[MACEP] Database (app) recommendation?

[JeanineDuBois]

Hi, folks,

Been a long time since I posted to Macep. I enjoy reading your posts 
and hold fond memories (days of yore): Friday afternoon meetings, 
SlumberTechs, June meeting on the dock. (Thanks, Paul!)  For those who 
don't know, I teach English at Tigard High, and for a number of years I 
developed a class called TechSMART (SMART=Student Mentors Accelerate 
Relevant Teaching). Teaching English and maintaining a separate lab 
became too much (especially when my husband became sick and died). 
Well, that was cheery, huh?! (; >) Gosh, it's been 8 years since I 
taught TechSMART.

So, now to the point. I am going to be integrating Brain Gym® into my 
Freshman English classes next year, and I want to keep some serious 
data. I intend to create a database with all my students in it and code 
specially created ID #'s by various learning designations, so that I 
can pull data about effects of Brain Gym on students with various 
challenges, skills, needs, etc. I also want to be able to insert 
anecdotal data and possibly multimedia, at least graphics of before and 
after samples. Audio (mp3s) and video clips would also be nice. I want 
to be able to learn the software and set up the database structure this 
summer. I also want to be able to insert new info on the fly and to 
quickly and easily generate reports, graphs, stats, etc. For now, I'll 
have fewer than 150 students in the database, but I would like it to be 
robust enough to be able to work as effectively for up to at least 
10,000 students. Although I am most familiar and comfortable with 
AppleWorks, I know it has gone by the wayside, and I really want to use 
a DB which would be most user friendly for other BG instructors to keep 
data anywhere in the world. Oh, and I am running Mac OS X, but I need 
the DB to be cross platform and something along the lines of an 
industry standard. So... for all the marbles, what database do you 
recommend, and do you have any hot tips other than to determine format 
for entry before creating the DB?

Hope you're off to a great summer ... and that you have time to reply 
if you have some words of wisdom. (; >)

Thanks, folks!

--Jeanine DuBois


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Jeanine DuBois
Licensed Brain Gym® Consultant / Instructor
www.compassions-doorway.com/brain_gym.html
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