School Profile
I am really impressed with the new Drupal installation profiles. I hope that they are a continuing trend in drupal. I would like to see a profile geared toward Schools because schools, grammar and high schools in particular, are usually the victims of poor websites. Often they are forced to build their own in house or hand it over to the district to manage. They are given spotty sites with long names with email addresses such as johnsmith@erskineacademy.pvt.k12.me.us. I think Drupal is the perfect solution for the underpaid, over worked Sys Manager of the local school district.
A profile geared to parent, student, administration, and teacher communication would be a god send. It would be made even better if there were a few modules created to track homework, grading, report cards, and school news and events. This would help schools avoid costly alternatives that use money they really don't have.
Truly, there is no group more deserving of such an easy installation profile than the school system. I'm not just saying that because I am a substitute teacher.
Thoughts on Modules:
Report Card Module:
A module that would track classes, homework, link to teacher profiles, over all grades for students as well as ending grades. The printer friendly version would be a printable report card that parents and teachers can view, but not the student.
Homework Module
Teachers could make assignments on the website, print out a student assignment, parents would see what assignments students owe, are pending, or past due, and teachers can classify as such.
PTC Module:
A module to help organize parent teacher conferences that allowed parents to select a time and date from given choices, and teachers could then approve the selections.
I realize that this is a big undertaking, and after I get my PHP learn on, I am going to try and tackle it as my first project, but I know that there are other people interested and was looking for some feed back.
groups.drupal.org
You may want to explore with others with a similar interest
http://groups.drupal.org/drupaled-distro
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
Serendipity
Hi Malcolm
About 18 months ago, my company built a prototype system which was designed to answer most, if not all of the issues you highlight - and some. Although we invested the significant amount of time in it as a commercial venture, I have not been able to do anything with it, and am currently looking at other uses for the work that was done. In any case, I always envisaged a non-commerical/low cost version for certain situations and am always interested in helping good causes.
The development was never completely finished to do all the tasks it was set up to (it's still a prototype) but it is a very good base, I think, for allowing 21st Century communications and sophistication to be implemented in schools to help all the stakeholders harness the power of the internet - and Drupal, of course. We even built an SMS Gateway which sends text messages to parents if a pupil skips morning or afternoon registration.... Click here for our demo site and e-mail me for a test account (there are different roles for pupils - even different year groups, teachers, parents, etc)
I have just posted to this forum (http://drupal.org/node/135357) a request for a freelance drupal expert/s to help me with NPO projects, one of the areas therein is schools, so maybe someone reading this would also be interested in taking our Drupal schools project further.
Since it's been a while since I immersed myself in Drupal, I'm off now to read about this Profiles business!
Arthur
imustard.com
Yup!
As Steven said, come on over, roll up your sleeves, and let's get this done.
Cheers,
Bill
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
Practice Test Module for skills and drills
I think a school portal-like site that connected all classrooms, schools and teachers/administrators would be awesome. In addition to the PTC, Homework and Report Card modules, I think the development of a "Practice Test" module would aument a school site and benefit students in the learning environment. This module would allow teachers to design practice tests in core subjects, post them to website (web access) and allow the students to take the practice test, see thier score, see which asnwers were incorrect, allow them to go back, retry, then submit their final responses. Sinc it's practice, they can work on areas of weakensses. The PT Module would keep track of which tests students take, generate a report/diagnostics and save them to Student Profiels so parents and teachers can track a students practice and work in certain areas.
Hence, the Practice Test Module is a one that I would like to explor with anyone or group serious about the development of it, within a school site based on Drupal.