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Re: [school-discuss] School Admin Software

Hi Charles,

On Fri, 12 Oct 2007, Charles Cosse wrote:


Les, are there any other software that interface with your database?  I mean
stuff that other people wrote, but which cooperate with your OA conventions
and merge data from your database with theirs?
Not out in the wild. Since OA becomes the main source of student data (and is maintained in an up to date state by the secretary/ies, it is a very useful datastore. (ie. being always up to date, etc. and maintained by someone other than IT folks). We do export user information to other systems in a division context, but this is not a real built in interface. I have kicked around the idea of building an LDAP interface to give this a more generally useful form (rather than just one-off hacks). However, there has to be more interest for this to be pursued... 



I confess that I am, again,
thinking along the lines of my own personal experiments with data-recording
applications and recording student session data, to be merged with meta-data
about the school/class/district/etc.  It's not an exact science, but similar
data-mining potential exists to what Google, for example, records about you
when using gmail, etc.   There's ton's of info in there getting thrown away,
otherwise.   Anyway, are there any apps making "synergistic" use of your
data?
Currently, No. Most things are built within OA to date. One of my interests is the import of gradebook information into the OA gradebook from Moodle. For me, that would be useful. Any expressions of interest out there? (and willing to work with me to that end?) 

Thanks, Charles, for the insightful questions.

Les R.







Thanks,
Charles

On 10/12/07, Les Richardson <les@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Hi Daniel,


Les Richardson wrote:


Yes, I continue to toil alone in the pit of software development for
school admin software. And, yes, alone, little can be accomplished in a
short time.



You're doing great Les.  In Engineering you only get a maximum of two of

the

following three things: good, fast, cheap.  We'll give up fast. Note

that M$

does none of the three :-)


Thanks. Yes, agreed.


Say, it turns out that the middle school my daughter will be at next

year is

piloting TeacherEase this year.  Pretty pricey stuff, $65 to $90 per

teacher

depending on volume.  Here's what the school says they can do with it:

"You

can login and access your child's subjects, assignments, and progress.

From

time to time you may also receive email for good grades, missed

assignments,

behavior, etc."



Doesn't OpenAdmin do most of this too?


Yes, you can view (as the parent) their attendance, report cards, and
teacher gradebook (for your child's subjects) currently.

In order to add automated email's would be very simple. It's just that no
one has asked for it. I try not to build stuff nobody wants.

The other issue is that I work _with_ people. The development process is
an interative one. Someone asks for a feature.... I come up with some
ideas that fit in with overall OA objectives (which include simplicity). I
write some code, they test it; we make changes until they're happy. This
is then put into the updates area (or part of the next release).

I don't build to a spec sheet (even though that would look sexy and 'sell'
more software...) I could also make it look 'pretty' by using more
graphics (ala MS) and sell it that way. Howver, graphics are slow in a web
environment and folks on dialup would not get acceptable performance if
they were teachers working on their gradebook or doing their attendance
from home. It's all a tradeoff and I don't really have to make the
tradeoffs that commercial implementations must...

Let me know IF you want automated email (and it would really be useful to
the school and parents). It would increase the (already steep)
installation curve for OA since you would need an email enabled Linux/Unix
server.

I could easily add this to the demo site, if serious.


Les Richardson
Open Admin for Schools
http://richtech.ca/openadmin




 The last item, automatic email to
parents, is the only feature I think OA lacks, but is it on your

roadmap?

I'd like to offer the teacher who is coordinating the pilot the chance

to try

out OA as well.

Daniel

--
Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Georgia Open Source Education Foundation