[K12OSN] SchoolTool RPM packages...

[Tom Hoffman]

Hi All,

I'm happy to report that Russian company Linux Ink
(http://www.linux-ink.ru/english) is putting together RPM packages for
SchoolTool for Nau Linux, their school and academia focused
distribution, so that should be a big step towards getting supported
packages for other Red Hat & Fedora based distros.

And if you can tolerate reading a non-commercial commercial, continue
reading.  Otherwise, stop!

--Tom

As a new school year approaches in much of the world, I'd like to take
a moment to point out that while we generally promote SchoolTool as a
free, open source student information system for schools, it can also
be much *less* than that, depending on your needs.

That is, since SchoolTool is free and easy to install, particularly
using modern virtual servers, you can use SchoolTool to solve specific
problems without facing the much larger issue of migrating your whole
school to a new information system.

Collect Assessment Data

Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia uses SchoolTool to create
and print regular interim reports on all students. SchoolTool's new
Report Sheet feature facilitates collection of grades, test scores,
comments or other custom data from teachers at regular intervals. Stop
emailing spreadsheets!

Track Grades and Attendance

Jeff Elkner of the Arlington Career Center in Arlington, Virginia,
uses SchoolTool as his personal gradebook. Anyone using Ubuntu Linux
on their desktop or laptop (or server in the "cloud") can easily
install and use SchoolTool as their online gradebook and attendance
journal. Schools can offer SchoolTool as a free alternative to
teachers wishing to move their bookkeeping online.

Schedule Resources Online

The Paul Cuffee School in Providence, RI uses SchoolTool to coordinate
the use of their computer labs and laptop carts. Teachers can check
what resources are available via SchoolTool's calendar and place
reservations online.

SchoolTool is at a point where a small community of individual users
and schools implementing some of the above features will do a great
deal to keep the project moving forward, and we have developer
resources to assist and respond to bug and feature requests, so please
have a look and let us know what you think.

For more information on SchoolTool, see http://schooltool.org