[Tutor] Design question: Web-based vs. desktop-based vs. desktop-based with data backed up to web server with a tablet thrown in for all cases?

boB Stepp robertvstepp at gmail.com
Sun Jul 19 07:49:50 CEST 2015


On Sat, Jul 18, 2015 at 4:58 PM, Brandon McCaig <bamccaig at gmail.com> wrote:

> Rather than worrying about technology, frameworks, peripherals,
> and protocols you need to focus on the real problem. Have her
> describe exactly what she'll do with it. Try to get her to put it
> into context of what she does NOW without the software so that
> you can compare. I'm 29 years old so I've been away from school
> for a long time. I don't know what teachers are using computers
> for these days, but I cannot imagine it being useful to walk
> around the classroom with a tablet (if anything I don't think I'd
> want my children's teachers having such a distraction). At least,
> not so useful as to commission the development of custom
> software. I'm also not familiar with what a Montessori teacher
> does, but it sounds even less likely that custom software will be
> useful since it sounds like the students' learning is much less
> organized than in a traditional school.

The Montessori philosophy of teaching is quite non-traditional.  Two
or more different grades of children are taught in the same classroom,
usually with just one teacher, who may or may not have any helpers.
My wife often does not have help, or, if she does, it has not been as
helpful as it might.  She has 7th, 8th and 9th graders in her class.
This coming school year she will have approximately 20 students.  At
any moment during the school day, all of the students are NOT doing
the same thing.  Some may be working in small groups.  Others will be
doing individual work, where it is quite likely that none of these
students are doing the same assignment.  Each student often has an
individualized learning plan.  The initial assessment project is quite
needful.  In the past my wife has wandered about the classroom
assessing her students with either a clipboard in hand or trusting her
memory until she got back to her desk and able to write down her
assessment notes for each student.  Note that students do not get
traditional grades.  Instead, they have a detailed list of skills that
they are working towards mastery in.  Her assessments will notate each
student's progress towards mastery in light of whatever assignments
they might be working on.  When it comes time to interact with each
student's parents, my wife needs to combine all of this assessment
data into a report of the student's progress in each skill area to
share with the parents.  This is quite burdensome to do entirely by
hand.

The Montessori method of teaching is most frequently associated with
children of age three up through sixth grade.  There are relatively
few examples of junior high/high school Montessori programs and there
does not seem to be a good consensus of how to apply the Montessori
methods to secondary education.  So the main reasons why my wife does
not have detailed requirements for what she would like me to program
is that she has been working out what is and is not appropriate on her
own.  After several years of developing her program, she feels she is
at the point where software can be a real help for her.  BTW, she is
very computer literate.  She has done programming before when she was
a university student and sporadically since then.  So she is well
aware of what is possible and what can be useful.

I have not given you a good idea of what a Montessori education is all
about.  If you are curious I encourage you to do the usual online
searching.

In this thread, I kept it very general on purpose.  I was probing this
community for their thoughts on two things:  1)  Should I make the
software web-based or desktop-based?  2) What would be the best way of
handling the data involved, particularly the data that impinges on
student privacy concerns.  As I said in the initial thread, some
software would be strictly for the teacher's use.  Some would be used
by the students and the teacher with the potential that the students
might have to access that software in their homes (homework).  And
finally in addition to the students and teachers, some things might be
desirable for the parents to be able to monitor their student's
progress from home.

And then to make things at least a little more concrete I gave a very
broad outline of the first project that she (perhaps foolishly ~(: >)
) hopes to have at the start of her school year.  And I have been
given some great thoughts by this community to help me on my way!

I understand and appreciate your concerns.  If the client was anyone
but my wife, I would not be attempting this for all of the excellent
reasons you gave.  But Vonda is kinda the lone ranger here in what she
is trying to build, and I think I can give her some real help.  And
from my perspective it is another opportunity to learn many cool new
things and push my limits.  I never seem to ever find time to just
read and study a Python (or other programming-related) book from
beginning to end, but when I have a concrete project to do, then at
least I start learning *something* out of sheer necessity.

As things develop more concretely and I get puzzled and stumped, I
will post more detailed questions.

Thanks for your thoughts!
-- 
boB


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