Re: [school-discuss] Creating the "Killer App"

[Matt Jezorek <matt@bluelinux.org>]

Good ideas, good rant, and makes sense. Now just because you can not compete 
with skyward. Just because your school might be moving away it could be *the* 
application that can go into other schools and start an open source movement.

Matt

P.S. If I can help you with anything on this let me know.


Quoting Chip <chip@force-elite.com>:

> Hello, I am a new person to this list.  My Name is Paul Querna, and I am 
> currently in 11th Grade at Mead High School ( http://mhs.mead.k12.wa.us ). 
> 
> Technology at my School and District ( http://www.mead.k12.wa.us ) is based
> 
> entirely around Windows 9X clients and Novell Based Servers.  Last Fall, our
> 
> school tried somthing new for technology, they had the students work on it. 
> 
> So, for one period a day, me and about 7 others work on various technology 
> issues at the school.  I already knew quite a large ammount of PHP and Perl
> 
> before this, and as such wanted to use my skills to create a fulley dynamic
> 
> high school website.  What then insued was a large struggle to get a Linux 
> based server installed so we could even use PHP (There is Perl for Novell, 
> but no PHP).  After getting our server an external IP, it took another month
> 
> to get the domain name right, and another month to get SMTP unfiltered.  To
> 
> say the least, we are still having difficulties coordinating with the 
> District Admins. :-)
> 
> For our website, I created the MyPHPSchool Project ( 
> http://www.sf.net/projects/myphpschool/ ).  It does a few nice things like 
> calendars, Web based Grades, Custom Teacher Home Pages (Teachers can edit 
> links.. add stuff, etc...).  However, this past month I have more or less 
> stopped developing all new features for MyPHPSchool.  Our District, as part
> 
> of Washington School Information Processing Cooperative (WSIPC)( 
> http://www.wsipc.org/ ), is moving to Skyward ( http://www.skyward.com ) for
> 
> everything this comming fall (See 
> http://www.skyward.com/News/Archive/Q201.shtml for more info ).  My simple 
> system cannot compete on the level of somthing like Skyward, so it would be
> 
> pointless for me to continue development.
> 
> This brings me to my biggest surprise.  There is no open source competitor 
> that is anywhere near competitive with the commerical products in this arena.
> 
> Browsing the Google Administration and School Management Directory ( 
> 
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Educational/Administration_an
d_School_Management/
> 
> ) you can see that almost all of the programs are commercial programs(Not a
> 
> _bad_ thing, just disapointing, not like I am a GPL/Linux Zealot or anything
> 
> :-) ).  
> 
> What I see, is that in years previous, school adminstration software was 
> specialized, ie one system for student schedules, another for Transportation,
> 
> another for attendence, and yet another for Grading.  What we are seeing now,
> 
> is the combining of all these into one product.  Open Source Programs are not
> 
> competitive with these one system products because it would take tweaking of
> 
> each to make them all work as one, which is somthing that most Administrators
> 
> do not have the time to do.  So they go for the more costly in upfront costs
> 
> in order to save time.
> 
> So where does that put us?  I think this is where open source *could* be the
> 
> most successful, in creating a one product solutioin, that can still 
> interface with anything else via various methods.  I have read the mailing 
> list archive on ZIS/SIF and EduML, and think that these could very well be 
> the key people need to bring open source to education (on the server side at
> 
> least) at levels never seen before.  
> 
> What I would like to help with is the very top level of this interface.  They
> 
> way I see it, the best way is to create a PHP, or Perl web based system, that
> 
> is _extremely_ data source abstracted.  So that it can pull its information
> 
> from anything, from a traditional database like mySQL, pgSQL, and Orcale, or
> 
> from one of the new XML based systems still under development(Perhaps even 
> have modules for both ZIS/SIF and EduML). The system should be able to do 
> every aspect of data movment the school will ever need, this means exstensive
> 
> output and input filters.  The one last thing I think that is most inportant,
> 
> is flexiability.  The system needs to be able to run on Windows, or Linux, 
> run in Frecnh, German or English as examples.  That is the key to widespread
> 
> adoption.  And that is how you create the Killer App, that will bring Open 
> Source to Education.  Create somthing so wonderfull, that is does 
> _everything_ a school needs to use the computers adminstration wise, make it
> 
> flexiable, and make it free.
> 
> --- Sorry for the long rant ---
> 
> - Paul Querna.
> 
> P.S. One more thing.  I volunteer to help do this "crazy idea(tm)".
> 




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