schooltoolers team mailing list archive

[Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman@xxxxxxxxx>]

We are preparing a new SchoolTool release to coincide with the release
of Ubuntu Karmic at the end of October.

Brief overview of new features:

"Interventions" - this is a system we developed with Science
Leadership Academy in Philadelphia to manage and track interventions
taken with a student.  Basically, you can set up a meeting between
stakeholders (relevant teachers, administrators, parents, etc.), set
up a plan based on specific steps, and follow up to track the
implementation of the plan.

As part of "interventions," we're adding outgoing email notification
services to SchoolTool, which will initially only be used by
interventions but more widely integrated in future releases.

Permissions audit.  In the current version, who has permission to do
what in SchoolTool is rather opaque.  A new web will make this more
clear and comprehensible to users.  Changes in permissions will still
only be possible by changing configurations in the file system.

"Action button" user interface cleanup -- these are the gray buttons
across the top of most pages.

Many improvements to the gradebook and reporting system, including
more default reports.

Fixing group calendar sharing.


I've also started thinking about the priorities for next April's
release.  Here are my current thoughts:

* workflow to excuse absences in the journal
* homeroom and day absences in journal
* general navigation cleanup to eliminate dead ends
* adding incident reporting to Interventions to make it a complete
discipline system
* CanDo - track history of score changes (something VA doesn't
require, but would make CanDo more widely attractive)
* better integration of calendar with other components
* more reports

Of course, your ideas and suggestions are welcome.

--Tom