[school-discuss] Status of Engima gradebook project

[Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

I pulled this from Mike Eschman's latest article on Open Source
Schools.  He raises some very valid and important points.  If we
don't address them, I don't think this gradebook/student information
system project will fare any better than the ones that preceded it.
So I'd like to _strongly_ encourage the real,
currently-in-the-classroom teachers on this list to read this, step
up, and help out:

------------------------------

That brings me to the gradebook project. I am worried. The way this
was supposed to go, when i posted the storm recommendation for
DISCUSSION, I would be pelted with substantive responses (responses
about what to change or building on some other base), but, instead,
only one or two folks responded, NONE OF THEM TEACHERS.

The silence was (and is) overwhelming. Some good teacher need to
step forward and SPONSOR it. By sponsor, i mean a teacher should say
"if you do the work, my school will use it, and you will hear about
it when we have problems." i need this very badly, because the first
person account is always the most valuable because it is based on
observation, not conjecture.

Many technologist put method ahead of everything. They assume that
if modifications to software are required at any time after the
first clean compile, then the method used to produce that result was
somehow flawed.

I understand the comfort it brings to the soul, this idea that if
only you find that magic bullet, it will be right first time, every
time. But this belief is poisonous to dialog.

If this silence continues and we take it for assent, the gradebook
solution will be stillborn. if you're not around when a tree falls,
maybe the tree didn't fall. but if you write a program that doesn't
get used, then you can hear the boom when it hits the ground all the
way down here in Louisiana.

When I was studying computer science, i took a class in "writing the
novel". the teacher used a method book for plot construction,
texture, deep fill and so on. most of the student results were
well-ordered and lifeless. I fell back on musician's instinct. I
read good books and mimicked them. so I might take the morning
paper, pick out an article and rewrite it on the spot, in the style
of Herman Hesse or Joseph Conrad (for example). once it SOUNDED
right, THEN I would go into grammatical and stylistic analysis.

It's what Melville called the "whaleness of the whale ....

You just can't use a set of rules to breath life into an endeavor,
you have to put some heart into it. That doesn't mean success is
guaranteed, but it does ensure that success is possible. And kids
will smell that on you, upwind and eight city blocks away.

We'll be increasing the number of audio programming channels over
the next few months, and we will have a French and a Spanish
channel.

If teachers rise to the occasion, gradebook will be seeing quarterly
releases too. but right now, it seems the teachers have turned their
backs on us.

It's nice to talk to other programmers, but we don't really know
what is good and what won't work. and I'm not talking about choice
of software or coding style. If the code is stable and the user
interaction is acceptable and appropriate - then you have a winner.

I am going to light a candle and hope that before week's end
teachers will be telling us on the list why this "storm" needs the
following changes.


--
Doug Loss                 All I want is a warm bed
Data Network Coordinator  and a kind word and
Bloomsburg University     unlimited power.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Ashleigh Brilliant