[sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Report cards on XO

[Eben Eliason]

I'm not sure that such an idea actually requires a special activity,
or a "report card" template with preset fields. It seems to me that
the item of importance is the ability for the teacher to give each kid
an immutable object which they may then view on their XO, and take
home to show their parents.  This object might be a .pdf, or it might
be an image, or it might be something else, but the teacher could
create such an object in Write, or in a spreadsheet activity, or in
whatever suits their needs best.

It seems to me that the more interesting part of this problem is the
distribution method.  Unlike a homework assignment where the teacher
could share an activity, or (in the future) send an object to everyone
in the class group, there is need to distribute files individually to
the kids by some unique identifier.  Perhaps this is the place where
an "Evaluate" activity does have it's place.  If done well, a fresh
instance of the activity could provide a way for a teacher to fill out
evaluations (or import in their desired format!) and identify which
kid each belongs to.  Then, upon sharing that single evaluation
activity with the class, each kid would receive *only* their own
evaluation from the shared instance.  That instance would then, every
time they open it, simply be a viewer for that particular evaluation.
This is a good example where the master-slave (usually discouraged in
Sugar) would actually work.

- Eben


On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 11:01 AM, Yamandu Ploskonka
<yamaplos at bolinux.org> wrote:
> Following with the "Printing support" thread, I found out that the
> "only" item that _needs_ printing in the conventional school setup is
> the report cards.
>
> Since I militantly believe that XO-supported education we should not
> depend on printing at all if it were possible, I would want to submit a
> proposal to have grading information be accessible through the XO.
>
> While that is a simple part of student management software that
> doubtlessly will be part of the server, and thus accessible as a web
> page, still there would be a need for that information to be copied
> _into_ the XO for those kids who would have no access to the server from
> their homes.
>
> Thus, in its proposed incarnation, the "Work Report" activity would
> exist in the XO, be fed its information updates from the school server.
> The child and family would have that info as an available reminder of
> the teacher's feedback and child-specific suggestions.
>
>  From a security standpoint the server notices via mac address the ID of
> the child's computer to upload info to.
>
> There would be an associated activity, "Teacher Reports", available for
> the teachers' XOs, where the teacher can comment on student work.
> Simple fields, "what is good about this work", "what needs improvement",
> "other suggestions".
>
> While I personally would avoid there be a "grade" field, I am aware I
> will be overruled on this, so I concede.
>
> In most cases anyways the report card follows a definite format and is
> already pre-printed to be filled out by hand.  I am sure that
> improvements on this are possible, but since this is very much a
> nationally-defined format, it might not make sense to worry at this
> stage.  Last time I was there in 2000, Uruguay High Schools printed
> reports on dot-matrix plain paper already.
>
> Yama
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