Seating Chart Creator - Help Me Design My First Program

[sumpm1]

Hey guys. I am new here. I am a teacher. I have always looked for software that would help me as a teacher in the classroom. And I always had ideas for some of the features I wanted in the software. I have created a few small programs in LiveCode now, enough to get my feet wet. And I am ready to tackle the serious idea I have; "Seating Chart Creator" for teachers.

I have a long list of features that I want to implement. And I have a vague idea of how the interface should work.

I need help PLANNING the design. How should I go about laying down the plan?

Once I have a good plan, I can just tackle each challenge one by one.

But if I don't know how to outline everything to start, it will all be too difficult to actually put together, and I am less likely to receive help if it is all chaotic.


Let me know of any tutorials, books, videos, threads, checklists... that you know of that are good for beginning to design software.

Or if you know of a thread where someone outlined their plan and got help, I could see how they started, and what was eventually asked of them. Also if you know what details I should post, let me know.

Also tell me if this is posted in the wrong forum.

[sumpm1]

Self Bump.

[FourthWorld]

It's a broad question, but if you have time I'd be happy to spend a few minutes over the phone helping you get started. I know a lot of teachers and it's a tough job, happy to help. Drop me a note at ambassador [AT] fourthworld.com and we can set up a time to talk.

[Randy Hengst]

Richard is way more knowledgeable about coding than I am, but I'd be happy to help, too. I work in a teacher ed program, I've taught middle school and elementary, I supervise student teachers and work with our teacher candidates and teachers to develop (very simple) apps.

be well,
randy

[Newbie4]

I have written a seating chart program and have been using it this school year. It works fairly well and I am planning on submitting it to the app store this summer.

I am a teacher at the high school level. I have classes 6 periods a day, with about 30-36 different students in each class. Two of my classes are Quarter classes, so I get about 70 new students every 9 weeks. So I have really depended on it to make my days easier. It also allows me to take attendance, do grading and print seating charts for paper copies (for Subs).

The seats are moveable and the students are also moveable in those seats. Then you can click on those students to mark late or absent and record the date/time. You can display the students in different ways and with different data (grades/birthdays/age/nickname/last name/etc).

My next task is to see if I can interface it with our Internet-based School Grading System. I am not sure where to start.

I used it to help learn LiveCode which may have been too large a task to start with. It has taken a lot of time and many false starts. It has gotten quite complex and involved for me as a beginner. I would recommend starting out with something simpler like a test maker, student note keeper or something to record and track assignments.

You are welcome to try my program and I can give you the code after I have cleaned it up. (It is not very readable right now and needs more comments in places)

What did you have in mind to do? I will help if I can although, I am nowhere as knowledgable as the other posters in this forum. I will at least try to help you if I can.

I must say, it has been an interesting (and sometimes frustrating) experience. But it has been fun and I have learned a lot. The more I learn about LiveCode, the braver I get in trying new ideas and implementations. LiveCode is definitely worth learning.

I have started other projects that as a teacher, I could use. Maybe we could collaborate and come up with some good projects and useful teacher apps.

Let me know of you are interested and how I can help

[sumpm1]

I have written a seating chart program and have been using it this school year. It works fairly well and I am planning on submitting it to the app store this summer.

Hey. I searched through your posts to see if I could find your program, I will try to find it at the 1001 things page. Collaboration? That sounds neat. I have so many simple little ideas that could be useful for a teacher, random student generator, timers, behavior and goal tracking... Just easy little stuff really.

And you seating chart program sounds neat. I would love to see how you worked out saving some of the data; I read your discussion about nested arrays.

I think I could probably suggest some easy additions to your program. And try adding them if you wouldn't mind.

You can email me at
dehall[at]episd.org