In order to keep our customer support at the level that we feel we need to be, we will be offering afternoon web seminars starting next week. While we will still be setting appointments for school visits, we will be offering the web seminars as an option to view the application, participate in a question and answer session, and discuss how we can develop Schoolbinder into the small learning community platform that schools need.

 If you are interested in attending a web seminar, look out for an email from us next week. It will outline the simple steps to setting an appointment and clicking your way to the seminar.

The Rails Rumble is a 48 hour web application development competition. As a contestant, your team gets one weekend to design, develop, and deploy the best web application that you can, using the awesome power of Ruby and Rails. Some members of Schoolbinder's development team entered the Rails Rumble this year and developed an application called Lowdown.

What is Lowdown?
Lowdown keeps your software project on track by helping developers, designers, project managers and owners all focus on satisfying stakeholders. How? Simple. 

Feature Stories

When developing an application the client and the developers need to make sure that the ideas that the client has in his mind are exactly what the developer has on his mind. Feature Stories are basically the stories that are created to describe the many features of the software application. 

Lowdown allows the client and the developer describe exactly what is going to happen in the application. It lets you create, edit and discuss feature stories using a fun and helpful interface. After using the application, I realize that the interface keeps you focused on the exact details of the functionality of the feature. It does not let you drift off like one would in a long-winded email.

Estimates

Once the stories are complete the developers can then enter the number of hours they will need to develop that specific feature. It gives the client a clear understanding of the full cost of the feature. It keeps a running total of the cost of the complete project too!

Prioritize

Once you have an idea of what the features will cost, you can drag and drop each scenario to create a group of features that will make up your next release or iteration. 

So why is this all so special?

I have been on the client side of building an application. The developers and I built a good working relationship. All of this that I spoke about was being done using Basecamp, Google Docs, emails, etc. As the project evolves and the pace picks up it becomes very difficult to manage all of this information and ideas and requests can easily slip through the cracks.

Lowdown, even in its infancy, is the equivalent of a task master. It organizes everything. It gives you a clear picture. Best of all, when it comes down to development decisions, picking features is like picking off of a fast food menu. “Let me get number one, number four, and let’s also go with number 6.” All you do is drag and drop and you are done. You know exactly what you are going to spend and there is no confusion over what is going to be done next.

This is my ‘client perspective’ review of Lowdown. I did not even get into the Cucumber features. I’ll leave that for the hardcore programmers. As a client, you should demand that your developer use Lowdown. Trust me, it will make for a better development project.

(download)

Click here to download:

Lowdown_The_new_way_to_develop.zip (14 KB)

We are currently developing the new features for Schoolbinder's 2.0 release. I am happy to say that among the many new features, Bulk Editing and Goal Setting History are two of them.

 I have met some amazing people at the NYC. I have learned a lot about the difficulties of managing a school. I also realize that we have developed a very good application.

 If the administrators that I met are an example of the people that will joining our venture, Schoolbinder will have a tremendous impact in NYC. The ideas that have been brought up during these meetings are examples of leaders knowing what technology can do for education.

 I look forward to the 2009-2010 school year and the challanges it may bring. We are putting together a dream team of schools so bring it on.

 Roderick

 I want to appologize to the schools that I could not visit during the Aug 5-7 trip. We still have 15 spots available in the program. I will be in NYC again on Aug 10-11 to meet with more schools and every Monday and Tuesday until all schools have been met.

 If you are interested in a demo please fill out the short form on our website at: www.myschoolbinder.com and click on the "I'd like to see a demo!" image on the top of the page.