Windows 8 
Access 2013
Hello,
So the title says it; I am wondering if Microsoft Access is what I need to accomplish the following.
I teach guitar lessons and have been in the process of creating a system to make things a bit more efficient. Right now I do everything on a touch screen and transfer all files to flash drives I ordered for all my students.
In the past I created a log in section on my website for each student which contained all videos in a player, backing tracks, warm ups ... Everything you could think of. This took hours as it had been many years since doing any programming... The site hardly got used...
- So... What I am doing now is:
- I have a calendar in excel, each name links to a word document.
- Within the word document I have just a couple tables set up:
- one table contains what we're working one, completed, and the plan for the next week.
- The second table contains a list of what we have gone over each week so they can go back and check our progress.
- Every song, scale sheet, video, etc. within the tables are linked to files which are in each student's folders.
- At the end of the lesson I then transfer the entire folder to their flash drive (always copying again files that are already there... I copy everything just to make sure I don’t miss something that may have been updated that day)
I was wondering if I would be able to create a simple UI with access which I could use during lessons and for my students to use at home.
- Ideally it would have a few tabs on top for each section, perhaps:
- Warm up, Progress, Songs, Lesson Plan, Lesson Records.
- Within each tab small lists either in drop down menus, iframes, whatever, with each item linking to the external file (sheet music, mp3 file, video, etc.)
- The ability to add items to these lists and create the links using the created form and not needing to go into the table in access.
- This all needs to happen quickly and efficiently so I am not spending lesson time screwing around with tables and forms.
- The ability to have this form run independent of access itself (either as an exe, web form such as php, or even a jar file...) so the students can run this on their own computers without needing to purchase Microsoft Access.
- Would like this to look neat, clean, efficient, and engaging.
About my experience with access:
Little to none… funny thing is I am currently taking a course, for my degree in Integrated Supply Chain Management, called Business Computer Applications. One of the sections is for Access: before each section he gives a pretest and if you score above 80 you get that grade for the section and no longer need to attend class until the next section. Like I said, I have never used access before taking that test…. I scored a solid 100% on the test, haha…. But I couldn't tell you the first thing about the software’s capability, I am just fairly quick at picking up this kind of thing.
Again, is access the software that can pull this off or am I looking for something else?
Like I have with many other things in the past I was going to sit down and just spend a few weeks learning the software and its capabilities, but before wasting my time with that I thought I would hop over here and see if it is even worth it. Time is limited so I must use it wisely; as I also have a 2 year old, college, wife, house, and 32 guitar students.... sleep is often sacrificed (its a waste of time anyways) : )
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