Looking for software to keep track of students/classes for dog trainers
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It doesn't need to be dog specific (tho, that would help as we need to track what dogs a particular owner has)
Ideally, they want to be able to:
- track communication with the student (that would be a bonus feature)
- current class they are in (class name/day/time/capacity, instructor name/notes, start date - dates float - sessions are 6 weeks, but sometimes longer if a holiday happens (or a governor says "SHUT IT DOWN"))
- Past classes (with ^that^ info too)
- Able to easily create rosters (both current and past classes)
- It doesn't need to do scheduling
Basically, something that can keep track of recurring classes.
Right now, that info is all kept in various spreadsheets, so when they want to create a roster of past classes, or just see what classes a student has taken, it's - well - difficult.
I don't mind writing something (I'll get free classes out of it!), but having something to start from would help.
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@dcon said in Looking for software to keep track of students/classes for dog trainers:
Right now, that info is all kept in various spreadsheets, so when they want to create a roster of past classes, or just see what classes a student has taken, it's - well - difficult.
The natural progression from a bunch of spreadsheets is a database. If you don't need a service, SQLite's well-regarded and easy to get going with. If you need a service, Postgres is also well-regarded. (Note that the SQLite authors themselves recommend Postgres for applications where it makes sense.) You might try with SQLite first and then migrate if it turns out you need the larger deployment (the pain of migration is almost entirely related to the amount of data to move, which doesn't sound too large right now as you're using spreadsheets).
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@dkf said in Looking for software to keep track of students/classes for dog trainers:
SQLite
That's actually where I'm heading now. I was just thinking if there was something available that did "mostly" what I needed, that would save a lot of effort!
I'm currently cloning an existing sqlite program of mine as a starting point. And I've been playing around with sqlite via "SQLite Studio" at coming up with a viable schema. Since they're currently using Google sheets, I figure I can just have them share the db via OneDrive/etc. They'll just have to be careful not to edit at the same time! (I'm not going to try and deal with some web-hosted thing - they don't have the setup and I don't have the experience (I write desktop apps).)
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I was pondering if you couldn't just finagle some random CRM to do this, but my
tripped and couldn't get back up...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Looking for software to keep track of students/classes for dog trainers:
I was pondering if you couldn't just finagle some random CRM to do this, but my
tripped and couldn't get back up...The problem there is that most cost money. Or my google-fu just wasn't working... Everything I saw wanted a lot more per month then my friends are willing to pay. And the free ones were extremely crippled (in terms of what we want)
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@dcon My one and only suggestion is a negative one. DO NOT, whatever you do, try to adapt a LMS (the educational version of a CRM), despite that looking like it would meet all your needs. Because all LMS's suck. Bad. Like every other piece of "education-oriented" software. The surface is fine, but actually trying to adapt it to your needs? Forget about it.
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@dcon said in Looking for software to keep track of students/classes for dog trainers:
Since they're currently using Google sheets, I figure I can just have them share the db via OneDrive/etc. They'll just have to be careful not to edit at the same time!
If they're mostly just reading, that'll work fine. If there's more writing, it'll be ghastly and earn a special cite on a particular website…
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@Benjamin-Hall A lot of those came up in my initial searches. I was less than impressed. Plus almost all wanted to be the be-all-end-all access methods for teachers/students/admins. I'm not setting up a website to do that!
My "students" are dogs. They (mostly) don't need access. And the "parents" (owners) really don't either. So the only ones who need access are the "admins" - and that can be done off-line as the data does not (and really shouldn't because of PII) be online.
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@dcon said in Looking for software to keep track of students/classes for dog trainers:
@Benjamin-Hall A lot of those came up in my initial searches. I was less than impressed. Plus almost all wanted to be the be-all-end-all access methods for teachers/students/admins. I'm not setting up a website to do that!
My "students" are dogs. They (mostly) don't need access. And the "parents" (owners) really don't either. So the only ones who need access are the "admins" - and that can be done off-line as the data does not (and really shouldn't because of PII) be online.
It's a constant--anything made "for educators" or "for education" is overpriced, controlling, and a stack of
to infinity and beyond.At one point I made my own static site generator to create simple "quizzes" (except not really), because the LMS we used was just that bad.
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This post is deleted!
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@Benjamin-Hall I see myself in that comment so very hard. But then again I have professionally supported LMSes in a university and workplace context so I was
all along.
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@Arantor said in Looking for software to keep track of students/classes for dog trainers:
@Benjamin-Hall I see myself in that comment so very hard. But then again I have professionally supported LMSes in a university and workplace context so I was
all along.Yeah. I only had to integrate against them, and only non-professionally (I was a teacher and earlier a grad student). Hated hated hated hated. And the more I learned about software development, the more I could see all the things they were doing
. The curse of knowledge, I guess.
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@Benjamin-Hall did Moodle touch you in the no-no place? I mean, you could get a Moodle to do this with a couple of plugins but then you have something wildly unhelpful with a vague spreadsheet level tracker attached.
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@Arantor I'm forgetting which LMSs I've used over the years. Well...have repressed the memory is more like it.
I just remember super clunky and awkward. The worst, though, was our gradebook/course management system (I think that's what it was called). The one that actually ran all the parent info, transcripts, marketing stuff, alumni information, grades, etc (private school). Didn't help that we were on an ancient version because our "IT admin" refused to learn new versions, which led us to be blacklisted by the sales team of the platform. We'd not have been allowed to upgrade even if we were going to. So the year after I left they were scrambling to find a whole new system and (somehow) port 3 decades of crufty bad data (like, seriously bad data) over to it.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Looking for software to keep track of students/classes for dog trainers:
3 decades of crufty bad data
You repeat yourself.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Looking for software to keep track of students/classes for dog trainers:
adapt a LMS (the educational version of a CRM),
When I first read that, I thought you said LIMS. Those are more than enough of a shitshow for the rest of the description to work very well. It's like it is difficult to manage information for some reason...
