Shared folder between 2 schools

[Cazale]

2 schools who work closely together (share staff, etc) have expressed an interest in having a shared folder, which staff at either school can access. As far as I can tell, it's mainly going to be used as a document store (no personal pupil stuff).

 

I was thinking of keeping it as simple as possible. Maybe setting up a separate folder at each school and having them sync (with something like OneDrive or DropBox), rather than messing about with permissions or domain trusts.

 

Anyone any thoughts on this? Anything to watch out for?

[3s-gtech]

Another possible option would be O365 Sharepoint, with cloud storage being behind it but bringing the collaboration features of the platform. I'd imagine there'd still be some interesting work behind the scenes to get two separate sites working together on it, but not too hard. Same goes for something like G Suite.

[Narwhal]

The real problem with creating a shared folder on something like Dropbox is that eventually teachers will forget that it is not a school owned environment and they will put personal pupil stuff in there. Most staff don't think about data protection as much as they should and you can tell them all you like but they will still put inappropriate material in a folder intended for resources only.

[localzuk]

There's no need to use a cloud service like Dropbox to sync - there are tools to enable your own sync, such as https://syncthing.net/ or https://allwaysync.com/ etc...

[mjs_mjs]

2 schools who work closely together (share staff, etc) have expressed an interest in having a shared folder, which staff at either school can access. As far as I can tell, it's mainly going to be used as a document store (no personal pupil stuff).

 

I was thinking of keeping it as simple as possible. Maybe setting up a separate folder at each school and having them sync (with something like OneDrive or DropBox), rather than messing about with permissions or domain trusts.

 

Anyone any thoughts on this? Anything to watch out for?

 

Firstly i would assume that it needs to be as secure as pupil data - one new member of staff not knowing that it isn't could be a breach and a disaster waiting to happen.

 

Syncing between sites is an OK idea - but could lead to sync errors and overwrites, 2 staff at 2 sites editing the same document on each server....

 

Something you could look at (iff you have the internet capacity at both locations) is setting up a desktop in one location to be a server (non domain joined) then add it via a VPN to the other site (or sit it in the DMZ and VPN to both sites) thus both sites would have access to the content and you can back it up ect like a normal server....

[FN-GM]

There's no need to use a cloud service like Dropbox to sync - there are tools to enable your own sync, such as https://syncthing.net/ or https://allwaysync.com/ etc...

 

I have used this before we got round to merging a schools network in the MAT. Works pretty well.

[Jaan]

Server 2016?... Storage replica.

[mukz]

We are with LGFL and opened up file sharing ports between the two schools for the specific VM which was set up for sharing of data across our Sixth Forms.

We provided the passwords to login, etc.

 

Works well.

[PotNoodleTech]

Office 365, google classroom.

[mtillbrook]

i would go down the Sharepoint route. Office365 free educational version (you would have to set it up for one school as MS need you to proove that you are a school!). You can then setup logons for the people in the "other" school so they can use it.

It's secure and meets the relevant data security standards and, more importantly, its free!

 

If you don't want to use Office365 for it, you could install the Sharepoint foundation edition and stick a server in a DMZ and setup access that way!