[Zope] Zope Projects

Tim Wilson wilson@chemsun.chem.umn.edu
Sat, 7 Aug 1999 21:41:29 -0500 (CDT)


On Sat, 7 Aug 1999, Jeffrey Perry wrote:

> It seems to me that Zope could use a few more toolkits.

As I've looked at Zope over the past few days and soliciting input from
the list about uses for Zope in a school, I'm convinced that some sort of
"school" product would be great. It may be that some of it is already
there in other products, but what I would want is (and I'm sure to expose
my naivete with respect to Zope programming here):

* Instant, basic Web pages for teachers who would like to make their
curricular material available for download.
* A "what we did in class today" page for students who miss a day.
Teachers would add each day's class activities through a simple Web form.
* A simple way for student groups to share documents and collaborate on
various types of projects.
* A calendar showing due dates, upcoming events in the course, etc.
* A discussion system for course topics.

And the holy grail (as far as I'm concerned)...

* An online electronic gradebook where teachers could enter grades,
students could view (but not edit :-) their grades, parents could request
electronic updates, etc. This would be AWESOME!!

BTW, let me plug another group here. I've been involved with the education
wing of the Simple End-User Linux (SEUL) group. We've got an active
listserv discussing the use of Linux in educational settings. The homepage
is at http://www.seul.org/edu/ Of particular interest is Bruno Vernier's
work on EDUML, a subset of XML for working with data of interest to
educational institutions. You'll see a link to it on the SEUL-EDU
homepage. A connection between a Zope online gradebook and Bruno's EDUML
would be a natural.

Later,
Tim

--
Timothy Wilson       | "The faster you  |  Check out:
Henry Sibley H.S.    |  go, the shorter | http://slashdot.org/
W. St. Paul, MN, USA |  you are."       | http://linux.com/
wilson@chem.umn.edu  |       -Einstein  | http://www.mn-linux.org/