Forget Snow Days, Kids Get Two Days Of No Classes Due to A Computer Glitch
from the how-did-we-ever-deal-before? dept
Apparently the Prince George County high school spent over $4 million on a nice new computer system... and the system is so buggy that students have been unable to attend class for the first two days of school, since the computer system refuses to give them their schedules. The kids still went to school, but just got to hang out in the gym or hallways since no one seemed to be able to figure out where they were supposed to go. The thing that gets me... is how did they get to the beginning of the school year and just realize this? I know I went to school way back before all this was computerized, and we got our schedules sent in the mail a few weeks before school. You have to think that the school would have realized this was a problem earlier and at least figured out some sort of manual way to get schedules to people?
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To quote Tron:
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Re: To quote Tron:
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RE: When computers fail, we as a society fail.
The failure of the launch is not surprising. A little procrastination and bungling by management, a little "can no longer hide that I'm incompetent" by a consultant and voila.
The $4M price tag is surprising. I design CRM/ERP systems. $4M would pay for a total CRM/ERP system usable by many fortune 500 companies. I see from the article that it is designed to support the 41,000 high school students in the county, but systems like this could support millions and still not cost so much.
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VRP
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Lesson from business
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But, if I had to schedule an entire high school on pen and pencil? I wouldn't even know where to start. And telling kids to just "go to their class they signed up for" is a very good recipe for disaster. And this is at a school 170 students. The thought of scheduling 4000 students by hand when you plan on doing it by computer? Good luck.
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And yet it was done, somehow back when
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But, if I had to schedule an entire high school on pen and pencil? I wouldn't even know where to start. And telling kids to just "go to their class they signed up for" is a very good recipe for disaster. And this is at a school 170 students. The thought of scheduling 4000 students by hand when you plan on doing it by computer? Good luck.
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Our ancestors must have had magical powers to do all this by hand then......
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OBANINATOR - "A NEW change - yes we can!"
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Open Information accessible any time.
Computer read more information in a single second than a human can.
Open information accessible by computers, again, at any time.
The dots match! 1+1 == 2!
I didn't see this :(
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In schools I've dealt with, the assumption is one, and two if you're lucky, do the scheduling all on computers. This tends to start out as a highly automated process. I tell the computer how many of each class to have per semester and how many students per class. I give scheduling and request priorities. As far as actually building a master schedule, the technique for doing so is lost on us who tell the computer to do it. Whereas in the past, more than one person would word on schedules and they knew and utilized techniques to build a schedule from scratch.
Building schedules also takes a lot of time. Having done it for the past few years, I know when I need to start to make the magic happen. Now, if the entire system goes down and I'm unable to do scheduling (that's the real problem, IMHO- the system not working and not having some way to connect to the database), I'm in a very bad position because the school relies solely on me, who was never trained in the formal art of schedule making, to make schedules.
It is worth noting a lot of schools function under the same premise because scheduling software tends to be complicated, and most administrators get completely lost. Inevitably, the only people able to actually use the database software are the IT people. So, guess who gets to make the schedules? Your friendly IT staff!
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It isn't really complicated and straighforward. All you really need is a database that is up to date and a program that reads the database and follows some rulesets to establish a valid school-wide schedule based on student needs.
I guess I can tell my CS friends who made a scheduler that schedules classes based on what classes students have selected to sell it as they can make a ton of $$$.
You can also do the same by just doing queries on a database. Also, most programmers will tell you they were never trained to make your program. They made it based on your desires and expectations through trial and error.
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PG County
I was never trained to do 90% of the things I do. I just use a few brains, some common sense, and a little bit of forcing the issue.
Here is what I'd do. Start with a list of students and a list of classes. Gather any data that you can get in a few hours time, last year's schedules, etc. Start assigning. I really don't know what that should take more than a day, considering you have a lot of idle teachers and students to help. Sure, some students will be placed incorrectly, but once you have them in a class, they'll know if they belong or not.
Demand a full refund for the SchoolMax software, since obviously, it didn't work. Seriously, the name alone sounds like some crappy beltway bandit style product.
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I swear...
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As a Comp Sci major...
For crying out loud I fail a project if it doesn't work even half right, how does someone get to spend $4 million and screw up this epicly?
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Anger is easy to set in with stories like this.
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Computer Glitch
After the glitches first day of classes a manager of finance and the project manager asked me how long it would be before the bugs were worked out..I commented, "about 6 months to a year typically" and he did not believe me,it was pretty much a year before the system was functioning without daily issues.
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Like the recient stories on how GPS units mislead ....
I need a different hammer ... my thumb is always purple, damned no good hammer, I hate those bastards that made it.
When will sheeple realize that a computer is just a tool, no different than a hammer or a chainsaw. Used properly and with planning and training they can be tremendously useful and productive tools, used improperly .... you know the rest. (I hope)
Maybe the problem shows up with the SchoolMax software but the root of the problem is with the school district and its lack of leadership.
Don't confuse true leadership with good management or good administration. Many organizations are well managed and administrated but have no direction or purpose and therefore aren't profitable or don't provide the service intended. I once inherited a organization that was the most organized, well managed group of people who were fiercely loyal to the manager. When I asked her how her unit was contributing to the corporate goals, she was dumbfounded ... and eventually unemployed because because she couldn't shift her focus from internal management and administration to serving our external customers. In my experience, most educational organizations are focused internally and not on the customer ... the student.
Michael Xue, the Nakroshis's and the other students and parents do deserve so much better.
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Re: Like the recient stories on how GPS units mislead ....
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Parallel processing
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Hmm must be getting lazy
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Schoolmax Sucks on Facebook
I checked out the Schoolmax Web site. It does come across as "some crappy beltway bandit" as Joseph Durnal said. The content is all touchy-feely and no technical content at all.
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School computers
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http://www1.pgcps.org/sis/index.aspx?id=61218
Even the Latest New and Updates page isn't in chronological order.
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Spelunking the Prince George's County Public School's website.
http://www1.pgcps.org/sis/index.aspx?id=57332
Obviously the Prince George's County Public School can not use profanity on their website so they use __________.
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It was also kind enough to delete me in my sophomore year because someone entered me twice, but with a different ssn each time.
Perhaps they buy bad software because the people who end up making these purchasing decisions have no idea what they're doing?
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Oh F'ing brother
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If you knew PG County
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