The point isn't just cost. The administration of many of these systems takes significant time - usernames and passwords, groups and memberships, access rights. Many of these web solutions are hosted externally and cannot therefore integrate easily with existing school or user databases. If you're interested in a cheap solution and things like mysql integration, you could start by looking at moodle. If you use sharepoint then you're into MS servers and IIS/ISA servers, and you still have a lot of work to do to get a 'school' structure up and running. You'd have similarly to work on moodle to produce a structure which is acceptable, but if you have pupil and staff data in existing databases you will be able to customise moodle more. It depends on how large the site might become. Moodle would be good on a relatively small scale, and you are trading off costs: developers costs money by the hour as well, and even if that's you or existing staff you should cost it. I'm installing a product called 'firefly' which originated from St Paul's School, and is now being managed by a separate small company. Why? We use MS servers. Firefly authenticates to NT/200* servers, and integrates with active directory, where we can store pupil/staff/group data. Minimal administration costs therefore. It's written in c# .net and though the code belongs to the company, it's possible to customise page content to integrate with any external database (and you can run PHP/mysql on an IIS server if you feel so inclined). Page editing happens online - less hassle, less skills needed. Much easier to impose consistency over content generated by others, and no need to learn how to use editing packaged unless you're into technical stuff. Because it sits on our server, we have the opportunity to roll out various media formats for internal use - with an external server, you wouldn't really want to put up too much movie content for example. We are going to take data from SIMS to active directory to define groups and access rights. We can script this but I'm thinking how we can do this live. After all, SIMS is just an SQL database. Once up and running robustly, we will make the server available externally, and it will probably run the school's 'official' website as well; that depends on bandwidth requirements and costs. This is not a sales pitch, but an attempt to explain the logic behind a decision which I think will suit our specific requirements and setup. I think you have to define what you want from your website first, and only then how to deliver it. AT which point you will eliminate a lot of products, and I suspect the solution will find itself. Derek -----Original Message----- From: linuxgirlie [mailto:linuxgirlie@gmail.com] Sent: 17 January 2005 12:12 To: suse-linux-uk-schools@suse.com Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Re: The BETT Show & A Computer on Tottenham Court Road Have we got all those things? Though in seperate packages??!?? If so surely its just a case of putting on a frontend for all the systems so its intergrated. I'm pretty sure its easy enough to get PHP to talk to all of the different MySql Databases provided. Has anyone got any ideas to what we can use instead?? This sort of thing really annoys me!! ARGH!! :) Jo On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 11:56:38 +0000, Colin McQueen wrote:

linuxgirlie wrote:

...

I was interested in RM who seemed to be showing off a VMWare clone and M$ who seemed to be showing some kind of Online Classroom system

...

like Moodle.

This may be the Learning Gateway. It is essentially Sharepoint Portal

Server 2003 (SPS) configured for LEA/Schools with web parts for Class Server, Exchange Server and LIVE Comms server (Messenger) and some integrating web parts that bring assignment deadlines, school events and personal calendars into a planner view. There are attempts to integrate SIMS as well. All held together by MSSQL server and protected by ISA-SERVER. Very expensive solution but quite good at sharing and indexing information. Moodle has far more learning tools and isn't trying to be all things. RM has Kaleidos as a VLE and CMS and may be releasing a complete MLE/LMS in Autumn which licences SPS from MS. Connect 3 schools only at first. Other similar things on show, NetMedia's MyGrid4Learning and Capita's Learning Platform. All very expensive.

-- Colin McQueen

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