Re: [seul-edu] Intro and Help please

[milo <milo@fullsite.com>]

Ben,
Seeing you have made some derogatory remarks about schoolmation I think that I need to reply as I am one of the developers.
1. Surely this board is not a place to be bashing other peoples contributions to the open source school market.
2. Over a hundred schools do not believe that it is hard to use. In fact all our reports indicate the opposite.
3. It is not hard to maintain as you say. We as the developers are easily maintaining and developing 2 versions of it now.
4. The one on the website for download is not indicative of the product anymore. It has been radically redeveloped as a result of feedback from the users. (none from you) A new open source version will go on the website in about 4 weeks. If you are on our mailist you will receive notification.
This new one has many fixes but it also supports any language. We have also invested a huge amount of time in creating useful electronic guides.

I think the most important thing to say however is that we accept criticism all the time as long as it is constructive (offer suggestions) we dismiss destructive critisicm for what it is.
As you will understand these things are difficult to make well. We are trying.
As you can also understand your efforts at this stage are a little hard to evaluate.
I applaud what you are trying to do. I also support it in spirit but have no time to help you. I will watch with interest your progress.
There is a place for all  of these contributions.  We are just a couple of teachers trying to help other teachers.

Myles O'Meara


Ben Efros wrote:

> Hi Mike,
> Sounds like you are looking for a scaled down student information system ( SIS ).  The OpenSIS project (www.opensis.org) is working on a very advanced and complete form of what you are seeking, but it is not even near being complete. Development on the software is still in infancy, but the software will be mostly written in PHP.  At this point, OpenSIS cannot do anything "productive" ... the project has at least 8 to 12 months of good development work to go.
>
> www.opensis.org outlines all the project's main goals (roughly) on the main page.  OpenSIS will allow teachers, school administrators, and students to all login and do specialized functions and view information applicable to them.
>
> The project needs more PHP developers at this point, but even if you do not have PHP experience I would encourage you to join the sis-devel mailing list (linked from opensis.org).
>
> I have heard that schoolmation.net might be able to help you, however it looks hard to use and looks to be quite a pain to maintain the system.  Schoolmation is probably the first open source student information system and it definately shows.  OpenSIS aims to be the second-generation open source SIS with many more features and much more support for LARGE schools and school districts.
>
> Ben Efros
>
> On Tue, 28 Aug 2001 21:44:37 -0700
> Mike Norton <mike@sierrapinesacademy.org> wrote:
>
> > Hello.
> >
> > My name is Mike Norton and I am the Administrator for a public charter
> > school called Sierra Pines Academy.
> >
> > I love Linux and im working on setting our school up to use all linux
> > servers for all of its admin work.  This brings me to the need for
> > help.
> >
> > I am desperately needing a package that will allow us to input grades
> > and produce report cards and transcripts.  This is something that
> > will be school wide rather than teacher centric.
> >
> > We also need a good system for the teachers to post assignments and
> > homework so parents can be involved.  And what would be wonderfull
> > is if these two systems would work together.  BUT the first one is
> > a MUST have.  I could write one using php and MySQL but I simply
> > do not have the time.
> >
> > Does anyone out there know of something we can use?
> >
> > Thanks in advance.
> >
> > Mike Norton
> > http://www.sierrapinesacademy.org
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >