Common Core

[cah506]

Maybe it's already there, but...could the common core standards be placed in there already so we don't have to type them in? Maybe make it an option to use them or use your own standards.

[David Tong]

I think you can read my mind . I am in the process of importing the ELA common core standards into our demo. I can make this as part of the application. Sooner or later, I will approach commoncore.org and ask for the permission and assistance to import all their sample units into TODCM!

Do you or anyone know where I can find other core standards other than English Language Arts? I need them in Excel or CSV file format so I can easily import them into the system and make them part of the application.

[cah506]

Here's the link to the National Standards (Common Core). You can view them on their website or you can download them in PDF. Right now there are only ones for Math and ELA. Science and Social Studies is yet to come out. You'll also need to add the option to add other standards. I'm in Iowa and Iowa has added to the Common Core so we have more that would need to be added.

http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards

[David Tong]

We are planning to add the ELA and Math common cores plus some old national standards such as Standards Projects for the English Language Arts, National Standards in Foreign Language Education etc. from the National Research Council and other organizations. Most of these old standards were defined in the mid 90s.

There will be a lot of data entry work for us and this will take some time before they are ready.

Yes, you can always add your own standards and benchmarks in TODCM.

Cheers,

[gsporter]

Great idea. I would sugguest something like the glossary import function in moodle. The utility I use is
an excel spreadsheet that the data can be copied into then exported to a xml format which is them pulled into
the moodle glossary.

If we can not find the stds in excel, csv etc standard I have had pretty good luck exporting pdf to text then
using sed, awk,grep etc to clean up the formating and move it into csv.

My school is in the processs of determining which standard we are going to map to Common Core or ACT so
the ablity to access/import multiple standards is an issue.

Greg Porter

[David Tong]

Yes, part of the work for making the standards available in TODCM is to implement an import process that would allow an admin to select which sets of standards to import. Schools will be able make their own import files as long as following our import file format. Open source project is a community effort and I would love to see schools share their import files once our import tool is available.

I never thought about using the Linux/UNIX commands to extra data from a PDF file. Cool trick!

Great idea. I would sugguest something like the glossary import function in moodle. The utility I use is
an excel spreadsheet that the data can be copied into then exported to a xml format which is them pulled into
the moodle glossary.

If we can not find the stds in excel, csv etc standard I have had pretty good luck exporting pdf to text then
using sed, awk,grep etc to clean up the formating and move it into csv.

My school is in the processs of determining which standard we are going to map to Common Core or ACT so
the ablity to access/import multiple standards is an issue.

Greg Porter

[David Tong]

We are almost done putting the Math and ELA common cores into Excel format and we are able to import them into the TODCM database. The import is currently done using CSV files and database SQL queries and we will need some time to implement an import tool and this can take months. The import of strands, standards and benchmarks is very complex and it takes a lot of time to have a reliable tool to perform the import.

If anyone is interested in the 2 sets of common core standards for TODCM please PM me or reply to this thread.

For anyone who is interested in making their own import CSV/Excel files we can provide the SQL script and import file format so you can perform imports before we have the import tool ready.

We are also planning to make import files for other subjects based on common national standards.

[james]

Hi,

I would be really interested in SQL scripts and import file formats as I have just started with the program and will have several hundred of these to enter. These will be a key feature in several areas of the program allowing users to import repetitively structured information as standards or benchmarks, targets or even course descriptions with repetitive fields of data in them. Can I suggest integrating these is a pretty high priority.

Thanks

James Scully
Sultan Qaboos University
Oman

[David Tong]

Hi James,

I'll send you the Excel templates and SQL scripts once I have them finalized. I just changed the Excel template format recently and need to rewrite the SQL scripts. I'll send them to your email address once I have them ready. Right now, I have new Excel import templates for user accounts, courses and learning targets and all of them will have a script for importing.

I think this will work for people with SQL experience before we can get the import tools implemented.

I noticed you are from Sultan Qaboos University and I would like to know does TODCM work well for a university environment and any improvements you like to suggest to make it more suitable for universities?

Thanks,
David

[David Tong]

Here are the import templates and SQL import script:

http://todcm.org/resource/todcm_import.zip

This will help you to import strands, standards and benchmarks from CSV files into the TODCM database.