Final Project

School District Web Site

Since I am currently not teaching in a classroom, I did not have a practical purpose for developing educational interfaces or applications for students in a classroom using Flash or some other development tool.  This coupled with my ultimate goal becoming a Technology Coordinator in a school district led me to the decision to create and code a prototype of a School District Web Site.  In discussion with Craig, we determined that the best way to approach this task was by writing the native HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) & PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) scripts from scratch without the use of a development software.  The thinking behind this approach was to provide me the technical tools that will enable me to support the technical requirements within a school district.

I purchased the book, ‘Visual Quickstart Guide - PHP for the Web 3^rd Edition by Larry Ullman, which is an excellent resource.  This book provided a very readable and practical guide for coding html and php.  Many books of this nature are difficult to read and follow through with the examples but this book was really an excellent tool. With the books help and of course our Professor Craig Kapp, I was able to code basic scripts to create web page forms, query data, insert data, delete data and to put it all together in an overall Web page that is more aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

In order to accomplish these tasks, I had to first establish a Domain on the Web.  I used my GoDaddy site that I had originally used in the Multi Media I course.  For that course I had developed a Blog.  This time around I needed to establish web site and MySQL Data Base on my domain which is: http://johngbarrett.com/ .  Establishing the MySQL data base was fairly straight forward.  Once I defined and create the ‘schooldistrict’ data base I then created the following tables: Users, courses and students using the MySQL tool ‘phpAdmin’.  This tool required a little bit of learning time but once I understood how to navigate and perform the various functions, it was easy to navigate.  One of the hardest tasks in data base design is determining the data fields required and how to structure those data fields in tables with unique identifiers (keys) for accessing the data through queries.  Following is the Users Table that records all of the Users of the schoodistrict data base:

Database schooldistrict

Table structure for table Users

Field	Type	Null	Default
fname	varchar(10)	Yes	NULL
lname	varchar(15)	Yes	NULL
pswd	varchar(8)	Yes	NULL
role	varchar(1)	Yes	NULL
email	varchar(30)	Yes	NULL
id	int(8)	Yes	NULL
userid	varchar(8)	Yes	NULL

Dumping data for table Users

Fname	lname	pswd	role	email	id	userid
Adam	Apple	password	a	adam@schooldistrict.com	1	apple10
Chris	chris	password	s	chris@schooldistrict.com	3	chris10
Mike	Cappiello	mc	t	cappiel4@tcnj.edu	39	mcappiel
Dina	Bottley	db	t	bottley3@tcnj,edu	38	dbottley
Allison	Mazurek	am	t	mazurek4@tcnj.edu	43	amazurek
Sean	Mason	sm	t	masons1@tcnj.edu	42	smason
Jaclyn	Kotler	jk	t	kotler4@tcnj.edu	41	jkotler
Kathryn	Goodhart	gk	t	goodhar5@tcnj.edu	40	kgoodhar
Craig	Kapp	ck	a	craig.kapp@gmail.com	33	ckapp
John	Barrett	jb	a	jbarrett@nac.net	29	jbarrett
Katie	schooley	ks	t	schoole2@tcnj.edu	44	kschoole
Diane	Steiner	ds	t	steiner4@tcnj.edu	45	dsteiner
Melissa	Todd	mt	t	toddm2@tcnj.edu	46	mtodd
Katherine	Valeo	kv	t	valeo2@tcnj.edu	47	kvaleo

In the table the field ‘id’ is automatically generated by the MySQL data base and is the unique identifier (key) of this table.  The data in the table is created by each user as they initially login to the Web Site and request access to the site.  On the initial SchoolDistrict page http://johngbarrett.com/school_login.php the new user is prompted to provide all of the data seen in the example above.  The are required to provide their firstname, last name, userid, password, email address and to select a role of either: administrator, teacher, student or parent.  The userid and password combination can also be used as a unique identifier for data base queries.  In regards to the table structure of this data base, I still have a lot of work to do in further identifying the data fields that need to be included in a school district web site and also need to determine how to organize the structure the data in a logical manner.  The process of ‘normalizing’ the data base structure is something that I need to look further into and do more research as I expand and further develop this prototype web site.

     

The prototype ‘School District Web Site’ consists of an initial login page where a current users can login into the web site or a new user can request access by providing the required information.  Once a new user registers an email is automatically generated by the web site and sent to the user’s email address informing them that they have been registered and providing them their userid and password information.  The new user is then redirected to the login page to log into the system.

When a user logs into the School District Web site they are directed to the Home Page, which allows them to access all of the features of the web site from one location.  Currently, the Home Page allows the user to perform two queries of the data base.  The first query allows the user to select a teacher from a ‘drop down’ list and then to perform a query of the courses taught by that teacher.  The other query allows the user to select a student and view the courses that the student is currently enrolled.  Across the top of the Home Page is a banner containing links to school district pages such as information about: the School District,  Board of Education, Human Resource, Business, Students, etc.  This banner section was designed by modeling an existing district web site.  I used this site as a template for the type of information that could be included on a school web site.   I also copied and modified the source code from this site in order to help me understand how to script more advanced formatting techniques to make my site more aesthetically pleasing.

My goal is to continue to enhance this web site and use it as the basis of my Education Technology Department Project.  Toward that end, I am planning on enrolling in the Web Design I course in order to further enhance my html and php coding knowledge and application.