Hello.

I manage a primary/middle school website. The site includes a page where parents and students can check homework assignments by subject. I (my new principal!) would like for parents to be able to search homework by GRADE, which means that each teacher would need to contribute to a single page, rather than asking parents to click around to each individual subject page.

Right now, I have a frames page set up, again, by school subject. I realize that I may be posting to the wrong forum, as there may be a PHP/SQL or other solution that may be easier or work better. However, my experience with those is limited (although I'm very good at cutting and pasting!). Ease of use for the teachers is extremely critical. Basically, I'd like for each subject area teacher to be able to post their daily assignments to their own particular page, and for all of the subject assignments to show up collated on another page.

Here is the homework page:

http://www.stjaneschool.org/Homework/juniorhigh.htm

Thanks in advance for any help/advice,
Charles

Your best solution, really, is a database-driven content management system. It would give you the kind of functionality that you describe and still be set up to be easy to use.

Charles I agree that what you're seeking is best down by a database driven content management system (CMS). I'm pretty sure there are existing systems for what you want to do. I've seen others ask enough similar questions.

I did a quick search and found this site. The page I linked to is an administration system specifically for K-12. It's probably more than you need or want to spend, but it might give you some ideas on what to search for.

One CMS you should definitely look at is Moodle. It's free, open source, and runs on PHP/MySQL. It was created specifically to manage online courses. I don't know for certain, but I would think it could do what you want with the grades.

Here's a case study of Moodle from the K-12 Open Technologies site. I'm posting the link in part so you'll check out the K-12 Open Technologies site. I just found it while searching, but it looks like it could be useful for someone in your position.

In addition to the above I'd think there would be some small ready made free scripts to do roughly what you want, though they'll probably need to be customized. Here's the page from HotScripts with educational scripts. Some will be free, others pay. The free ones generally need a little work to get them to do exactly what you want, but they usually provide a really good start.

Hope some of the above helps.

CMS

Moodle is absolutely the way to go its open source and completely free to use.

To all,

Thanks! I already have Moodle, and it seems that it will give me a lot more functionality than I had originally thought of! Kinda a forest and trees thing, I guess.

I'm glad I thought of it!

Thanks again,
C

Originally Posted by chuckie66

Hello.

I manage a primary/middle school website. The site includes a page where parents and students can check homework assignments by subject. I (my new principal!) would like for parents to be able to search homework by GRADE, which means that each teacher would need to contribute to a single page, rather than asking parents to click around to each individual subject page.

Right now, I have a frames page set up, again, by school subject. I realize that I may be posting to the wrong forum, as there may be a PHP/SQL or other solution that may be easier or work better. However, my experience with those is limited (although I'm very good at cutting and pasting!). Ease of use for the teachers is extremely critical. Basically, I'd like for each subject area teacher to be able to post their daily assignments to their own particular page, and for all of the subject assignments to show up collated on another page.

Here is the homework page:

http://www.stjaneschool.org/Homework/juniorhigh.htm

Thanks in advance for any help/advice,
Charles

I would use an access database through cold fusion, or just a plain old SQL database.

Access databases are seriously limited and cold fusion hosting tends to be pretty expensive. Using something that's PHP-based (FREE) is a better solution all around.

database driven is how I run my site, and I use SQL..... highly recommend it because it's easy to learn