Tapping a world of schoolroom innovation

Schools have to organize and coordinate massive amounts of information – from student records to complicated class schedules – and to do so, many use software packages called “student information systems” created expressly to meet their needs.
But paying the fees for programs such as Powerschool and Chancery, with increasing costs depending on the amount of registered users, can divert limited school funds. More and more, however, free and open-source alternatives are emerging, including one international collaboration based in Providence: SchoolTool.
SchoolTool is a project to develop a global school administration infrastructure that is freely available under an open-source license and designed to be used on an unlimited number of machines by an unlimited number of clients.
Via a Web browser interface accessible through any operating system, SchoolTool allows schools to manage enrollment information, scheduling, attendance and grades, generate reports, and import and export data.
SchoolTool began development in 2000 and is funded by Mark Shuttleworth, of the South African-based Shuttleworth Foundation, creator of the free Ubuntu operating system.
Ubuntu, named after an African word that means “humanity to others,” can be used in a home or work environment and supports word-processing and e-mail applications, as well as Web software and programming tools for laptops, desktops and servers.
The significant difference between free software products such as Ubuntu and SchoolTool, and proprietary software, such as Mac OS X, Windows or Powerschool, is that open-source software can be modified by the user, and there are no licensing fees to download, install and use it.
Tom Hoffman, project manager for SchoolTool, was the guest speaker at the Providence Geeks’ monthly dinner last Wednesday at AS220, giving a presentation titled “Managing an International, Philanthropically Funded Open-Source Project from a Victorian in Elmwood.”
Hoffman has a master’s degree in education from Brown University and taught in the Providence public schools for two years, then became technical coordinator at Feinstein High School. He has been working on the SchoolTool project since 2004.
In an interview, Hoffman noted that due to the data collection necessary to comply with the No Child Left Behind Act, the U.S. education world has “shifted over the past few years away from home-brewed databases to big commercial products.”
But while schools may pay large sums for information systems, they often cannot add a feature or change an option to accommodate a particular scholastic arrangement. This causes problems for school administrators “constantly,” Hoffman said. With proprietary software, it may even be illegal to analyze the technology in an attempt to make such changes.
Schools face difficult challenges because their scheduling, resources and classes regularly change and, importantly, differ from one school to the next, he said. Open-source projects such as SchoolTool are based on collaboration between the author and users, who can improve and alter the source code to meet a specific need.
While proprietary education administration software products cannot be changed to accommodate an unusual schedule or a certain type of assessment, SchoolTool could be customized “to provide a particular type of public calendar,” Hoffman suggested, “or even a certain work flow of steps to resolve student absence.”
SchoolTool is using open source development, Hoffman said, to answer the question “How do you get from identifying a need for free software in a particular area to delivering a free solution?” Still, implementing SchoolTool systems in the United States isn’t always feasible.
“It is difficult to bootstrap this kind of open-source project in schools that have stable technical infrastructure like here in the United States or in Europe,” Hoffman said. “SchoolTool is more explicitly philanthropic and aimed at the developing world in the long term.”
At this point, SchoolTool is being deployed and tested with the international baccalaureate program at Vilnius Lyceum in Lithuania as well as at Jacqmain High School in Brussels, fueling international interest in the software. But the United States isn’t far behind.
This year, public schools in Arlington, Va., are using SchoolTool as part of CanDo, a competency tracking program for technical schools. Funded by the state and the school district, with $10,000 from the Shuttleworth Foundation, CanDo is example of open-source capabilities because it is “an extension of SchoolTool,” Hoffman explained, “that was developed by the students and former students of a computer science teacher,” said Jeff Elkner.
Most of the coding for the suite of applications contained in SchoolTool has been done by a Lithuanian software development company called Programmers of Vilnius, Hoffman indicated. But as is typical of the collaborative nature of free and open-source systems, the American students and interns who helped develop CanDo “are increasingly integrated into our team of professional developers,” Hoffman said.

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