Hoping for a better timetable experience later this year?
It was Autumn 2008 and I was sitting at my workstation thinking about
the new school year, you see, I am the IT manager of a school. My
workstation is tucked away at the far end of the school grounds, which
can make me hard to find. Sometimes an advantage. In came Joe, my
assistant, with a CD in his hand and he was waving it in my face like a
wild man.
"Michelle, Michelle, you just have to see this, I mean you
should really see this..."
"This what?"
"It's a timetable program. But I mean you just have to see it..."
"Now Joe, the school has already tried a couple of timetabling systems."
"But this one comes under a thousand dollars, and you have got to see
it..."
I was used to Joe coming in with some new toy to show off , usually
some gadget like a iPhone, or a piece of software that was going to
save hours of my time each week, yeah right.
"Joe, I will not waste another X dollars, plus GST, on a
timetabling system ever again." Joe paused for another breath. "It's not
like the last one, really. I've never seen anything like it. There's no
save command. It hasn't got any pop-up boxes with confusing options.
It's got unlimited undo. It's almost like there's nothing to come
between you and the timetable."
I looked up, interested. Joe, knew that I had no patience for software
that required endless clicking of OK buttons to get anything done. And I
had just finished preparing a sorted report of some data from the
schools database that seemed to delight in forcing me to go through
hoops just to get a simple list of students.
"Please give me a break."
"If you say so." Joe said, and he dropped the CD on my desk with a page
printed from a website and immediately turned about face and left.
After running the install program, I have a shiny new icon for
SM-Timetable on my workstation and five minutes later after completing
the two steps required to display the sample timetable data, I am hooked.
Every student, teacher, and class is immediately accessible from a list
on the screen. By clicking on a student, on the right of the screen his
or her timetable is immediately visible. Now, how to print that? Trying
the button with the Printer seems the logical thing to do, and it works.
Nice looking page too, easy to read with good use of fonts. And all
this is done without reading the help or once needing to figure out
which command to choose on the menu bar.
I wonder how can I put a student in a class. I can get a list of
classes on the left of the screen and a list of students on the right. I
give my hunch a try, a click on the student and drag it onto the class,
and there she is added to the class! Not a single, "Do you really want
to do this?" to get in my way. And I can see the Undo button in case I
do make a mistake.
This really is different, I reckon the teachers and admin staff would
actually like using this one. I now realise what I am looking at. This
is a timetable system to be used all year round, by all staff. Not just
a select few for a couple of months of the year, but anytime a current
and accurate list or timetable is required.
Twenty minutes later I have printed class lists, added the names of a
couple of our regular casual teachers, and printed a timetable of all
the sample teacher's classes for each day of the week. Still without
reading any documentation. Looking through the help, I see that I could
store comprehensive student details including individual photographs. It
even sorts out the allocation and making of timetables for casual
teachers each day, that alone will impress the deputy.
Now, how much did Joe say it would cost...
