On Fri, 18 May 2001, Paul Taylor wrote:
Has anyone out there taught mysql et al to A level students? Is it possible? I am about to teach my AS students their second ICT project and was hoping I could do something interesting on Linux rather than the usual Access stuff. Databases are not my forte and my students are struggling to get D grade projects in Excel so something very accessible (no pun intended) would be nice.
Some ideas from a non-teacher (so please feel free to ignore): If you set up unixODBC then you can use StarOffice's StarBase tool to access the databases. This would then give you a setup with several levels of accessibility: a very Access-like interface via StarBase, direct SQL via the mysql command-line interface and also a web interface through PHP. This should give plenty of flexibility for exploring more interesting ways to use databases, without cutting you off from the ability to use a friendly, MS Access-like tool to access the data. Just a thought, Michael