schooltool-developers team mailing list archive

[Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman@xxxxxxxxx>]

Had a good meeting yesterday in Richmond with VA CTE and the Autism
Center people.  Everyone seems excited and on the same page.  One
takeaway from me is that the Autism Center folks seemed sharp enough
that if there'd been another existing tool for this kind of competency
tracking that was affordable for a project like theirs, they'd have
found it.  I can't really explain why this market niche seems
relatively open, but when we have the new version done, it may give us
an opportunity for growth in the US, at least in programs slightly
outside the main stream of K-12 schooling.

We also went over the importers in detail with Glenda.

Various notes:

* we should make boolean score system entry easy (toggling)
* the autism and CTE reports should be very complimentary in filling a
wide span of cases, since the first is very focused on individual
students and how all teachers are addressing various skills (i.e.,
which specific skills aren't we teaching well) while CTE is more
focused (but not exclusively) on teacher and class reports (i.e.,
which teacher's students aren't reaching the standard).
* we need to be able to search from the group index page
* we should display the right date format in view views even if we
can't really in edit views
* there is a bug in the student & teacher import of custom
demographics, and generally the import views need to be more explicit
about looking at headers rather than guessing based on position.
* we should probably pre-screen import worksheets for data types and
give a very explicit error message if they aren't what we want
(usually text, unless we want a date), including explaining how to
change the cell format in the spreadsheet.
* we need to work on the new section import some more.  In particular
we're bumping up against what is practical have users use as an
initial import AND works as a round trip format for export/import.
* we should try just using the whole tertiary navigation space in the
skills gradebook as a kind of giant menubar, since the skillsets will
often have long titles and no short label.
* we need more tests for import/export.

--Tom