school-data-systems.org    

FAQ

The following are answers to frequently asked questions about all aspects of the data-system.

How easy it the system to install?

It is quite a big job for someone to set up the system if they have no experience of a Linux system. Having said that, the possibilities that are openned up when you have a web server in a school are huge and this makes it worth spending the time on making one available.

Does the system run under a microsoft web server?

All the software that we write is open souce and can be modified by anyone. We have not written the system with a microsoft server in mind but if apache is installed on such a system as well as a MySQL database server and the Perl and PHP programming languages, it should be possible to modify the system to work. We do not support this however and we do not anticipate working on making it available in this way.

What are the hardware requirements?

As ususal, the better the hardware, the faster the system will run. We used to say that any PC would do and have had the system running without trouble for years on an old Pentium 200MHz machine. As the system has improved, however, we now recommend using a machine of better spec. The key element is the amount of memory in the computer; the more the better. With the price of computers low at the moment, you can get a new machine that will be pretty much future proof for under six hundred pounds. We see this is a worthwhile investment because we think that as time goes on you will get more and more use out of this valueable resource.

What Linux distribution do you use?

We have had the system working on just about every distribution of Linux we can find without any problem. If you are setting the machine up yourself and have a preference then you can just use that one. You may need to alter some of the configuration of either apache or our system to make sure everything is in the right place if you use anything other that Fedora Core as this is the one that we are currently writing it for.

How do I make it accessible from the Internet

To make your web server accessible from outside you Local Area Network you need to assign the machine with an external IP address. Your service provider for your school should be able to set this up for you. If you are unhappy about having an external connection onto your LAN you don't need to do this and use the system purely internally.

How secure is it?

If we install the system, we make every effort to make it as secure as possible. All external contact is made through a secure connection like those used for internet banking and shopping. Access to the system is done through passwords and uses apache authentication. No internet machine is completely safe though and the machine needs to be monitored regularly to check for possible intrusions from malicious uses acrosss the internet.

How does the data get onto the system

Data is sent to the system as csv files. All spreadsheet programs export data in this way. Obviously the way that your school produces the data will depend on how you store it but it can be exported from such applications as SIMS with very little effort. If we install the system for you we will then make all the changes to the data necessary and upload it to the server. Because schools often have different ways of storing information this does vary from one institution to another, and ofter we have to write programs for a specific school to solve problems with their data. This is often a good thing as our work finds potential problems with school data.

How easy is it to get data off the system?

The data system is designed to be a stand alone assessment package that does all the analysis and data manipulation that schools need. We often find that schools already have data systems in place and data needs to be transferred to them.

All our systems are able to export data in a flexible way either in comma separated variable (csv) format or Microsoft Excel^®. These formats can then be used to import the data into programs such as Assesment Manager. All the schools that we work with currently do it this way and prefer this method of data collection.

What about printing out things like reports and references.

The system produces fully formatted documents for you to simply click 'print' for. You customise how you want your reports etc to look and the system produces pdf documents that you (or your web browser) open in Adobe Acrobat Reader (or other pdf viewing software). You simply print off these documents. The system organises the output to minimise the amount of paperwork necessary. For example, if you ask for a whole year groups reports, they will be presented in tutor group order for easy distribution.

The survey system produces a fully formatted report with graphs and tables of analysis in pdf format. Again, you simply click print and you have a document ready for presentation to any audience.

Everything about the output of the data is customisable as they are produced by passing data to the excellent Perl Template Toolkit which pipes the documents through Latex. By using such professional documentation software we ensure that the printed documents are of a very high standard.