schooltool-developers team mailing list archive

[Jen Overgaag <jovergaag@xxxxxxxxx>]

Comments in line.

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Alan Elkner <aelkner@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> Having not heard from Dave this week, I want to assume that no news is
> good news on the cando front.  Am I right in being so optimistic?
>
> Anyway, I have been doing an analysis of the FET system and the
> various files you sent us, and I'd like to summarize my findings and
> ask some questions.  First of all, I noticed that although FET
> expresses the various concepts like groups and subgroups differently
> than schooltool does, I see a predictable and reliable mapping between
> the two, and it will be no problem to write import scripts to get your
> data into schooltool (I've already begun this work).  The only FET
> feature that schooltool does not support is groups (we call them
> terms) that overlap years.  I don't believe that you need this
> feature.  Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing that a
> single year term would work for you.
>
[JO]Yes you are correct, a single year term works for us.

>
> The question of student enrollment into classes seems to be addressed
> in FET by aligning students into what they call subgroups  (we would
> use schooltool groups for this) and enrolling the entire subgroup into
> a set schedule of classes.  That assumes that students will always
> enroll in classes together in this predictable manner which schooltool
> can support but does not require.  The one thing that I didn't notice
> in the set of xml files that you sent us is the actual membership of
> any student in any of these subgroups.  Could you please send us an
> xml file example of a list of actual student names and their
> membership in one of these subgroups?  That will allow me to create an
> import of the actual students into schooltool and the classes they
> belong to.
>
[JO]  From what I've seen FET does not deal with individual students.  It
only manages the groups and subgroups and will never ask you to enter the
names of individual students.

>
> Reading your FeatureDetails document, I can see that you will be glad
> to take advantage of schooltool's groups for not only class
> enrollment, but also things like club membership and sports teams and
> the like.  It's convenient that schooltool offers this group feature
> independent of class enrollment, and you can feel free to have
> teachers and students belong to any arbitrary number of independent
> groups.  Any connection between a student's membership in a group such
> as '8b' in schooltool and their enrollment in the set of classes that
> students in '8b' attend is purely arbitrary from schooltool's point of
> view, and as I said before, we can support making that connection.
>
[JO] Perfect.   That's just what we need.

>
> You mentioned using groups for grade levels as well, and a subgroup
> such as '8b' suggests to me grade level 8, subsection b.  Although you
> wouldn't have found documentation for grade levels in schooltool, we
> will have support for them in the custom schooltool package that we
> will be making for you.  Eventually, that support will end up in
> schooltool core, but you will be amongst the first users of that
> feature in your custom package.
>
[JO]  OK that's fine.  For the most part we group students according to
their subgroup since they are categorized and spend most of their time with
8b.  But there are a few classes and a few instances that they will be
scheduled and addressed as a grade 8 class.  Option classes, for example,
and the UCZ exam export will be done only for grade 9 and grade 12.  As long
as we have a way to group them based on either 8d or grade 8 we're happy.

>
> One last question for now: are you intending to move all your FET data
> into schooltool as a one-time thing, and then use schooltool from then
> on, or do you intend to use both together for the years ahead?  My
> analysis leads to the conclusion that you wouldn't need FET anymore,
> but I could have missed something.  Please advise.
>
[JO]Assuming SchoolTool will continue to only support calendaring and not
timetable generation we will need to continue with FET.  The timetable
changes drastically every term and there are minor changes every couple of
weeks (due to the high staff turnover).  I had it in my mind that we would
create a new timetable using FET every term, import, then just make the
minor adjustments as teachers come and go within the Schooltool calendar.

>
> Thanks,
> Alan
>