On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 9:07 AM, Neil Manson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Tom > > Thanks very much for the reply. One of the things I love about many Open > Source projects is the developer responsiveness. > > Another thing I love about Open Source is the ability to get involved. > > I'm not sure if I should be sending this directly to you, or to the list. If > you think the question below should rather be on the list, please let me > know and I will resent, and you could rather answer it there. > > We are a small school that is part of a larger IT Faculty. Our students are > required to complete a year long (actually 2 x 13 week semesters) Industrial > Experience project as part of their final year. They usually work as a group > of 6-8 students per project. How would you feel about one (or more) of those > groups working on SchoolTool? I'm not exactly sure of how these projects > run, as I'm not responsible for the course, but you would need to act as the > client, give the students a specification of what is required (or work with > them to develop a spec.), and then give them some guidance as the project > progresses. You would also need to give us some feedback on the quality of > the work produced at the end of the project, to assist us in assessing the > students. > > What are your thoughts on this idea?
This is almost exactly what our experience has shown us works. The most successful part of SchoolTool is CanDo, a competency tracking application which was created by secondary school students and teachers in Arlington, Virginia. The close relationship between developers and teachers makes all the difference. Notably, the gradebook is more something we cooked up in relative isolation, and it shows. The important thing would be that rather than "SchoolTool" acting as the client that you worked with local users as the client. We could support and evaluate the technical side, but we'd want you to have local users -- perhaps even yourself! So yes, I think this is an excellent idea. --Tom _______________________________________________ Schooltool mailing list [email protected] http://lists.schooltool.org/mailman/listinfo/schooltool
