[schooltool-dev] Data import - my ideas

[Gregor Jacobs]

Hi there,
I am the German guy who has those ideas on how to make data import
easier, maybe you heard about yet :-)

I have no knowledge on any programming, except for HTML and LaTeX basics
(so what a common computer user might want to know) but use ubuntu Linux
as Operating System at home.

At the moment, there is (as you already know) my idea of creating a data
file which is easy to fill in for the end user. I had e-mails about this
with Tom and got a reply from Ignas which was also sent to this list as
copy, therefore I subscribed now. Hope that is OK with you.

Now, the XLS import to SchoolTool is a major step to getting it easier,
but as the sample data file has 47,000 entries for sections, I fear this
might discourage some people, and my idea was to have ONE list with all
students and all data about them (nothing new) but
1. one column with the grade the student is in (just one number, like 8,
9, 10, or a letter if your school uses letters)
2. the columns for subjects (one per subject): en (English), ma (Maths),
ph (Physics), sp (Spanish), ch (Chemistry), mu (Music), ar (Art), etc.
as abbreviations.
3. per subject for each student the course / section assignments, as a
single letter or number to identify the subject's course for this grade.

An example: student jacobsgr is in grade 9. All his courses / sections
will be something like xx9_y where xx is the subject and y the course
number.
He is assigned to English B2, Maths C2, Physics A1, Spanish (none),
Chemistry B, Music 1 and Art 2.
The course / section IDs are then en9_B2, ma9_C2, ph9_A1, ch9_B, mu9_1
and ar9_2.

The tricky thing is to get this out of excel. Formulae's names differ
from country to country, so I think the best is if some script extracts
these data and creates a temporary file with the assignments, and
SchoolTool reads that temporary file into the database.

http://gregorjacobs.de/spreadsheet1.png <-- A screenshot of a very short
sample file...

The next step then is to make that the temp file with all the entries,
line by line, kinda

"assign student hartfl to en7_1"
"assign student hartfl to ma7_C2"
"assign student hartfl to ph7_A"
...
Due to lack of knowledge, I have no clue on how to make that... But I am
sure someone of you could to that in an instant =)

I guess most schools in the world have in common that students are
organized in grades, and students are taught in certain subjects. The
bigger the school, the larger the number of courses, so I thought
creating course / section IDs which can be read easily (and adjusted, if
needed) might come in handy.
Furthermore, schools can easily adjust the tables to their means (such
as extra subjects or whatever sections they have).

By editing the courses' names or the names for the grades, it's even
possible to have more than one branch per grade (as Germany still has).

The current sampla data lists each section (courses) and includes in the
head lines information about location and time. I just thought what if
there is a sheet with all rooms and then from Monday thru Friday the
courses... Like, Room 101 in building A (roomID a101) has on Monday
these courses: en7_2, ma8_A2, ge10_E, (none), hi5_2. That would become
in the temp file
"assign room a101 on Mon 1st to en7_2"
"assign room a101 on Mon 2nd to ma8_A2"
"assign room a101 on Mon 3rd to ge10_E"
"assign room a101 on Mon 4th to empty"
"assign room a101 on Mon 5th to hi5_2"

This way, we ensure that no room is booked twice at the same time (which
definitely would cause chaos).

Same with teachers... Teachers' timetables as one large sheet.

The problem I see among this is the fact that the rooms' table needs
(with 6 lessons a day) 30 columns, and the teachers' table as well...

So far for my personal suggestions. Handling lots of data is difficult,
so if it can be made least difficult, this comes in handy... And with my
suggestions I try to keep the chance of overlooking and easily detecting
if everything is OK up.

Gregor