I am part of a small tutoring homeschool group of about 100 students in Oregon (and growing). We are looking for a simple open source student management system. Our students are in classes a full day on Monday, but work on assignments throughout the week at home. We have a full range of core and elective classes. My son (who is currently working on his computer science degree) has helped me set up Gibbon on a server to test out. I personally have database experience in MS Access, so have some general knowledge.
But before I put a lot of effort into this (which I’ve done with other systems), here is what I am looking for (some I do see available in Gibbon), but if you all feel Gibbon is not a good option for us, please let me know. Maybe Gibbon is overkill for us, I’m not sure. But, I like what I see.
online registration by parents for students (names, contacts, age, grade level, etc. Also need to add a field in reg form to allow sign up for participation in year end graduation ceremony for 8th graders and seniors)
online payment of registration fee by parent (before class enrollment allowed)
set up of courses, classes, and planner/schedule (I’ve started playing with Gibbon and noticed that the class names are very short, is this field adjustable?)
listing of each class information details (so; Science - Jr. High Life Science; details of the Life Science class to view)
lesson planner for teachers (if the students attend class on Mondays, but work on lessons all week, would the class days need to show M-F, and not just Monday?)
variable grading option for teachers
option for parents to view/print grades
we have events and field trips with students each month, we would like a sign up feature (at this time we use SignUpGenius.com) that could be sent to all parents/students emails. Possible fee per field trip (most are free).
There is more, that I could figure out over time, but I just wondered about these basics. Most of our teachers are are parents, with backgrounds in the field they are teaching about, but may not have a great understanding of computers (enter my son and I). However, I would like to get the system setup to hand off one day, when I’m done homeschooling (graduated one, got one more to go).
Thank you in advance for your suggestions and support.
Thanks. I’ve also started reviewing the Youtube videos.
Also, I figured out the answer to one of my questions above - (I’ve started playing with Gibbon and noticed that the class names are very short, is this field adjustable?) Well, with my son’s help! I adjusted the field to a larger field size.
ldpetchell, thanks for your patience. Please keep in mind we are a small team. Also, posts with single questions tend to get more attention first as they are less complex. Let me answer your questions below, and feel free to follow up as needed:
online registration by parents for students (names, contacts, age, grade level, etc. Also need to add a field in reg form to allow sign up for participation in year end graduation ceremony for 8th graders and seniors) Yes, this is possible using the Application Form feature in People > Students. Once an application is received, you can choose whether to accept it, thus creating student and parent accounts, or you can keep it in a queue and record milestones against it.
online payment of registration fee by parent (before class enrollment allowed) Yes, this is possible via the Application Form, using PayPal. You will need to enable PayPal in Admin > System Admin > Third Party Settings and then set a payment value for the application form under Admin > User Admin > Application Form Settings.
set up of courses, classes, and planner/schedule (I’ve started playing with Gibbon and noticed that the class names are very short, is this field adjustable?) All possible, take a look under Admin > Timetable Admin > Manage Courses & Classes. Each course and class has a long name and a short name. Generally our courses are something like Year 7 Science, which shortens to SC07. The long name is used where space is plenty, the short name where space is limited (e.g. in the timetable). Please note that the length of the short name has been carefully chosen, tested and callibrated to ensure it works across the system: you can make changes to your own codebase but it might break something else in the system, and when you update your changes will be lost. If you find a solution that works across the system, you can always let us know so we can look to implement it from our end.
listing of each class information details (so; Science - Jr. High Life Science; details of the Life Science class to view) This can be done under Learn > Departments in the main menu. You can set up your departments in Admin > School Admin > Manage Departments.
lesson planner for teachers (if the students attend class on Mondays, but work on lessons all week, would the class days need to show M-F, and not just Monday?) Students can select to view lesson plans by class or date, so it should not really matter what day they are looking, the information is available: e.g. a class I teach on Monday can be viewed the Sunday before or the Tuesday after…or any other date.
variable grading option for teachers When you create Markbook columns (under Assess in the main menu) you have a choice of a range of grading scales. If these do not suit your needs, you can define scales of your own under Admin > School Admin > Manage Grade Scales.
option for parents to view/print grades Yes to view, as long as Markbook columns are set for Parents to have view access, have a complete date set, and the date is equal to or past the complete date. No to print…
we have events and field trips with students each month, we would like a sign up feature (at this time we use SignUpGenius.com) that could be sent to all parents/students emails. Possible fee per field trip (most are free). This is not built in to Gibbon, but Andy Statham (@andystat) of Rapid36 has a commercial solution for signups for parent events that might work and that I am sure he can demo for you. Otherwise…Google Forms?
In conclusion, home school is not what we had in mind when we built Gibbon, but the system is designed from the ground up to be flexible…so it seems like a “yes” to most of your questions above.
Awesome! Thank you! Yes. Homeschooling can be a bugger to organize in anyway. State regulations, etc. Our state is not so strict, but our tutoring co-op tries to provide options to the parents and students. Gibbon does seem flexible and usable. Having a smaller group, makes funding system setups impossible. We hope to grow and add more options for students, so I’m trying to prepare for this by finding a system that I can work with. Thanks for the information. I will look into it all.
Happy to help : ) You might find Free Learning to be a great fit for home schooling. Check out some background information at http://rossparker.org/free-learning, and then look at installing the Gibbon module for it if you find it useful. Happy to give you a Skype demo at some point.
