Idea Man

Every once and a while I get to talking to the folks that manage our student information system (Banner) and man…. does it sound like a big mountain of complicated code and applications (with a hefty price tag to boot)! Student information systems have been in use for a long time now and I wondered if it might be the right time for an open source one to come along? Couldn’t enough people agree on what might be considered a set of best practices? I talked about it in passing with some people here, just as a “wouldn’t it be interesting if…?” conversation and one response I got was that many schools think that the way they do their processes is the right way (or better yet, the only way) so getting people to agree on something would be hellish. But… take a look at course management systems… Moodle is popular and so isn’t  Sakai, maybe they could follow the trends set by those products? On a similar note, I just got the newest issue of Network Computing Magazine where they survey their readers for what erks them, one entry on the cover said “7% say open-source projects are run by sanctimonious elitists”!