SchoolTool is a project to develop a common open source administrative framework for schools around the world, funded by The Shuttleworth Foundation. 

Current Status

In August 2005, SchoolTool released a shared calendar server and resource scheduling application for production use.  It is being tested and used informally in several schools around the world.  A competency tracking application called CanDo was created using the SchoolTool codebase and is in production use in several schools in the state of Virginia.

We are now developing a set of web based applications to handle student information system (SIS) functionality, including:

• enrollment and promotion,
  
• contact info and demographics,
• attendance,
• gradebook,
• reporting.

For more information on our vision, history and technical architecture, see http://schooltool.org/about-schooltool.

What We Are Looking For

We are seeking partner schools to test the SchoolTool student information system during the 2006 - 2007 (Northern hemisphere) and 2007 (Southern hemisphere) school year.  The schools will receive customized versions of the application as well as online support throughout the school year.  We will select six to eight primary or secondary schools worldwide for this program. 

SchoolTool is and always will be free software so any school, whether they are selected as partner schools or not, may test and use these versions of SchoolTool and participate in our community via the website, email lists and IRC.  Also, any school can make modifications to SchoolTool themselves, or pay a third party to do so, and contribute those changes back to the SchoolTool community.

Benefits to Participating Schools

Partner schools in this program will receive the following privileges:

• high priority in feature requests,
• cutomized reports and databases for your school (see "What We Will Provide" for more details),
• online assistance in importing data from legacy systems,
• online support, bugfixes and refinements throughout the year.

At the end of the year, schools will of course be able to "keep" their software and upgrade to subsequent versions of SchoolTool.  The school will have to make arrangements for ongoing support from either employees or local consultants.

What We Will Provide

The applications listed below will be accessed via a standards compliant web interface:

• A customized database for student contact and demographic data at your school.
• An attendance system.  We will ensure that this system conforms to the legal requirements of your locality.
• A simple gradebook for keeping "traditional" point/percentage based scores.  Based on local feedback, we will make sure this application fits your local practices.  We will support traditional grades on a A to F scale or equivalent, as well as teacher comments.  Outcome/standards/competency based assessment will be fully supported in later versions.
• Facilities for enrollment, promotion, adding courses & sections, and other interstitial bits of the underlying business logic of student and class administration.
• Custom report templates for outputting the data collected above in web, pdf, XML or CSV format, as needed.
• Migration scripts for existing data.
• Calendaring/scheduling/resource management, based on the existing SchoolBell and SchoolTool Calendaring functionality.  Due to the increased privacy needs of the overall system, access to calendars may be more rigidly restricted.  This version of SchoolTool will not generate timetables automatically.
• Remote support for the above, primarily via email and IRC by experienced SchoolTool developers.

Requirements

• The primary expectation is that the school will use SchoolTool as much as is possible based on their technological capacity.  Ideally, teachers will have access to networked terminals in their classrooms for entering attendance data and grades, but we will also consider partnering with schools that have a lower level of access to technology.
• We require evidence of the support of the school principal and, if relevant, technology coordinator and computer systems administrator. 
• Ther must be one person who will manage this effort locally and function as the primary point of contact between the school and the development team.  This person must read and write English fluently.  Spoken English is not important.  Most communication will rely on email and IRC chat, so the contact person must be open to using these tools.  This person does not have to be an employee of the school, but must be in close contact with the school and available to solve problems on short notice.  Note that we will also welcome direct communication with the development team from users (clerks, teachers, students).
• The site will be responsible for testing and providing feedback on a series of releases during 2006, including:
• early January: a development snapshot of basic functionality;
• late February: alpha release;
• April: beta release of the complete system;
•  June: final release.
• The school must provide a dedicated server to host SchoolTool.  This server should only run SchoolTool and services directly related to SchoolTool.  The server may be located and maintained locally, at the school building, or remotely, as long as the school has a reliable network connection to the server over the internet and/or LAN.  The server requirements are dependent on the size of the school.  The baseline for small schools is a 1.5 ghz CPU and 512 mb RAM.  The server must have a server configuration of Ubuntu 6.04 installed.  The school must submit a plan for regular backups of SchoolTool data.  This server should be set up for testing during or before April 2006.
• We will provide easy to use tools to translate SchoolTool into languages other than English, but the translation itself must be done locally.  Partial or complete translations for SchoolTool into several languages have been created by community volunteers in the past, but we cannot guarantee that they will be up to date or accurate.
• Schools chosing to participate in this program should have some existing system (paper or computerized) or backup plan for administering their school if they decide that SchoolTool will not meet their needs prior to the start of the school year.
• Access to local Python developers or web designers interested in contributing to the project would be extremely helpful.

Application process

Send an email with the subject line "SchoolTool Test Sites" to hoffman@schooltool.org before November 30, 2005, with the following information:

•  a short description of the interested school;
•  the qualifications/background of the intended primary contact person and their relationship to the school;
• short description of the technical infrastructure of the school;
  
•  why the school is interested in testing and using SchoolTool;
•  a summary of any local laws or regulations regarding privacy or security that are relevant to the use of applications like SchoolTool.

 
Where appropriate, you can simply provide links to relevant information.

Our goal in the selection process will be to find a variety of schools that have the capacity to remain engaged in testing, developing and successfully using SchoolTool.

The Shuttleworth Foundation

The Shuttleworth Foundation is a South Africa based charitable foundation which drives social innovation through education.  Delivering free, effective and sustainable administrative software to schools is part of a broader strategy for using technology to advance education in the developing world.