this 
> application ready to put in production use by September.
> 
> This project was initiated by a school district contacting our agency about 
> the possibility of developing the application.  We searched the net for an 
> existing program that managed IEPs.  There are several commercial software 
> products available on the market for IEPs. Not surprisingly, they are 
> remarkably expensive.  We where not able to find any Open Source 
> applications that would fulfill this need.
> 
> The application would probably be appropriate to any state educational 
> agency in the U.S., although the surface features might need to be adapted 
> for the peculiarities of specific state implementations(for example, 
> different terms used for the same data, interfacing with existing state 
> databases, etc.).
> 
> We have just started working on the basic design of the application and 
> specifying what it will do, we have not started coding.  So far the basic 
> functions of the application will consist of a database to store the data, 
> a web interface for completing the forms, and several reports that will be 
> generated from the data.  We plan to develop the application using PHP, and 
> Mysql as our platform.
> 
> We would like to hear from you if you know of other educational 
> institutions that might be interested in this kind of application, or if 
> you know of any existing projects with a similar purpose. We are also 
> looking for funding sources for this application (grants, donations, etc.) 
> that will help pay for programming and design time.
> 
> If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, please contact us:
> 
> Ken Russell, Web Applications Designer, krussell@esd189.org
> Chris Francy, Web Applications Engineer, cfrancy@esd189.org
> Information Systems Support Center
> Northwest Educational Services District
> Mount Vernon, WA 98273
> 360.416.3490
> 
>