Is anyone here already working in K-12 education?
Interested in working on an open source K-12 gradebook?
I have a K-12 school gradebook application written in Delphi Pascal with Borland BDE.
It's freeware, available on the net. (
http://www.habarbadi.com/gradebook) and from download.com and cnet.com.
I wrote for and with a teacher friend. We worked on it till it became "commercial quality". (her words, not mine ;-))
It has been downloaded by several thousand teachers, according to the counters.
Could this application help create jobs for programmers?
Could it help promote awareness of open source software in this sector of the general community?
Most K-12 schools currently don't employ programmers, but perhaps they should.
The application needs:
* conversion to Free Pascal/Lazarus
* cross-platform compilation
* upgrading the database to Firebird
* to allow data access from the school web site, so parents can review grades online
* a flexible reporting system
* language translations
* and other stuff...
What would WE get out of it?
Since this is not a generally useful programmers application or toolset, it does not offer the programming community the benefit of tools like Synapse, FlameRobin or GIMP.
Because the field of Education is not wealthy, it is not an application that can be offered in two versions (Community & Enterprise).
Therefore, we have to ask - how can the programming community and Free Pascal programmers benefit? :roll:
A good grade-book is a much needed application. There is definitely a market for one. There are currently dozens of nice grade-books out there, but most schools don't use anything, maybe spreadsheets. There is certainly no compelling grade-book application for schools.
Could a free open source grade-book be a seed to create IT jobs in K-12 schools? Schools are pressed to make elaborate reports to allow parents and administrators and the local and regional governments to evaluate their students progress.
A nice day job in the local school with a light work load preparing exquisite reports would be great and also allow programmers to work on their own stuff on the side. Every school ought to employ a programmer! :idea:
Giving schools an opportunity to have an open source system with a superb electronic grade-book and student reports (written in Free Pascal) might ease the path to other Open Source resources and help mass school board conversions to Linux, Apache, etc. I'd also like to see the grade-book included in Linux distros, especially in SkoleLinux - the school version
http://wiki.skolelinux.no/
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