[Zope-PTK] case study: PTK goes to school

[Timothy Wilson]

Hi everyone,

I don't know if anyone will find this interesting, but I thought I'd
describe what I have in store for my Web site WRT the PTK. Perhaps it will
spark an idea with the developers. If interested, please read on and give
me feedback. If not, file it in /dev/null.

Background
==========
My school district has approximately 5,000 students K-12. We have eight
different schools plus a number of separate administrative buildings
(transportation, community ed., etc.).

We have a WAN and a T1 connection to the Internet with network jacks in
practically every room. Unfortunately we're a bit short on actual
computers in some areas. Except for the Linux-based Web server that I
admin, we're a Novell shop with all staff and student information in NDS,
Groupwise for email, etc. We belong to a consortium of other schools and
use a large system called TSIS
(http://www.ties.k12.mn.us/applications/student.html) to track student
grades, schedules, attendance, etc.

I teach physics and 9th grade science full-time. All of my Zope work
is done on the side and for free. As such, I can't spend nearly as
much time on it as I would like. Last year I secured a few thousand
dollars to build a Linux-based computer lab in the science dept. at the
high school and put together a bunch of cast-off Pentiums so that all of
the science teachers have computers on their desks (with a Linux-powered
fileserver).

Goal
====
I'd like to develop a District-wide portal that would facilitate
communication of important information to students, parents, and the
general public. Operating from the assumption that this would improve our
relationship to the community and thereby benefit the school, I plan to
make space available for local community groups and non-profits on our
server. Obviously, not all of them can afford the high-bandwidth that we
enjoy.

I'm very interested in the Zope-edu project (http://www.zschool.org/)
because I hope to make it possible for teachers to create simple Web pages
for their courses.

I would like to hook Zope up to NDS to provide instant portal membership
for all students and staff. If we can design a system whereby teachers can
add assignments (due dates, etc.) to their Web pages, it should be
possible using the data in TSIS, for example, to dynamically generate a
list of upcoming assignments for students when they log in to the site.
Further applications could include viewing grade and attendance
information, uploading homework, and collaboration between students on
projects.

I'd like have a community-wide event calendar that could be filtered
according to users' preferences.

Vision
======
I would like everyone in the District to put their Web-based data in Zope
so that everything is integrated. Imagine a guest to the homepage browsing
the site and seeing general District information about the schools,
directions for various administrative things, links to individual schools'
homepages, etc. But what would a student see? Let's say that one of my
high school students logs in. The homepage would immediately "morph" into
something more focused on the high school with recent sports scores, a
custom "to do" list and assignment calendar for the student,
school-specific news, etc. Everything would be customizable according to
the student's preferences. A middle-schooler's view would be similarly
morphed into something focused on the middle schools and their programs.
What does that kid care about the science club at the high school? That's
what's so cool about the dynamic nature of Zope as far as I'm concerned.

Let's say that a parent of a 6th and 10th grader becomes a member of our
portal. He or she could choose to see news related to the schools where
his or her students attend. Additional information about PTA events could
be displayed, etc. The possibilities are endless.

Zope.org's portal serves a much more singularly-focused community. My
portal plans on the other hand will need to fit a community with very
diverse interests, tied together somewhat loosely by the common
affiliation with the school district. I think the difference is very
significant and will require careful planning to make sure everything fits
together.

Questions
=========
Using the high school as an example (because I'm most familiar with it),
what is the relationship between departments and individuals? This relates
to my comments regarding news categories from a couple days ago. I would
need homepages for the science department and the guidance department, for
example. The food service area would want to post menus and other
information. I realize that this plays into one of Zope's greatest
strengths, but planning the site so that someone is responsible for each
area (and making sure that the person doesn't need any Zope Zen) while
allowing for individuals to post news, events, links, etc., is very
important. I'm sure that there are a number of options, but I'm not ready
to commit to any particular design yet.

Let's be more specific. The high school will need a homepage with links to
student organizations, administrative information, links to the student
handbook, etc. Someone will have to be in charge of keeping those things
current. The less they have to know about Web pages the better because
responsibility for this will almost certainly fall to a secretary who
knows little or nothing about HTML, DTML, or any other *ML you can think
of. The science department within the high school will need a page with
information about its courses and faculty, links to students' projects and
other science news, etc. Individual science teachers will need their own
pages to post assignments, class notes, syllabi, etc. Individual students
might need their own pages to post homework, collaborate with other
students on projects, etc. It seems that this situation has many more
tiers than Zope.org. I'm sure that Zope's security mechanism will be a
godsend here.

We don't have the resources to undertake any sort of substantive training 
with future users. Whatever we do with Zope has to be easy enough to be
nearly self-evident.

Conclusion
==========
I wouldn't even dream of doing this without a tool like Zope. It's my hope
and plan that whatever comes out of my effort and that of the others who
are part of zope-edu will be made available to others who would like to
use for their schools. That's another reason why it needs to be simple and
as intuitive as possible. I've only gotten a little taste of Zope Zen. Joe
Schoolteacher in Anytown, USA, may have less time than I do to devote to
getting a system running. A "School portal in a box" would be a very
powerful tool for teachers and schools that would have a good chance of
benefiting students and their learning directly.

-Tim

--
Tim Wilson        | Visit Sibley online:         | Check out:
Henry Sibley H.S. | http://www.isd197.k12.mn.us/ | http://www.zope.org/
W. St. Paul, MN   |                              | http://slashdot.org/
wilson@visi.com   |   <dtml-var pithy_quote>     | http://linux.com/