Wednesday 23 November 2011

subject option choice

all first round of test data has now been imported and is checked,
-issues are tutor class being 4 characters, has now been changed to 5
-subjects are at levels not years for the system to work, year12 is level 2

just need to work on option lines locking down, as well as entering in curriculum data, including fckeditor
as the fckeditor does not exist any longer and I don't want to put on old software, I have installed the ckeditor  http://ckeditor.com

I have had a meeting with the client and they have requested a number of changes
1. Move the last years subject selections down, I am also thinking of adding in the options that they choose term 3 (completed 28/11/11)
2. If the student doesnt need to change options they need to confirm that they have accessed and confirmed there course.Working on this, it is not passing throw from index to confirm, message Data not entered showing up. - This has been fix and is now working fine, main reason way that I had changed the variable name from attending to returning earlier on without changing it throughout the program. (completed 4/12/11)
3. If they are leaving school, this needs to be sorted, drop down list with a " please choose from the options below message"(completed 28/11/11)
4. add into the sql statement that they have added in the destination, table attending. needs to be done on the first screen? if they are leaving then second screen should have thank you, you have been registerd as leaving school and going onto... - this has been completed, all data is now submitted into tables 4/12/11

Fix in hod editor-option line codes disappear- input type was set to number, needed to be changed to text as now optionline runs by like %optionline% to find options listed abcdef fixed 5/12/11

Sunday 20 November 2011

How to change?

One thing I want to work out is how to develop change.

Computer science 101 via Stanford uni online

Came across this one today

CS101 teaches the essential ideas of Computer Science for a zero-prior-experience audience. Computers can appear very complicated, but in reality, computers work within just a few, simple patterns. CS101 demystifies and brings those patterns to life, which is useful for anyone using computers today.

In CS101, students play and experiment with short bits of "computer code" to bring to life to the power and limitations of computers. Everything works within the browser, so there is no extra software to download or install. CS101 also provides a general background on computers today: what is a computer, what is hardware, what is software, what is the internet. No previous experience is required other than the ability to use a web browser.

Course is available at http://www.cs101-class.org/
Wondering if it may be something to get my year 13 students involved with, though I need a bit more a guideline on what is to be taught each week, so I can prepare my lessons and check the content to suit

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Subject option choice .10

I have been asked to make some changes to the program to allow it to be used as part of an re-enrollment package for the beginning of the year. Once students get there ncea results they will have the opportunity to jump online and make changes to there subjects based on the information they have. This then gets imported into the SMS and a timetable is created. All good in theory, but how will it work in practical. I am going over my code looking for how I developed the system and am surprised to see that I have already coded some of this in, and left it either commented out or being used in the junior sections.

I have fixed up the messages code and included in a table that will be able to be edited by others, something I wrote in comments ages ago and had yet to do. Now I am trying to figure out how to include a extra drop down box and how this will affect the I am planning on leaving school, there are now 32 options afterwards on where they are looking at going. This could be added to the main table and if there is a leaver they will have a number added to a field that will be pulled out in a report. select * from table where leaver = 2 order by asc.

This needs to Include blank timetables or no passing of information through to the export and that filled==2

If a student is leaving school? Does a student need to have their timetable reported back into the system? yes, if they are leaving school and are not coming back, they may come back later on.

One thing that makes this one different is that I have to include option lines, the thing about that is trying to figure out a way to do option lines being the beast that they are. I thought about doing different database row entries for each line, but this becomes unmanageable. One way around this could be to use the LIKE statement to look for the option line in the option field, this would mean changing the field from INT to VARCHAR(6) as there is the possibility of six option lines.

Has every students selected subject lines == no, some students don't have subjects, so these would have to have dummy/empty lines attached.
what does does it go live? NZQA release there results - 17 or 20 Jan


Those not returning could possibility get a different confirm screen, this would allow then to select from a combo box on where they ate planning to go and would be simpler to program. Students would still need to have the filled==2, and it would be unlikely that they would relogin and change there selections