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Re: [school-discuss] Web-based School Administration...



Thanks Tom/Dave,

My company does consulting/programming as well and we always put open source first. Right now I'm considering only open source options becuase whatever solution we implement will most likely have to be extended to support their specifics.

The school is a small, private school with a single campus and only a few hundred students. They have a very small budget for this project.

Thanks for the links to other options. They provide me with some good ideas for features that we should be looking for.
So back to the point, anyone know of any good open source packages for SIS or school administration?



Tom Adelstein wrote:

If anyone wants an open source application built instead of a closed source, proprietary one, consider contacting JAMM Consulting - http://jammconsulting.com and contact Neil.



dfrankson@infinitecampus.org wrote:

My company Infinite Campus http://www.infinitecampus.com designs
web-based student information systems (not open source). Which district, #
of students and state are you at?

A few other non-open source web-based systems:

* Powerschool http://www.powerschool.com
* Chancery SMS
http://www.chancery.com/solutions/features/chancerySMS4_0.html
* Schoolspace http://www.limitless.net/


There are many products that are "web-enabled" (where a terminal program can
be run in a browser), but I don't really count those. I have alot of
experience with many competitors' products and I can tell you the functional
and technical strengths and weaknesses. But, my opinion is biased, and I
wouldn't want to disrupt the email list with anything that could be
considered a sales pitch.

We use alot of open-source projects embedded in our software, but we haven't
yet ported to a full linux solution.

Dave


----- Original Message ----- From: "Micah Quinn" <mquinn@quinnteam.com>
To: <schoolforge-discuss@seul.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 3:31 PM
Subject: [school-discuss] Web-based School Administration...



Hello all.

I've been doing some searching for a web-based school administration
program using the software resource listings on schooforge and other web
sites. I've evaluated several of the applications and found only a
couple to be really up to speed for production use.

NOTE: My notes/comments regarding the following applications are not
intended to offend the developers/supporters of those applications.
It's simply my naive comments based on only a couple of hours of
research. Apologies in advance for anything mis-stated. :-)

I've currently looked at:

* OpenAdminForSchool - The demo shows a very rough interface and
very few complete features.
* DistrictDNA - Install was complicated and it's not a web-based
application.
* Educational Information System - Nothing but a framework so far;
nothing really usable yet. Looks like some great goals though.
* Ionia Student - In planning stages
* LISSARD - Again, some nice ideas, but mostly boilerplate for more
complete features in the future.
* MainBrain - Really nice commercial application, but I've no idea
of the pricing. It looks like expensive software.
* SchoolMation - Very nice software and extremely reasonable in
pricing. Anyone out there used this?
* MyPHPSchool - Again, fairly incomplete and no real examples to demo.
* OpenSIS - Sounds promising, but the site "opensis.org" is down.
Anyone use this?
* OpenUSS - Has some outstanding looking concepts for making
material available, but doesn't seem to encompass administration
tasks. (Grades, student info, etc.)

Anyways, you get the idea. Is anyone on this list currently using
web-based software that is of production quality and will do some or all
of the following:

1. Student Information (name, age, address, phone, parents, photograph,
etc.)
2. Grade Tracking (Transcripts, report cards, class averages, etc.)
3. Attendance Tracking
4. Emergency Contact Information
5. Course Tracking
6. Generic Form/Document Tracking (Permission slips, parent
communication, etc.)
7. Internet News Publishing
8. Secure Parental Internet Access

Thanks for any feedback you can give.