Re: [seul-edu] Additions to K12Admin

[Tonnesen Steve <tonnesen@cmsd.bc.ca>]

On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, Jeff Waddell wrote:


> I would like to help with this.  I've been working on my own book tracker
> with php and postgresql for my own personal use in the last month.  It's
> not polished but it does work.  I've been keeping track of the books I've
> read on paper since '91.  Having the information in a database for means I
> can do things like see how many books by a certain author I have read over
> the course of my reading.  See if I've read all the books in a series.
> See how many books I've read in a given period of time.  This is useful
> and exciting to me, and I was wondering how I was going to release this
> code, since it would need user authentication and such to be useful to
> multiple people, and I really don't have time to investigate the proper
> ways to do that.  So anyway, how do I get started on finding out how to
> integrate my stuff into yours and get this functionality out there :)

I'd like to take a look at what you have, if possible.  Even just the
database schema would be useful.  K12Admin is written pretty exclusively
in Perl and uses Mysql for the backend, but that's certainly no show
stopper.  It sounds to me like your functionality exceeds even what I was
shooting for (mine was based on teachers having paper charts on the wall
in their classroom that they wrote the names of books each child read as
they read them).  I was thinking lately, though, that it might also be a
very useful tool for the teachers themselves to also track the books and
other materials that they are reading. 



> I would also like to have the storybook ability.  What I would like to do
> is scan in pictures from books and then read the text into sound
> files and type the text that corresponds with it into a text file.  Then
> either use bgsound or some type of sound plugin to get the pictures,
> sound, and text all delivered over the intranet.  I say intranet because
> these books are all copyrighted so I can only use them internally.
> However having the ability means we can do as you mention above to create
> our own books.  Both as children and adults.

Funny I never thought about sound.  Probably because of limited bandwidth
between schools here.  Our bandwidth ranges from 56K ISDN up to 512K cable
modems, so bandwidth preservation concerns are always high on the list.  I
also hadn't considered the possibility of having "pages" to the story with
pictures and text on each page.  The current implementation of my story
board just allows the students to submit one picture and one block of
text.  The idea of "pages" of text is interesting.  It would add a level
of complexity for the younger students that my story board was aimed at,
but it could possibly be made an optional format for older children.  I
like it. 


Steve Tonnesen