Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-edu (225 mails)

["Alan Davies" <staff.asd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm not sure that 'free' is a good way to go here.

Administration is a mission critical area of school function.  As such it
can't possibly rely
on goodwill of volunteers to find bugs and solve them - or to test new
versions rigorously.

I am disappointed that the market is so dominated by a single supplier -
SIMS (which we
don't use - we use Phoenix).

In fact considering the high cost of SIMS I am surprised that there are not
more competitors
out there - but the reality is that users once familiar with SIMS (and
having heared of SIMS)
are not ready to migrate to anything else whether technically better,
cheaper - or free.

(A rather similar argument as to why Microsoft continues to dominate).

I would be much in favour of some industry standard SQL based database to
drive these
systems with suppliers providing mix and match module capability- but that
would require
specifications laid down by Department of Education and such a scheme would
end up being
more expensive than giving all schools SIMS, run years over due and not work
properly as users required at the end.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Duncan" <chris.duncan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <suse-linux-uk-schools@xxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2003 11:37 PM
Subject: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Free school administration software -
project has started


>
> Hi all,
>
> I have read messages on this list with interest over the last few months.
A
> topic, which is of interest to me, has been raised on several occasions,
> namely, the question of a free school administration software package.
>
> A project has now been started to produce such a package. It is at the
planning
> stage and has need of volunteers to help define the requirements of the
system
> and assist with the construction of it. I am posting to this list because
I am
> convinced that the most effective way to produce a free software
application of
> this nature is to engage the education community in it's development from
the
> outset.
>
> If you would like to become involved please visit this site:
>
> http://schooltool.sourceforge.net
>
> and subscribe to the mailing list.
>
> Regards
>
>
>
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>