smurfomatic Posted June 12, 2013 Posted June 12, 2013 We have a parent's group that wants to have a "noticeboard" for buying and selling stuff, organising meetings etc. and I was thinking the best way forward is a messageboard. Different forums could then be set up for different situations. This would have to be: Hosted somewhere other than our own webspace - while the school will link to it, we don't want any responsibility of running the thing. Disclaimers will be posted telling users who to moan at... Child friendly - no unsuitable adverts, and decent spam controls to stop users being bombarded with messages Free - or at least, very low cost Easy to use - the parents will be running it, and I have no plans to help them! Does anyone have any experience of similar setups? A version was attempted previously - not sure what they use, but everyone signing up got spammed. Simple admin controls, so they have to explicitly approve members rather than block them, would be good.
Jamman960 Posted June 12, 2013 Posted June 12, 2013 I'd be very careful, If the parents running it happen to have a falling out with the school for whatever reason and stop cooperating with you they've got themselves a rather large audience which will more than likely be visible to prospective parents which is the last thing you want as a fee charging school. There was an alumni group on facebook for the school I work at at one point(also an independent prep school), the original admins stopped monitoring it and some of our less mature ex pupils started posting negative comments about the school which we had trouble getting rid of. I can't think of any decent free hosted forums, phpbb and a small amount of web space would do the job once setup but its probably still not quite easy enough for non-technical parents.
smurfomatic Posted June 12, 2013 Author Posted June 12, 2013 We've only just begun to discuss the implications of setting this up, the issue of losing control was one point that had been raised! The other option was to go really basic, and use something like mural.ly to make a "virtual noticeboard", without the risk of spamming going on. Still issues with control though...
GeekyPete Posted June 12, 2013 Posted June 12, 2013 Try kidblog.org, Free, designed for school, and the teachers can control everything so most importantly safe. Access can also be given to parents etc.
smurfomatic Posted June 12, 2013 Author Posted June 12, 2013 GTX - thanks, I'll get in touch if/when we know what we're doing. Geekypete - we already use kidblog for the pupils, so it may be a good extension...
edutech4schools Posted June 12, 2013 Posted June 12, 2013 Google apps for education has forums that you can control from the admin panel and no adverts + free + has all the other apps for free such as sites.
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