Re: [seul-edu] Additions to K12Admin

[Jeff Waddell <jeff@smluc.org>]

Hello Steve,

On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, Tonnesen Steve wrote:

-->Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 12:15:52 -0700 (PDT)
-->From: Tonnesen Steve <tonnesen@cmsd.bc.ca>
-->Reply-To: seul-edu@seul.org
-->To: seul-edu@seul.org
-->Subject: [seul-edu] Additions to K12Admin
-->
-->
-->The talk of a homework database here recently got me interested in
-->developing some additions to K12Admin.  I've added three databases:
-->
-->
-->1.  My Reading List
-->
-->Students can track books that they have read.  They enter Title, Author,
-->Illustrator, Rating (currently a happy face, sad face, but will have a
-->four star system for older kids) a short review of the book, and
-->optionally a picture of the book, or some original artwork inspired by the
-->book.  Teachers can get a list of their students and how many books each
-->has read, and can also get a listing of the specific books a student has
-->read.  I'm using ImageMagick to convert the picture that gets uploaded
-->so the format doesn't really matter.  It can be Macintosh PICT, bmp, jpg,
-->gif, even a PDF document.
-->
-->I'm hoping to add this picture functionality to a story book web
-->application that I have as well where students can type in their original
-->stories and have them appear on a web page immediately (within the
-->district at first, publicly viewable after approval by a teacher).
-->

I would like to help with this.  I've been working on my own book tracker
with php and postgresql for my own personal use in the last month.  It's
not polished but it does work.  I've been keeping track of the books I've
read on paper since '91.  Having the information in a database for means I
can do things like see how many books by a certain author I have read over
the course of my reading.  See if I've read all the books in a series.
See how many books I've read in a given period of time.  This is useful
and exciting to me, and I was wondering how I was going to release this
code, since it would need user authentication and such to be useful to
multiple people, and I really don't have time to investigate the proper
ways to do that.  So anyway, how do I get started on finding out how to
integrate my stuff into yours and get this functionality out there :)

I would also like to have the storybook ability.  What I would like to do
is scan in pictures from books and then read the text into sound
files and type the text that corresponds with it into a text file.  Then
either use bgsound or some type of sound plugin to get the pictures,
sound, and text all delivered over the intranet.  I say intranet because
these books are all copyrighted so I can only use them internally.
However having the ability means we can do as you mention above to create
our own books.  Both as children and adults.

Contact me at jeff@smluc.org


Sincerely,

Jeff Waddell
--> 
--> 
-->2. Homework
--> 
-->Teachers can enter homework assignments which students can review.
-->Teachers can also enter either numerical or anecdotal marks for each
-->student and each assignment.  There is a rudimentary gradebook as well
-->that calculates averages for each assignment and each student.
-->
-->
-->
-->3.  Student Behaviour
-->
-->Allows staff and administrators to track behaviour incidents (good or bad)
-->for students.
-->
-->
-->None of this has made it into the public distribution of K12Admin yet, I
-->still have a fair bit of polishing to do on all three, but if you are
-->interested in any of this, you can see it in action at the demo site:
-->
-->
-->     http://k12admin.cmsd.bc.ca/
-->
-->
-->log in as demoteacher/demopass
-->
-->
-->Steve Tonnesen.
-->
-->
-->