Forum OpenACS Q&A: How can I use dotLRN for a kindergarden?

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1: How can I use dotLRN for a kindergarden?
Posted by Alex Schenkman on 04/22/03 05:40 PM
I was wondering about using dotLRN for a kindergarden.
Don't laugh, it is serious.

There seems to be a communication need between busy parents, teachers, grandparents (who have time and internet access and want to see what their grandchildren are doing), etc...

The problem is:

1) These students (kids) can't login by themself and manage their accounts.

I thought it would be possible to create fake email addresses that would just forward messages to their parents addresses.

The problem is then that user administration is divided between dotLRN and the email server. For each new student I'd need to add a fake email address.

I could have every parent write their sons/daughters name between brackets on their pretty_name so it would be easy to see who is who.

I might be just making things more complicated than what they are.
I'm new to OACS, so I have difficulties seeing the whole picture.

Any hints?

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2: Re: How can I use dotLRN for a kindergarden? (response to 1)
Posted by Caroline Meeks on 04/22/03 07:50 PM
Hi Alex,

I'll think about this and post a reply within a day or so. My first thought is that every adult should have thier own account (each mom, dad, grandparent, teacher, etc.) with thier own hopefuly preexisting email address then you should use dotLRN to create a customized view that gives them the info they need about thier children (remember a parent may have more then one child, even in the same grade.)  This "user centric" approach has been at the heart of dotLRN since it was a Master's Thesis project.

If you can answer, here are some questions:

1. How many kindergarten classes are in the school?
2. Does the school have more then just kindergarten?
3. What percentage of the parents do you think currently have email addresses that they already check regularly?
4. Are you anticipating the children are going to use the system at all?
5. Will the teachers be accessing the system from home or shcool or both?
6. Will specialist teachers be using the system (ie gym, art etc.)
7. Is there a need for non-teachers to communicate with specific student's parents (for example, special needs programs, pull out reading groups).

I'm excited to see dotLRN being used for K-12 I think it has great potential for exactly the sort of use you are describing.

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3: Re: How can I use dotLRN for a kindergarden? (response to 2)
Posted by Alex Schenkman on 04/22/03 09:02 PM
Thanks for your answer Caroline,

Here are some answers to your questions:

The truth is that I work as a swimming teacher with small kids, and that is the environment I'm thinking about. I said "kindergarden" to make the environment easy to picture. But both are very similar.

1. How many kindergarten classes are in the school?
Many, many. Around 350 courses a year.

2. Does the school have more then just kindergarten?
Swimming classes for adults also, but that is not a problem.

3. What percentage of the parents do you think currently have email addresses that they already check regularly?
All of them, or at least 95%.

4. Are you anticipating the children are going to use the system at all?
Nope. They are very small.

5. Will the teachers be accessing the system from home or shcool or both?
Don't know yet. Problably home.

6. Will specialist teachers be using the system (ie gym, art etc.)

7. Is there a need for non-teachers to communicate with specific
student's parents (for example, special needs programs, pull out reading groups).
Administrative personal, absolutely.

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4: Re: How can I use dotLRN for a kindergarden? (response to 1)
Posted by Caroline Meeks on 04/25/03 10:01 PM
Hi Alex,

Here are some thoughts.

The key to the project is that each student has one or more parents/guardians (I'll call them guardians from here forward to be inclusive). The Guardians are the actual users of the system. OACS tends to represent such things using groups.

Thus each student should really be a group; perhaps a user with an associated group, but definitely a group. A group can be made a member of another group. Thus rather than, or in addition to, making each student a member of a class you can fairly easily modify the code to make the student's group a member of the group.  I think you will want to use Composite relations here.

Are you going to be using Oracle or Postgres?  Open Force wrote a package for Sloan that allows the creation of Personal Communities for each dotLRN user.  Its oracle-only  and has never been used in production, thus might have bugs and definitely needs UI work and it has not been documented. However, it might be exactly what you want. It would allow each student to have their own community where teachers could upload progress reports, photos whatever. This could be reused from session to session forming a permanent place for records on that student.  I expect this package will eventually become the basis of portfolio functionality in dotLRN.

Here are some pointers to the docs on groups etc.

https://openacs.org/doc/openacs-4/groups-design.html
https://openacs.org/doc/openacs-4/permissions.html
https://openacs.org/doc/openacs-4/parties.html
https://openacs.org/doc/openacs-4/permissions-tediously-explained.html