Markus Project Background

Most open source software starts with a programmer who has a personal need. It is commonly referred to as "scratching your own itch."

Corozal Community/Junior College Counsellor

About 10 years ago, my wife Judy was the Counsellor for both Corozal Community College and Corozal Junior College. At that time she did not have access to a student's grades until they had been manually entered into the student's permanent record, at the end of the semester.

She asked if maybe the grades could be entered into a computer in our computer lab so she would have access to them while there was still time to identify and help students in time to improve their grades before the end of the semester.

Microsoft Access Queries and Reports

Since I was the computer lab administrator, I worked out a crude system using Microsoft Access queries to relate grades, students, teachers, and class sections. From these we could produce progress reports and specific reports to assist school administrators and the school counsellor.

These queries were never designed for anyone else to use. They scratched our itch, but it would take a lot of work for them to help any other school.

SELECT Grades.SectionID, Grades.F1, Students.LName,
Students.FName, Classes.Class, sections.TchrID
FROM ((Classes INNER JOIN sections
ON Classes.ClassID = sections.ClassID) INNER JOIN Students
ON Classes.ClassID= Students.ClassID) INNER JOIN Grades
ON (Students.StudID = Grades.StudID)
AND (sections.SectionID = Grades.SectionID)
WHERE (((Grades.SectionID) Like "*Engl"
OR (Grades.SectionID) Like "* Engl A") 
AND ((Grades.F1)<70) AND ((Classes.Class)<'gone')
AND ((Grades.Year)='2004-05'));