Sharing documents & storage - how platforms compare?

[IT_help]

Hi,

Presently I'm looking at the merits of various platforms and have picked up a lot of good general information already from the forum. Something that is of particular interest though, is how platforms can be utilized to aid collaboration between teachers. Things like:

• Storage & sharing of documents to share between one or more schools (for example schemes of work or projects with a twin school)

• What types of documents might be supported e.g. Microsoft Office

• Do you have experience of online editing of documents by one or more parties through the Learning Platform?

If anyone has any related experience or knowledge of this using a particular platform, advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[djm968]

MS SharePoint - It can be a little bit overkill for Education and a sometimes a pain to deploy and manager, but the MS Office integration and "bolt on" webparts are well worth it. I deployed this into an Academy recently with the helpdesk webpart and the outcome was very positive. I think WSS is still free with a MS Edu Volume License agreement but I may be wrong.

[Domino]

MS SharePoint - It can be a little bit overkill for Education and a sometimes a pain to deploy and manager, but the MS Office integration and "bolt on" webparts are well worth it. I deployed this into an Academy recently with the helpdesk webpart and the outcome was very positive. I think WSS is still free with a MS Edu Volume License agreement but I may be wrong.

WSS is free with windows server.

However to get the best of the document management features you really need full sharepoint server, which can get expensive.

[djm968]

Agreed it can be a bit expensive. A SharePoint server licence retails at around £560. User CALS for adults or members of staff are £12 each and for students that are going to use SharePoint they are around £0.90 each. A common misconception for schools is the need to purchase the internet connector licence this sells for between £4500 and £5000 but is not required by schools.

Then again costs are all relative some of my "corporate" clients would give their right arm for pricing at this level!

[LPPLUS_Support]

Hi

MOSS 2007 or Sharepoint 2010 can meet the requirements you have listed. With Sharepoint 2010 you can edit office documents such as word and excel online without having the Office client installed on the local machine. This allows basic editing using office web apps. With both versions you can have document sharing, versioning and collloboration. The document lists supports uploading of all file types and this can be controlled by restricting or allowing certain file types for the central administration application on the server.

If licensing, hardware and administration is an issue you can look at a hosting service

regards

San
LP+ Limited

[NewOrder]

San is correct and look at live@edu for student email and storage, linked to SharePoint.

With docs there is collaboration, sharing, auditing and so much more.

[IT_help]

Thanks for all the replies so far. They've been very useful!