robputt

Damn, Postal looks pretty damn good for a mass mailer. Obviously it has a lot more uses than the educational market but the fact this is self hosted and has decent tooling to manage IP reputation etc... could mean long term saving schools on mass mailing compared to AWS / MailGun / Sendgrid etc... I'll look into integrating it with OpenSchoolMail. Talking of which I reckon v1.0 should be ready towards the end of October, I'll probably need to get a demo together so people can check it out.

Ok, Just a quick update, I've been out for a few weeks on holiday, so far I have extended the models on the OpenSchoolMail app to allow groups of groups and I have started work on the admin UI (the UI bits are still in my personal branch and not PR'd to dev branch yet). Zag feel free to pull your other projects into the GitHub Org as well if you like (providing they are education related and opensource licensed of course). Did we have any update on getting a board configured on EduGeek for discussions surrounding this? Best Regards, Rob

Zag - Just added you to the GitHub org, you should have an invitation in your notifications :-). However remember you can contribute even when your not a member of the org by forking the repo, making any changes you like and then raising a PR against the upstream repo (I'll add instructions on how todo this to the docs). "Everyone who's not techy doesn't care if it's open source, that's only going to attract the tech people. If you're going to sell that as an advantage it's basically: You can pay us to run this, but if you ever decide we're doing a bad job, anyone else can legally run the same service, including yourself. If we don't provide new features you want, you can pay someone else/yourself to add them. All your data can be exported and all the formats are open, so your investment in time isn't wasted." @mavhc, totally agree this is how we should be selling it, the fact that feature requests are fed from the end user and there is freedom around how you run such software is a huge advantage. Like any opensource project if the project is worth anything people will build products around it, e.g. look at what's happened with OpenStack and so on, initially it was just a few projects and now it's running some of the world's biggest clouds, hopefully we can start with just a few projects but one day be a real proposition for schools either directly or via third party SaaS providers. Thanks for the comments and good wishes everyone.

Thanks elsiegee40, it's more of a collection of projects rather than 1 individual project, under GitHub I have registered them under a group called the "British Open Educational Software Group" I would suggest we use the same name for the sub forum and then we can discuss all the projects related to the group in the forum. Best Regards, Rob

Just wondering if this thread should be moved to a software section of the forum rather than General Chat? Mods?

Nice find here danbuntu! Looks pretty damn useful and so many data types covered too

Ok, I am going to spend a couple evenings getting a few small collaboration peices set up for the working group, e.g. a meeting calendar etc... and then I'll write a few docs and send some links. I think mostly it'll be centered around GitHub Issues, GitHub Projects and probably Slack & Google Hangouts, any objections / alternatives people would like to suggest before I get these in place? Best Regards, Rob

Hi David, As of yet I do not have a plan to extract data from school systems into some extensible portable format. However I do expect at some point we will need an extraction tool for SIMS atleast. I think it's fair to say that we will not be using a waterfall approach in achieving these projects, but rather an iterative approach. For the first release of the project I plan on having the following... a) A web based UI for registering students, contacts (parents / gaurdians), staff, groups of students and allowing staff to send emails to the contacts for a group of students b) The database structure to support the above. c) A method of bulk mailing (probably a queue based SMTP server and pluggable options for Mailgun and Amazon SES). d) Documentation for deployment and management I understand that these are very simplistic goals, and in no way make a usable system in terms of day to day usage for schools, but for iteration one it'll start to give a flavour and a base for what we'd like to acheive. Functionality such as MIS import tooling, SMS notifications, and so on will be iteratively added in subsequent releases. Your offer of a test / dev server is very kind however I currently work for a large cloud provider and I have an allocation for doing these sorts projects as part of my philantrophic efforts as supported by my employer, as a result of working in this space I have small amounts of compute resource for such projects which the company do not mind me using. However long term I would expect to deploy the hosted version to somewhere like Datacentred or UKCloud who are already well known in the GCloud hosting space and hence have the levels of security certification I'd like for hosting such a service. So, thanks for the offer and certainately when the time comes if you'd like to use your Positive Internet server resources for helping us test the project that would be really cool. However for demo installations etc... we pretty much have it covered for now The main thing I am reaching out for here is domain knowledge for the educational software area. If you have knowledge about systems such as SIMS it would be great to have you onboard to head up a project creating a general data export tool for SIMS (Opensource of course) which we can share with IT Network Admins and also use within our projects for data import / export. If you'd like to join the working group let me know and I'll PM you details about how to sign up to the mailing list etc... Best Regards, Rob

Hi Zag, Thanks for starring the repo. Would you be interested in joining the working group? Don't worry if you don't know Python we need a whole lot more than programmers... So far I need contribution from the following: - Doc writers - People with expert knowledge about education systems - Individuals to feed user stories for future enhancements - Testers - Web designers - we need a website set up for the working group - Pen testers - and many more :-). Of course being an OpenSource project all of this is 100% voluntary at the moment. Long term I expect we will probably need paid employees such as system administrators if the not for profit hosting takes off... The aim here would be to offer good support and availability whilst ensuring the price is not elevated beyond what it needs to be to deliver the service. Best Regards, Rob

Hi dhicks, Thanks for the feedback, as per my previous post we are not aiming for a SIMS replacement yet, MIS is put to one side whilst we mobilise on a Parent Teacher communication tool similar to the likes of ParentMail... I decided a smaller project is probably better whilst we get a working group in place. The whole idea is to provide OpenSource software which is 100% free and allows others to contribute freely to the project, in this case if the school has an experienced network admin they can easily deploy their own instance on a server in their server cupboard, or for schools which are not so well equipped or want less hassle a not for profit hosting option. I am largely against making any profit from schools, I am a firm believer the money can be better used for other tangible resources, specially if tax payers money is involved. As for using PythonAnywhere I will probably not use it, for the demo I'll probably throw it up on a simple lightweight cloud server at Rackspace or DigitalOcean or somewhere similar, but for the live production not for profit environment I would suggest using an ISO270001 certified datacentre in the UK, after all lists of parents emails, students and schools is obviously data which needs careful custody and deserves a certified secure environment. Best Regards, Rob

Good evening, Sorry for the really long delay in getting back to you all... Today I took a plunge into the world of making this stuff a reality, I've decided we should probably put a MIS on the back burner for a while, but I started up a Github group and started putting together some stuff for a ParentMail clone... https://github.com/British-Open-Educational-Software-Group If you want to see the code so far checkout the dev branch. (Yep I know the functionality is uber simple at the moment but lets keep it small and grow it iteratively) https://github.com/British-Open-Educational-Software-Group/OpenSchoolMail/tree/dev - I have started writing some docs as well, once I get the UI started I'll host a demo environment so everyone can play with it. I also propose we have a bi-weekly / monthly meeting so we can get input / discuss with contributors etc... What do you think? What sort of day / time suits you todo this? Best Regards, Rob

Ok, So I have been formulating my idea a little more and I have come up with the idea of "OpenPIMS (Open Pupil Information System)" we can change the name if you like but it is just a start for the project... Anyway the idea is to have all the usual goodness like other MIS systems, student database, school day planning, attendance & attainment recording, behavior monitoring, SEN requirements, safe gaurding event log and so on. Although I wanted to make the product to feel more like 2016 rather than 1992, a more familiar interface for teachers. For example how about simply adding notes throughout the day and tagging students in a method such as tagging seen in social networks (obviously all data would remain internal and secured) which adds events and notes to a students "learning timeline" similar to a Facebook wall with the history of the student. A very novel and familiar view for staff rather than multi page records and complex work flows seen in other software. Is this something that staff and schools would be interested in, and if so would you say this begins to tackle some of the usability issues cited with currently available commercial MIS systems? As always I am still looking for people to join the working group and shape the direction and requirements for the project. Best Regards, Rob

Hi Dan, Thanks for your reply. I understand exactly what you are saying... and I also read about OpenSIS and realized it has next to no use in the UK as it doesn't fit around our requirements. I totally get the concern about installing and supporting such software, hence the not for profit SaaS model being suggested. I think with an OpenSource MIS designed for the UK and a not for profit SaaS model hosting it on behalf of schools in compliant UK datacentres (maybe G-Cloud) we could probably offer MIS including capabilities such as those in parent communication tools and safeguarding databases for as little as £0.50 to £0.75 per student per year. Compared to using something like Capita SIMS with ParentMail and MyConcern this offers a considerable saving. I believe that offering the Opensource software for free to use on-site for FLOSS savvy network managers such as yourself and also a hosted SaaS solution for those less experienced at a cost price is the way forward. Ultimately I want to offer the best value for public spending we can here rather than private companies creaming the education system. Would you be open for me putting your name down as a potential for the working group? Maybe I could ask eduGeek if we can have a subforum for this purpose. Best Regards, Rob

Hi, If you fancy something later in the year (October Half Term) I can personally recommend the Bahia Principe Adeje in Tenerife, it is still warm in October that far south and there is a lot to do... Water park, big volcano and a pretty cool zoo on the Island. The food at this hotel is very very good and highly varied, you probably won't get bored of the selection if thats the kind of worries you have about all inclusive. Here is a direct link to the hotel... Hotel Costa Adeje Photograph Gallery ? Bahia Principe Hotels, the only tour operator to go to this hotel without doing it yourself (always risky because no ATOL) is Thomas Cook, we booked through a booking agent of Thomas Cook's called Purple Travel http://purpletravel.co.uk, Lorraine is very helpful and always works to get the best price. We have been here twice now with our young daughter and she has loved it both times... Best Regards, Rob

Wow, reading this is pretty crazy, the pricing is extortionate. Have you considered having an online top up only where parents / guardians top up via credit / debit cards and discontinuing use of the top up machines?