rikkicarroll.com

Here at the University of Kent all the students have access to this thing they call the Jobshop. When you register with them they send you emails about various jobs on and off campus that will fit in with a students timetable. Anyway about 4 weeks ago a new job posting became available. The job was web developer/programmer for the university IS Web Team. I looked at the requirements: XHTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and MySQL knowledge. I thought fantastic... So i applied within the next few days.

I've been somewhat busy over the last month. Fourteen of those days were spent in the 108 degrees Florida Sunshine. Ahhh....

I have also been busy 'switching'. Yes I have jumped from Windows to Mac OSX for my main platform. To be quite honest its not as hard to switch over as it may seem. Everything works pretty much the same as with Windows except it runs smoother and you don't get the OS fighting you. Instead the OS try to help you by staying out of your way. Its like the power of the Mac OS is there but its not in your face so to speak. You unravel as much as you want.

The Brief

The college I currently attend previously attended approached me and asked if i could convert there paper based Student Review System to an web based system that sits on the intranet. They wanted to streamline the process, making it easier for teachers reducing paperwork down to a minimum.

How the Paper system works

The current paper system is very paper rich and takes quite a while to complete. The process is very inefficient creating lots of extra work that really should not be necessary. The administration staff will produce paper forms for teachers to fill in about each student in their classes. The forms then are filled out by the tutor and sent back to the administration staff. The administration staff then copy all of the data by hand into a computer database. The database is then mail merged into letters to be sent home to parents of the students.