[education-wg] Hi education-wg

[Marcus Bailey]

While my company provides fund accounting software and services to K12 
finance directors, our Members experience such productivity gains that 
they routinely reduce staff in accounting and redeploy the funds 
elsewhere . . . often to purposes that directly effect quality of 
education. We have 150 Member K12s in many different states. Since we 
are the nation's only provider of FOSS fund accounting software, 
everywhere we go we encounter K12 district offices that are wasting 
money on expensive proprietary software.

Since every state has different data reporting requirements we have 
developed easy-to-use tools for  data conversion and custom reporting. 
We already have K12 Members in GA, MA, IL, PA, NY, ND, AZ, TN, and VA.

Marc Bailey
Director of Business Development
OpenRDA
Canton, GA

Don Davis wrote:
>
>>> For this group, my personal hope is that it becomes a communication 
>>> forum that leads down many paths.  To see real change  in K12, we 
>>> will need a clear vision, documentation that will back up our 
>>> positions, some brilliant brainstorming, and a commitment to our 
>>> kids' futures.  Some of the topics up for discussion probably should 
>>> be:
>>>
>>> - one-to-one computing
>>> - affordability
>>> - sustainability
>>> - scalability
>
> LTSP and LDAP. I think it would be very beneficial to have a cost 
> benefit analysis presented in a glossy pamphlet / website for that 
> could be given to IT directors/ principals / school board members etc...
>
>>> - repeatability
>>> - cost effectiveness issues
>>> - management methodologies
>>> - professional development issues
>>> - transition programs
>>> - more ideas from you!
>
> I would suggest plans for a repository of FOSS Educational software 
> (similar to Linux and beyond the scope of school forge.)
>
> I'm an educator and classroom tools are great: the Gimp, Open Office, 
> Audacity, etc. However,  it would be great if there were FOSS database 
> programs for attendance, grades, other school specific needs. I 
> believe that would help the educational IT landscape profusely. Every 
> school district is buying into a different chintzy gradebook or 
> attendance program. The big schools get the best and the other schools 
> spend limited resources on something (an inferior chintzy program) 
> that has been done a thousand times. (Not to mention that each of 
> these proprietary programs has it's own unique way of saving data -- 
> creating needless hours of additional work. How many hours are spent 
> typing information into spreadsheets or databases that has already 
> been saved electronically? ( I write Python scripts to parse the 
> information from PDFs, but I assure you most educators aren't.))
>
>
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