DIY Lesson Monitor

[mark]

Have pity on a poor school

We can't afford lesson monitor, but really want to automate class registration - for every period through the day.

We're trialling PCs on every desktop, starting with one faculty, emailing to the registration person a list of absent students every lesson.
This is hard enough to monitor for just a few users, and will be impossible when everyone joins in.

[Currently students are pulled out of lessons to go around all classes to collect paper forms from teachers.]

Can anyone help me work out how to do this?. What we need to do is see at a glance who has returned the information, and a way for staff to enter a list of pupil names.

- any more than that and I think we're re-inventing the wheel. They can buy Lesson Monitor if they want the works.

I'm thinking a local [to the registration person] PC access database and web server [but am wary of problems with access]. Something dumped on a share would be perfect. Dunno erm ...help!

[ChrisH]

Hmm not quiete sure what you want but a web form that puts info into a MYSQL Database wouldnt be to hard to do. You would have to set up tables for students and forms etc before hand.

Alternatively a web form that emails the results?

[alan-d]

How about a spreadsheet located on a shared area accessible to Form teachers and admin staff only?

Or as already suggested - a DB of some description.

[u8dmtm]

A browser based solution connected to a database - MySQL for PHP, SQL Server Express 2006 or Access for ASP or .Net. This solution will allow multiple users to easily access the system, no client-side software required (other than browser) and you won't even need to set up drive mappings.

For the size of the service you will be running Access would work fine, not sure what you meant about "...am wary of problems with access..."

[mark]

Spreadsheet would only be accessible by one person at a time to write - and too much traffic will be needed at one time.

Gotta be a database of some sort. No time of course to set this up - gotta squeeze it in when I can. Was hoping there may be something already made that I could use.

Used the facile forms component in Joomla for the conference registration - thought I could easily make up something in that - but then would need to keep kids out.

Thanks for the help so far. Oh - u8dmtm - was talking about access being flakey - the info i'm using is not critical so could afford to lose it, but just puts me off access really.

[DMcCoy]

Registration and attendance monitoring is important and can lead to fun and games with HMI and Ofsted. Spend some money on it. There are new attendance codes from Dfes in the not too distant future too, and no afaik you can't have custom ones either.

[alan-d]

Spreadsheet would only be accessible by one person at a time to write - and too much traffic will be needed at one time.

Apologies - I was thinking more on the lines of One per form which could be merged by the admin staff. I agree a DB would be better - I thought you were looking for a very simple solution

[mark]

Merge - ooh - too difficult! :P

Yes I was alan - care to have another pop?