Ruby PDF Writer
Author: Ryan
December 2009
At MITA, there is an an older model HP Laserjet (some model number), plotter printer, and I really wanted to make use of it. Because I had discovered many invalid Re-Enrollment records in PowerSchool, I wanted to visualize the records to get a clear sense of the the data structure. Nevertheless, I got to work using Ruby (and Rails) to pull info from PowerSchool (thanks Oracle ActiveRecord Adapter), and created a .pdf from the data. The result was a list of every student, with each of their prior Re-Enrollment records and their current Enrollment information mapped across the x-axis (time).
I'm fascinated with visual information. A few thousand records listed in table/spreadsheet format doesn't compare to a comprehensive graphic. Current technology enables and promotes the scaling and resizing of images and work areas. By visualizing the enrollment records in PowerSchool, I was able to quickly identify erroneous records, which can now be addressed. Additionally, the visualization has its own artistic value, representing our student's history with the school.
Results
The resulting image was helpful in illustrating patterns of data and the outliers to the data. For example, each enrollment was color-coded for grade level as well, showing how classes of students progressed (and sometimes not) through each grade. Some students would leave and return. However, the graphic clearly showed invalid enrollment records for a group of students. It also displayed other issues with the data, like duplicate enrollments and invalid Entry and Exit Dates.
Possible Avenues
A logical continuation for this graphic would be to incorporate grade data as an additional layer. Additional variables (Attendance, Test Scores) could be layered on, which could highlight other patterns and/or correlations with the data.