Automated administration - concept part 1 - Substitute management

Based on the responses I got from you about processes and/or tasks at school that could be removed or automated, I took on substitute management. This is one of those tasks that swallows everything from 1–2 hours each morning for a school secretary or an assistant principal. I’ll present all the responses I received from you in a later post, but I’ll start with an attempt at a solution to this issue: automating the flow. At the time of writing I’m on vacation but have a cold, so I really needed a small programming project to brighten the day.

Technology

The program is written in Python and stitches together a Google Calendar, Twilio for SMS and Sendinblue for email. The only cost is for SMS. The rest is free.

In the video you can see the following

1. The Python script runs in the background and is nothing anyone needs to watch. It contains a list of all substitutes with their phone numbers and email addresses. The script looks in a calendar to see if any staff are reported absent.
2. The school’s responsible staff enter the absence in the calendar — the name is enough. It could just as well be an Excel file, a form or a text file or similar. If the planning is added in the info of the calendar event, it will be included in the email to the substitute at a later stage.
3. The script finds a calendar event — i.e. an absence — and SMSs all substitutes on the list. The substitutes who reply to the SMS first get the jobs.
4. The script emails all the info the substitute needs, such as schedule, lesson plans and other materials. This would require a small effort to set up at the start of each year, but you’d probably get it back. Linking schedules to teachers and so on.
5. Finally, information is sent to the school administrators about who got the substitute and who may need manual handling.

Further thoughts

Of course you could have a better way to enter absences — for example via a form with a dropdown menu with all staff. Different priorities for who/which staff should get substitutes. Automatic retrieval of the current teacher schedule from the scheduling system. Automatic planning for the best use of substitutes based on schedules.

Is this something that’s interesting?

Right now this is very basic and more of a concept. Is this something you believe in and that would be interesting to work further on? Please get in touch, either here in the comments or on any social media.