FreeMIS - suggestions for registration module please :)

[mark]

Just had a play with the FreeMIS demo and was impressed.

demo: https://demo.freemis.net/
home: http://project.freemis.net/
schoolsforge page: http://www.schoolforge.org.uk/index.php/FreeMIS

My school are particularly interested in per lesson registration and report writing. I emailed Robert Jones the developer, and he's very keen to get something working for me, as we need something a little more than email to the office when a teacher clicks absent. We've tried that and it's just unmanageable.

Robert asked me if I could put forward a specification for lesson registration, and I wondered if anyone could help with some suggestions here.

<edit>No one made any suggestions yet so I changed the title!</edit>

[webman]

Have you looked at School Tool? Not sure if it does exactly what you want but it's under the same umbrella.

[mark]

No I hadn't. Looks very similar.

[NetworkGeezer]

I wish the project well but we have to be realistic.

Schools in the maintained sector have to do a number of returns to their LEA and to the DfES. Whichever MIS used must be able to collect, present and export data in the required format.

In many cases the writing of termly reports has been hived off to standlone apps but for a general purpose UK school MIS we are stuck with

SIMS.net, Integris, Phoenix and CMIS.

It has a lot of potential.
I'd love to have a system loke this that we could just hook into without risk of being sued. If schools/LEA's spent a fraction the money that they spend on support contracts for SIMS/CMIS on the development of projects like this things would be a lot easier.

[NetworkGeezer]

Eh?

Russ, Chris, Ric_,Tony, DB

Can people post without registering?

[mark]

Apparently Lothian LEA are funding FreeMIS development this year as I understand it. Schools could save a lot of money like this. You'd still pay support but with zero s/w costs...

[russdev]

Eh?

Russ, Chris, Ric_,Tony, DB

Can people post without registering?

they cant now

We want to know who you are

Russ

[CyberNerd]

Eh?

Russ, Chris, Ric_,Tony, DB

Can people post without registering?

It was me - UberHaxxor Cybernerd.
Honestly - I don't know what went wrong :!:

[CyberNerd]

Apparently Lothian LEA are funding FreeMIS development this year as I understand it. Schools could save a lot of money like this. You'd still pay support but with zero s/w costs...

Fantastic, This could save LEA's a packet and also allow easy integration for web-apps like moodle for VLE's etc. If only all LEA's were so forward thinking.

[Ric_]

I was discussing this with Mark last night and if you are looking for a reporting app this is just the job. You could easily ignore most of the features in FreeMIS and just use this.

@NetworkGeezer: If you look at the quality of the project to date it really is going places. It makes you wonder why SIMS, etc. are so crap when they are being payed extraordinary amounts of money and this open source app receives relatively little.

I'm sure that FreeMIS could easily be improved to include the reporting features that you mention with minimal investment from the LEAs.

[mark]

This is the email I had from Rob Jones of FreeMIS:

what would you ideally want FreeMIS to be able to do with regard to lesson by lesson registration? If you could put together a clear specification, then I could look at implementing it, as this is definitely something that I want FreeMIS to deal with.

[CyberNerd]

we have

Absent
Late
Holiday (for all)
Medical
Illness
Study Leave
Work Experience
Other Authorised
Family hiliday
Part time student
Teacher absent
Enforced closure
Unauthorized absence
Educated off-site
exclusion

Becta also are drafting aspecification on MIS systems http://groups.google.co.uk/group/sf-...000055b43177ed

[mark]

Excellent - thanks dude!

[Geoff]

This is the email I had from Rob Jones of FreeMIS

I wonder if you can pursuade him to join these forums. I'm sure he'll get some valuable feedback.