School Data Hub

Software tool to handle school information flows between teachers / administrative office in an effective, collaborative way.

Origins

This software originated during the COVID-pandemic in our primary school "Hermannschule" in Stolberg (Germany). In order to keep track on attendance and quarantine statuses I developed a simple app to keep records in a collaborative way with a simple backend built with flask.

As I realized the time saving potential that brought handling this information digitally, I started to build a data model with information sets that we handle every day and cause long ways (walking across the school), cost time and organization resources, or leave long paper trails.

While learning more and more how programming works, I extended the model more and more...

So what does it do?

The app takes exported information from the software provided by our Education ministry and uses it to build extended models of the schools' pupils in the backend without uploading any personal data to the server^. The models in the backend are then used to add our additional information.

Data protection efforts

A singular approach that this app takes is the transport of personal information through encrypted qr-codes. It works like this:

1. When the client is installed, it needs school keys. Without them, it is useless.
2. As a security procedure, the school keys are kept securely as an unencrypted qr-code in the school's office. Whoever wants to use the school data, has to come at least once.
3. A user comes to the office and scans the school keys containing the URL of the server and encryption keys. These are stored in the device's secure storage.
4. Now the user can log in with their credentials. However, after the login process, there will still not be any pupils' data to call /display.
5. Now, the user has to scan the pupils' credentials, tipically from the desktop version of the app installed in the administrative computer that has the education ministry software installed. With it, a .txt file with the pupils' data can be exported. The desktop version of this app can import this file and create / update data in the backend. The personal data is stored in the secure storage. With it - and with the encryption keys - the app can generate encrypted qr-codes that can be read with other clients to import the pupil identities. API calls are only possible with this pupil data (and jwt tokens for authentication).

But why so complicated?

Since I'm no expert in data security, this is the way I found to ensure that the pupils' personal data isn't sent back and forth through the internet. In fact, this way the personal data is only transported through devices over encrypted qr-codes. As we are storing quite sensitive information, it is crucial that this information can't be related to a concrete pupil without proper authorization.

You can read more about the data modeling here:

https://github.com/dabblingwithcode/school_data_hub_frontend/blob/main/docs/data_models_description.md

Have you got a better idea? Pull requests welcome! :-)

What else is encrypted?

For now, all stored images.

Features already implemented

Attendance

• keep track of presence, minutes late, excused / unexcused, gone back home (e.g. for being sick), parents reached/not reached

Schoolday Events

• keep track of schoolday events and document them with a picture of a document (or whatever you want to photograph). Schoolday events could be an admoniton, an accident report, a parents meeting (anything you need to document) or any other incident associated with a pupil.

School Lists

• create private (user) or public check lists to keep track of whatever you need to keep track of (paid money for a day trip, signed form from the parents, ...), including a field for comments.

Authorizations

• authorizations are like lists, but an image can be attached, too. We use it for things that we need to keep a record from, like signed authorizations from the parents/guardians - for instance the authorization to take an avatar picture for this app.

Accounts

• In our school, we have an own currency. We use it as a reward system to motivate our pupils. With this currency, they can buy stuff in our own shop (like school t-shirts or buttons, but also pencils, erasers, or little games like yoyos and such).

Special information

• In case parents/guardians provide special information that everyone needs to know (like allergies, emergency medication, likelyhood of having an epilleptic stroke..), it can be called in a special list.

Individual learning support (WIP)

Pupils have the right to get learning support according to their individual needs. Being an inclusive school, this also includes special needs. Our local school authority provides mandatory categories that we have to use to describe individual needs and formulate/follow specific educational goals. These have to be documented / kept record of, too. It is also essential, that this information is available to any colleague working with the pupil, and that all colleagues involved cooperate and share information.

• This app can work with any category tree - this means, you could use your own.

• Based on this tree, the app can document category statuses - as estimated by the responsible colleague for the pupil - and keep track of progress collaboratively.

• It also can document development goals, which are ideally formulated together with the pupil.

Pupil profile

• All information about a pupil is bundled in a pupil profile view. Here you can call additional information like the parents' language proficiency in German (since over 90% of the families in our school do not speak German at home, this is relevant to us), siblings information, or information about afterschool care.

Filters

• Filters are incredibly useful when dealing with lists. There are general filters (like class, schoolyear) and specific filters for the different views implemented, as well as different ordering of the list elements according to different criteria depending on the view.

Matrix: User accounts and room management with Matrix Corporal (WIP)

• If you configure a synapse server to work with Matrix Corporal https://github.com/devture/matrix-corporal , you can now easily administer accounts and room membership, including per user power levels in the rooms.

Calendar (WIP)

• Calender view to see / add / delete schooldays. Additionally, the attendance list of the selected date is shown. (To do: add more than one day at a time with https://pub.dev/packages/calendar_date_picker2 )

Roadmap

The export of reports in a printable format (pdf) is crucial for us and because of that on top of the list.

There are also a couple of models in the backend that are not implemented in the client yet.

TO-DO:

Code quality / architecture

• no dynamic type functions -> functions should have a return type (void or Future<void> ) (work in progress)
• detach API calls from the managers (work in progress)
• migrate filter architecture to PupilsFilter (work in progress)
• subsitute hard coded enum filters for class and school grade with a dynamic solution, so that the app can be used for other schools. Priority: high

Functionality

• error handling in API calls. Priority: high
• review state management across views. Priority: high
• handle 'no internet connection' case Priority: high
• review / implement navigation Priority: medium
• internationalization
• generally, improve code quality. The naming of models, functions and such should definitely be revisited by an actual programming person. O:-) Priority: low (it works like this)

Design

• review widgets design (rows/columns), and for that matter, the overall design structure (for instance implementing a theme). Priority: medium

Features

• pdf export feature: individual development plan report. Priority: high
• implement competence feature, competence report for a school semester and pdf export. Priority: high
• workbook feature Priority: medium
• book feature (library lending system) Priority: medium
• generate qr stickers as shortcuts for documenting features Priority: low

Thanks to the open source community

I have great admiration for the work of everybody contributing to the frameworks, packages and tools that I used for this project, and are deeply grateful for their generosity sharing their work. The more I learn about programming, the more I appreciate it. So thank you, open source community! You make things possible and this world a better place.