MkII Posted May 17, 2006 Posted May 17, 2006 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. No one made any suggestions yet so I changed the title!
webman Posted May 17, 2006 Posted May 17, 2006 Have you looked at School Tool? Not sure if it does exactly what you want but it's under the same umbrella.
NetworkGeezer Posted May 17, 2006 Posted May 17, 2006 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.
Guest Posted May 17, 2006 Posted May 17, 2006 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 Posted May 17, 2006 Posted May 17, 2006 Eh? Russ, Chris, Ric_,Tony, DB Can people post without registering?
MkII Posted May 17, 2006 Author Posted May 17, 2006 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 Posted May 17, 2006 Posted May 17, 2006 Eh? Russ, Chris, Ric_,Tony, DB Can people post without registering? they cant now We want to know who you are Russ
CyberNerd Posted May 17, 2006 Posted May 17, 2006 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 Posted May 17, 2006 Posted May 17, 2006 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_ Posted May 17, 2006 Posted May 17, 2006 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.
MkII Posted May 18, 2006 Author Posted May 18, 2006 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 Posted May 18, 2006 Posted May 18, 2006 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-uk-discuss/browse_thread/thread/56860bc1b3ceaa0/b7000055b43177ed?lnk=st&q=Information+Management+Platform+Functional+Requirements&rnum=1#b7000055b43177ed
Geoff Posted May 18, 2006 Posted May 18, 2006 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.
jonesieboy Posted May 18, 2006 Posted May 18, 2006 Hi there - I have been persuaded Timing is not great, as I am about to go away for a week's outdoor ed with a bunch of 14yr olds. Briefly - thanks for the invite! Yes, I agree that FreeMIS cannot possibly compete with SIMS yet. My intention with FreeMIS was to set up an Open Source project, get the ball rolling then sit back as hordes of developers piled in to do all the work for me. Alas, I'm still waiting, 2 years later, for anyone to help me code FreeMIS. I never imagined that I would even be able to get as far as I have without help. East Lothian funding is still "under discussion" I'm afraid. I'm optimistic, but the education budget is in tatters this year. Nothing that SIMS does is rocket science. Collating data and exporting it in a specified format is not hard. It's just that SIMS does a LOT of things. If FreeMIS is going to be successful, then it needs to harness the power of Open Source. many hands make light work etc. I was close to joining the SchoolTool team a year ago, but I got cold feet when I looked at their source code. Zope is pretty heavy stuff, and they seem to be making very slow progress given the number of professional developers they are paying. FreeMIS looks like SchoolTool because I nicked their css! (with Tom Hoffman's blessing!) Robert Jones
MkII Posted May 19, 2006 Author Posted May 19, 2006 A big old welcome to Edugeek jonesieboy! So glad to see you here Thanks for the info. Wonders if there'd be anyone here that could maybe lend a hand...?
webman Posted May 19, 2006 Posted May 19, 2006 Wonders if there'd be anyone here that could maybe lend a hand...? Yes
Geoff Posted May 19, 2006 Posted May 19, 2006 Sure. Do you have a bug/feature list anyplace I can hack away at?
jonesieboy Posted May 19, 2006 Posted May 19, 2006 Sure. Do you have a bug/feature list anyplace I can hack away at? Ahh..not really :oops: I have become so resigned to doing this on my own that I haven't written up this kind of stuff. But now that I have the chance of some help, I make this a top priority. Maybe a fortnight to come up with a to-do list longer than your arm I'd like to reassure you that FreeMIS is not the kind of Spaghetti Code nightmare that you might imagine from a one-man project. Ruby on Rails enforces strict separation of database, business logic and presentation layers, and comes with an integrated testing suite. Thanks for the offer of help, BTW
Geoff Posted May 19, 2006 Posted May 19, 2006 I am well aware of Ruby on Rails coding standards. Seeing as you use sourceforge. Just put things in the feature/request trackers there.
jonesieboy Posted May 19, 2006 Posted May 19, 2006 I am well aware of Ruby on Rails coding standards. Seeing as you use sourceforge. Just put things in the feature/request trackers there. Will do - you know Ruby on Rails already? Awesome Can't wait to get going with this when I get back in a week's time. Robert
Geoff Posted May 19, 2006 Posted May 19, 2006 Will do - you know Ruby on Rails already? Awesome Yes. I wrote a turn based space stratergy game to learn it.
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