[sf-lug] Fwd: help moving a public middle school in San Francisco to FOSS

[Christian Einfeldt]

hi

On 9/1/07, John Jefferson Lowry IV <johnlowry at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I know that this may not be the time do it, but migrating that
> spreadsheet to a solution like Moodle (http://www.moodle.org) might be
> a good idea.


Thanks for this suggestion, but I am a level one tech volunteer, and a
relatively simple end user who knows about 20 script commands. I am not an
educator.  I am not a computer scientist.  But I am a lover of freedom, and
I will be damned if I am not going to do my best to free this school from
the grip of Redmond.  So I am willing to learn, but I have very little time,
no budget, but we do have a nice local FOSS community, and so I am betting
we can beat this problem.

That way all you need a web browser tht works, versus
> having to use proprietary file formats or moving away form them.


Well, but the teachers need to do data entry.  Are you saying that this
solution runs over the local network in a browser?  Is it some type of AJAX
solution?

What are the next steps for making this happen?

You
> can write a perl script that access .xls file with the
> Spreadsheet::WriteExcel module, pulls the data you need, and puts it
> in moodle.


Okay, this probably means that I need to have a fileserver on the network,
yes?

As to fixing the having OOo opening the file.... You might SOL. I have
> had the most compatibility issues with big Excel files.


right.  As it currently is now, I am sadly going to have to recommend to
this teacher that he use an all Microsoft box for his work, because this is
a mission-critical app, and there is zero tolerance for failure of this app
or its data.  Unless, of course, you are Microsoft, in which case it's
alright, because hey, everyone uses Microsoft, so it must be the best,
right?  At least that is currently how the educators here think.  Their
attitudes are changing very slowly as they get exposed to FOSS in the
edubuntu lab, but it is a long, long, slow piece of work, and unfortunately,
this teacher needs a seamless solution in less than 72 hours, on Tuesday
morning.
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