Nstore5


Introduction
One of the first commercial applications to appear for the Series 5 was produced by an Acorn software developer, and in October last year Stuart Forbes of H.S. Software contacted me with information on Nstore5. This is the Series 5 version of the award-winning Pocket Book software for record keeping and report writing for teachers. I feel a little guilty in taking so long to review it, but as Stuart commented to me at one point, he's been dependant on the appearance of PsiRisc and ArcLink5, without which transferring the files to the EPOC32 machine is tricky unless you have a PC. To address that, H.S. Software have arranged with IMS that they can sell the basic version of PsiRisc with the S5 version of Nstore.
I have been trying Nstore5 on the Series 5 and on the Geofox One, where it works in the top portion of the screen, but otherwise is fine.

Installation & Setup
It comes on a single DOS-format floppy and takes around 320 kb to install, and the files must be on the internal drive. As well as the disc, you get a 34 page A5 sized manual that is superbly clear and easy to follow. It takes you through the setup, Topic and pupil data entry, National Curriculum records, and reporting.
That's just as well, as there's no on-line help built into the application.

What's It For?
Nstore5 is somewhat of a specialist application, being designed for teachers in UK schools, and so is going to be of limited interest to those not involved in working in that environment. Perhaps the best way of illustrating the purpose of it is to quote from the introduction in the manual:

"Nstore has been specifically designed to help teachers with National Curriculum record keeping and reporting, and this version runs on the Psion Series 5 palmtop computer.
It allows you to keep detailed records on up to 1296 pupils (depending on the free space available on your palmtop), and their achievements on the latest (1995) Level Descriptions in all National Curriculum subjects from levels 1 - Exceptional Performance.
In addition, you can keep a record of up to 32 Topics and the Level Descriptions they cover. Special facilities are available which can then:

The program also includes a bank of over 750 comments about many other aspects of a child's performance and personality, such as attitude, behaviour and presentation. It can also store exam, classwork, and Standard Assessment Task (SAT) data, as well as as a child's date of birth, gender, and attendance. These can all be easily highlighted, and used by the program to produce an automated end of term/year report.
This data can be exported in the form of a text report or detailed summaries, which can be sent to your palmtop's inbuilt wordprocessor and spreadsheet, as well as to other computers...
Data can also be imported into Nstore in the standard CSV file format which many computer packages use. Data files can also easily be transferred between Psion Series 5 computers."

If any of that is relevant to your job, and you have a Series 5 of Geofox One, then this is an application you really should have. As well as this version and the original Pocket Book one, there are also compatible applications for RISC OS and Windows, which just about covers the field of potential users.

In Use
If you've used the Pocket Book II equivalent, then you'll know what to expect. It has been designed to make use of the pen in most areas, and that includes it responding to taps on the screen as well as the toolbar.
The main screen allows you to set everything up, and there are warnings to think hard about that before diving in, as you can't change the format of the data later to add extra subjects unless you overwrite the existing data.


The Main Screen

It is also possible to delete a child(!), although it turns out that only removes their record from the file, leaving room to add another one.
Currently, it isn't possible to move pupil data between classes in the S5 version, and until that facility is added, it has to be done remotely by connecting to a desktop machine running the full version of Nstore. H.S. Software tell me that allows any combination of subject data to be transferred, and even for scores to be averaged across teachers if needed (e.g. for I.T. in secondary schools)
The National Curriculum recording aspect is the major purpose of Nstore, and it does that with a series of graphical codes. In the example below, the boxes with the triangle show that Jane has "performed this activity without aid", whilst the empty boxes indicate that she hasn't "experienced this activity". There are two intermediate stages as well, with one and two sides of the triangle completed, and space for recording SAT, exam, and classwork scores.


A Pupil View for One Subject

Report Writing
Of course, all this is somewhat incomprehensible if you're not a teacher, and what Jane's parents really want is for the school to turn it into something more useful for them. Nstore will do that too, giving an on-screen report which can also be exported as a CSV file to be printed out from a desktop machine. Having seen the reports the children of the Woodthorpe household come home with, I recognise some very familiar phrases that have turned up on them from time to time!


An Example Report Generated Automatically

The pupil data can also be exported and imported, allowing records to be shared between the desktop and palmtop machines.

Conclusions
I know that many teachers have come to rely on the power and sophistication of earlier versions of Nstore, and this one seems set to build on that with the S5 and Geofox One. You can see more about all the different platform versions of Nstore on the H.S. Software Web site and Nstore5 costs £49·95, or £24·90 when bought with the Acorn or PC version.
As mentioned earlier, a basic version of PsiRisc can be bought with NStore for £22·00. This will not cope with long file names, nor does it have any conversions, but customers can also subsequently upgrade to the full version at a reduced rate.


If you are a teacher, please also have a look at my page on School Uses of the Psion and Pocket Book machines.

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