schooltool-developers team mailing list archive

[Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman@xxxxxxxxx>]

This is an annotated (my comments follow Alan's notes to himself) list
of pre-1.0 refinements, mostly to the gradebook, that Alan is going to
be working on the next two weeks.  They're in order of priority (the
numbers are priority rank, 1 being highest).

On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Alan Elkner <aelkner@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 1) add due date attribute to activities
>    this is required
>    filter activities by due date
>        'term (drop-down)  section (drop-down)  (checkbox) show due in
> past n (1-9 drop-down) weeks'

We looked at how other web gradebooks handle fitting the large number
of columns/assignments one will accumulate over the course of a term
(semester).  Right now, in SchoolTool's gradebook you can make
multiple worksheets (like a spreadsheet) and that gives you one way to
break it up.

The other method which seemed to give the most bang for the buck is
allowing filtering by due date, specifically a checkbox that says
"show activities due in the last (select #) weeks."  So you can
usually only look at what was due in the last week or two, or uncheck
it to grade older assignments.

Of course, to do this you need a due date attribute, which we
obviously needed sooner or later.  Post 1.0 we'll make the due dates
show up on student and teacher calendars.

> 1) add term drop-down to gradebook
>    if new term has a section with same course as current section,
> choose that section
>    otherwise, choose first in the list

Basically, instead of one potentially long list of all the
sections/terms you teach in a year (e.g., six courses x 3 trimesters)
we'll separate out term and section into separate drop downs.  Most of
the time teachers will be switching between sections in 1 term anyhow.

> 2) add header attibute to layout and have text box on layout view
>    5 char limit for headings
>        optional, use first five chars of activity title if heading not set

This is for report cards -- generally you just want like "1," "2,"
"3," as column headers for each marking period.  The manager just
needs to be able to set that.

> 2) detect unsaved changes in gradebook
>    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/155739/detecting-unsaved-changes-using-javascript

It is fairly easy to give a pop-up warning about navigating away from
a page with unsaved changes, so we'll add that.

> 2) worksheets should be tabs instead of drop-down
>    use lyceum tab css
>    use sample Data.fs tom gave me to check out lyceum journal
> (teacher002/teacher002)

This will make gradebook worksheets look and act more like spreadsheet
worksheets and the month tabs in the attendance journal.

> 2) add label attribute to activity
>    this is not required
>    explain what the label is for so that it helps the user in
> activity add/edit views
>    if the user doesn't enter one, take the first 5 chars of title

We need to let teachers set an abbreviated label for the top of the
column in the gradebook.

> 3) activity description goes below worksheet tabs and above column headings
>    when user changes cell, activity decription changes
>    when user mouses onto a heading, desc changes, mouse off, changes
> back to current activity's desc
>    body onload should set focus to first cell

Squeezing in a place to display the full description (actually, should
this be "title" not "description," Alan?) of an activity in the
gradebook.

> 3) Deploy Worksheet as link on school year
>    in this case, also set up layouts for the user
> 4) course title should be all courses, not just [0] and should add
> teacher name(s)
>    if teacher changes from term to term, just show both teachers
> after course name

--Tom