Archive for July, 2005

SchoolTool

Tuesday, July 5th, 2005

I have been hearing about SchoolTool more often, lately.

They have a big vision: “a common information systems platform for school administration from California to Calcutta, via Cape Town! We hope to provide a single tool that will be readily adapted to the specific regulatory requirements and practices of different countries and regions, but that retains enough common functionality to make a shared development effort worthwhile.”

This makes sense to me as an ideal application for an Open Source approach. SchoolTool (like GroupServer) uses Zope and Python. It has a standards-based calendar module called SchoolBell.

Is anyone using SchoolTool in Aotearoa/NZ?

The Deliberative Democracy Handbook

Monday, July 4th, 2005

I am back from the USA with much to blog and much to delight and intrigue of a day to day nature. As my molecules are reassemble, I will post here on one or two matters – in the order in which they occur to me.

I saw a few copies of the Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the Twenty-First Century, while I was in the US. I’d recommend this for a comprehensive and in-depth introduction to deliberative democracy in the US today, whether online or in traditional settings.