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Bessie the Annihilator

A Simple Request

If you are actively using Bessie in an actual school environment, I would appreciate it if you let me know; I am curious to see if anyone is actually using Bessie on a regular basis. You don't need to tell me any details, just maybe who you are and how much you use Bessie.

Overview

Bessie the Annihilator (commonly refered to as just "Bessie") is a web-based grading program. It allows teachers to enter assignments and grades for various courses into a database, which students may then log-in and view. It is intended for small to midsized grading requirements.

This program is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). What this means is that anyone is free to download and use this software. In addition, you are encouraged to make refinements to the code (if you are so inclined). There are many other benefits to the GPL; read the full license to discover them all. The license comes with the program, as well; it is in the file named LICENSE.

Requirements

Bessie requires at least PHP 4.1 and MySQL in order to function. It could, in theory, run on a non-Apache web server, but this has never been tested. It could run on a non-Unix platform as well, but this hasn't been tried either.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you have a burning question about Bessie that you need answered? You can either e-mail me, or refer to the Bessie FAQ page to see if it has already been answered.

Download

Stable Version: bessie-0.7.4.tar.gz (~29 Kilobyte download)
Development Version: bessie-0.8.8.tar.gz (~37 Kilobyte download)

Screenshots

Administrator reviewing classes

In this screenshot, an administrator is reviewing all available classes. The check boxes on the left are for deletion purposes, while the links on the right allow the administrator to change such things as the description of the class and the sections that are patterned after it.

A teacher viewing assignments for a section

A teacher viewing assignments for a section.

A teacher viewing grades for a section

A teacher viewing grades for a section.

A student viewing assignments and grades for a section

A student reviewing the assignments for a section and their grades so far.

To-Do List / Roadmap

I have made a new roadmap that shows what changes will happen when. Note that nothing is set in stone; it simply shows my idea of what the future will bring. Any feature with a version number in front of it has been completed in the specified release.

0.7 (the "Band-Aid" series)

Start Date: December '01
This is where minor bug fixes/feature enhancements occur. The main purpose of these releases is to fix the initial release to actually make it usable.

0.8 (the "Database" series)

Start Date: March '02
These releases focus on database changes and the features around them. They will not be backward compatible, though it will be possible to import old data into the new versions.

0.9 (the "Cool Stuff" series)

All of the neat little extras will go in here. These are things that are not essential to Bessie, but will make it a neat product.

0.10 (the "Final Lap" series)

The final preparations for a 1.0 release.

1.0 (the "Bessie Rocks!" series)

Tenative Release Date: Who knows?

Future Directions

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