Group Meeting

Today we met in the Dubois Library to continue our work with our survey in Access. There was a bit of a rough patch seeing as we have a steep learning curve given the project parameters and deadline but we are making steady progress. We will be planning on meeting with Professor Gal of in the School of Business to further discuss our progress with our tables and our first objective. We're getting the hang of creating tables and labeling but a few things will also need to be hashed out.

Also we are finalizing a list of potential candidates that will be looked at as we hope to make a decision on the tablet and/or notebook that we will be getting for Principal Hyry to use along with the completed survey. The hope is that we will get as much bang for our buck in a product that will be the perfect mix of speed, silence, and efficiency.

Looking into Tablets

We are currently in the process of looking into a Tablet for Principal Hyry. He voiced preference in something that will not make his presence during each classroom visit overbearing. He desires to remain as much unnoticed and silent during his visits as possible!

We realized an IPad is not the only option and have headed more towards looking into tablets and netbooks. Seyi has looked into prices and models. In class, Kevin brought in his netbook to share with us which, as of now, seems like a solid option for what we need. It is small and has both touch screen and a keypad with the ability to use Access.

However, we are still in the begin stage of looking into what to buy and how to buy it!

More updates on this to come!

Process of Working With Access

We are currently in the process of working with Access and gaining the ability to create a rough draft of our form. We have looked online for tutorials whether they be videos or written instructions and used those for our own learning, as well as, bookmark them to provide as useful aids for the Peck administration. The Microsoft website itself has been very useful in guiding our way with experimenting with Access.

Today, an extremely rough draft of the survey was created with tables for Basic Info and Objective 1. This draft combined the current knowledge we have now into a beginning of the form, which has allowed us to see what further questions we have for Professor Gal, as well as, provide him with a foundation to help us work off of.

Current Questions:
1) Creating descriptions for each 'Field' question that will show up in form
2) Will 'Subdatanames' in Table Properties be useful in connecting all tables into one final report?
3) Primary Keys: What are they? Each table have ID number allow corresponding entries to be grouped together?

More specific questions will be known as we move ahead....


Now, to meet with Professor Gal again in order to move ahead!

Our 2nd Meeting with Paul

So we meet with Paul today, and our meeting with him was very productive. We were able to get all the raw data that we needed, and now we can essentially go to Professor Gall, and specify how we want the system to work. Although we have been delayed a bit, we now have what we need going forward with our project.

We are also thinking of investing in a 'netbook/tablet like' device. The ideal device will be able to run Microsoft Access while being non-distributive. That can be a netbook, or a tablet that is capable of running Access. Netbooks are good, but however they may create more of a noisy footprint, which the administration does not want to do within in formal visits.

So basically, we plan to meet with professor Gall on the 10th if he's available, and dabbling with Access during the following week to actually start creating the system. From then, we can move forward with the specifics and putting Principal Hyry's particular comments into the system.

A touch-screen netbook is more or less where we're are leaning, which should run between $200-$400 dollars.

The wheels are most definitely in motion! :)

-PSAdmin Team

Scheduling and Logistics

As we embark in the eve of a new semester, it is all about logistics and getting things on their way. We are all seniors in the suffle of classes, red-tape, and getting the nitty gritty done to be able to graduate this coming spring. My other partners were trying to get a hold of Megan, and she being as busy, if not busier than we are was just able to get a hold of us back. This week I was finally able to fully get my schedule on track and confirm. Right now, we are mainly just finalizing meeting times, and logistics.

We do have some big ideas though. I recently thought of creating a YouTube channel for using Microsoft Access Tutorials. We can use this help teach us how to use Access, and then we can potentially use them to help out the Admin team. We might be able to pass this channel on to the admin team if all goes as plan, but we are still more or less piloting this idea.

First Post of the New Year and Updates

Hurrah! It's 2012! The Peck Admin Team is very optimistic going into this new year of 2012! This is the year of action and execution! We have dabbled with Microsoft Access during the New year. Now we are just awaiting Megan's response in terms of availability. But once we get the green light on when she's available, we'll have to coordinate that with all of our schedules. Then we'll be ready to go, and get all the details we need to start.

Team Paper, and Project Proposal: The Road Ahead

The team has been hard at work in terms of figuring and executing the task at hand. We have been trying to figure out all the details in terms of what the database will be consist of. Our project proposal, Team Papers, and our other crucial assignments are completed for the fall Semester. Right now, we already know what means we will use to conduct our project. The Peck School already has the entire Microsoft Office Suite, which is nice and cost effective for our purposes. Now the only thing will lie in having to learn how to use Access. There are various resources available on the internet like YouTube and other streaming video sites which offer many tutorials. Our team looking ahead plans on looking and learning from them.

Team Meeting Thursday/Friday December 8/9th

The team met to work on the paper. When we met on Dec 5th we also assigned parts of the paper to each member.

-Kelsey: proposal and project variables

-Charly: PECK and their needs

-Eleni: PECK's key goals and objectives, addressing sustainability issue, and added value to PECK

-Seyi: project execution: what plan to do, timeline, what we need

On Friday we met to edit, finalize, and submit the paper.

Team Meeting Monday December 5th

The team met to finish the slides for the presentation, edit them, and practice what we were saying. We gave each other input on what to say during each part of the presentation. Later that day we made a Google Doc to the presentation script. The slides were not created to be too wordy or overwhelming, so to make sure we said everything necessary during the presentation, Eleni suggested we make a script and practice key points. This way we could give each other suggestion on what to add/delete.

Team Meeting Sunday December 4th

The team met to outline the Presentation we had on Tuesday December 6th about out project Proposal.

assignments for slides and talking during presentation:

-Eleni does community service pedagogy and info on Holyoke and PECK

-Charly does timeline

-Kelsey does value of project

-Seyi does specific about project: Access vs Drupel

Meeting with Prof. Gal: Access Info

Thursday December 1, 2011

-Access is capable of what we want it to do (to date)

-need to know: number of questions

number of options

what types of comments

responses in number scale, box, or drop-down menu

can limit text characters if want

-questions: need to set up formula to calculate a numbers or is Hyry inputing numbers?

what if wifi in school is down?

-when testing form, need to make sure can complete it in 10 minutes

-ipad affects how you test the form and length if description (don't want lengthy text because screen is smaller than on a laptop

-need more specific and detail to move forward in making the form with Prof. Gal!

Meeting with Prof. Brewer: Drupal Info

Wednesday November 30, 2011:

We met with Professor Brewer today to learn more about Drupal, another option to make the form in. He told us:

-t's web-based

-dependable - the White House uses it!

-can have pop-up menus, multiple choice, blank spaces

-can looks at survey results as a table and as analysis

-can get report statistics

-could generate a pdf of the report

-can add additional comments at end of survey (but not after each question)

-multiple views of data results

-Webform can generate e-mails

-could write a custom app for ipad, but difficult (need maintenance)

Cons:

-each teacher would have to set up an account in order to see the survey results for their in-class reviews (some less tech-savvy teachers may need to learn how to use website)

-have to build in security from ground up

-needs upkeep - maintain and support it over time

-Drupal needs to be at hosting service to be useful

-need certain things on computer to install Drupal

Looking Up Access

Monday November 28, 2011 Team meeting:

Our group met today to start investigating our options for what program we are going to build the form/survey in. Today, we focused on Microsoft Access. We started playing around with Access (since none of us know how to use) and figure out how to make a form. Eleni followed this process to make a mock-form: go to Faculty database; create form using Form Wizard; Justifies format; choose necessary fields; go the bottom right of screen, click on Design View (last) button, and click edit items - edit drop-down items, edit title of field. Colomnour View also looked nice. We also started looking up Access features to see what it has to offer (did not look too much into this).

Working on our Presenation

Today we all brought together our ideas, and slides for our presentation today. We had all worked on specific delegated roles that each of us would present on. Our idea is that we would all equally present our roles for the team, as well as our objectives, and primarily ideas moving forward.

We all worked using Google Documents to put together our PowerPoint. We were able to agree on color coordination, and the overall appearance of our presentation during the meeting as well too.

So far we are optimistic and expecting good things with how everything is coming along.

Meeting with Megan

Today, we met with Megan from the Peck School. She and the other administrator had many ideas that they wanted to work with. Most of their ideas were just a culmination of many brainstormed ideas.

The administration has wants to work towards tracking the progress of the students. They want a more efficient way of looking at the progress of each individual student, and they are looking for software that can chart a student's progress on a 40 point scale. Charly also talked about this previously when he met up with Megan earlier in the week, but she emphasized the need for this at today's meeting.

They also talked about how projects in previous years have been implemented a data base, and suggested that we could perhaps improve what is currently there.

But the project that seems to have the most priority is one which allows for the principal to evaluate his teachers more efficiently. The administration is looking for a streamlined way of evaluating how teachers are meeting objectives, engaging the students, checking the understanding of the students, and improving reading comprehension.

The administration is looking for a system that can evaluate how teachers are meeting the above objectives with a standard template of the principal comments, to effectively, and quickly evaluate teachers, so the principal can spend more time in each of the classrooms, and as well as meeting the goals of the full service school. The Administrators stated that they would be open towards buying an electronic device (ie, IPAD, Kindle, Nook, ect....) that can achieve the task for the administration.

Agenda for 11/15

Tomorrow we are going to meet up with the Peck School in Holyoke to start our project. We will contact her and get the ball rolling as well as learning more about the needs of the school. But for today we are looking to delegate rolls for the team, as well as deciding what we are planning on saying to Megan tomorrow.

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