Student Intranet

[Sirbendy]

We currently have a (rarely used) VLE, our main school website, and internally we have an intranet. Our Student intranet has been in the past a web page system put together by the kids using Frontpage (spit).

 

It's had things such as "poem of the day", sports fixtures, student news etc, as well as a link to a bullying report form.

 

However, it's stagnated of late..the year 11's that were maintaining it have lost interest, and with the exception of the bully form, it's pretty much redundant. It'd be a shame to lose though...so...do any of you have a similar "student orientated" internal intranet? If so, how do you implement it and what content do you have?

 

I'm just looking for ideas right now..it's currently based on a Uniform Server WAMP package, and I have tried a Mambo install before, but that was overkill really..

[Ryan]

Ours is pretty simple. I knocked up a one-pager in Dreamweaver, split into three columns:

 

Left side is a BBC UK news headlines feed

Middle is a Google safesearch-enforced search box with some handy reference sites underneath (wikipedia, dictionary.com, BBC Bytesize)

Right side is local/school news and quizzes that i update once a week(ish)

 

Run from IIS on 2k3.

[dave.81]

Ours is currently just a couple of static pages, with links to college email and such. Do wish to expand it to take into account college event, results etc but have enough to do and dont think most of our students could cope with updating it.

[Sirbendy]

Hmm. I see..

 

We have the home screen populated with a simple layout - white box on purple background, with school logo above some "link" buttons, a google safesearch box, Service status indicators and an "E-mail support" link button.

 

That runs on our (incredibly restrictive) IIS box, LEA controlled.

 

The buttons then link off to pages on a local Apache/SQL box, that takes over. I'll try to get screenshots..it's quite embarrasing for the most part...frontpage produces horrible code. That's why the home page is written in Notepad++.

[oha]

If you have content on an intranet - files in folders for each subject etc. then you can use a free utility called DIRHTML to convert into a heirarchy of web pages to link to the contents of the folders. It will operate under a batch file so you can schedule automatic updates a couple of times a day. We have a 32Gb Directory of Learning Resources served this way and any teacher can add content with minimum fuss and little know-how.

[Sirbendy]

I'll look into that..thankyou..

 

We had, up until 12 months back, a "Student Support Director", who was very enthusiastic about "a website BY the kids, FOR the kids", with links to help sites, info, and so on..he picked a few kids from each year, and we used to hold monthly meetings with them and say "What do YOU want on there"..and then they'd brainstorm, and it worked..quite well.

 

The kids did the pages (badly, I grant you), I then tore them apart on the quiet and redid them on the Apache box. Designated kiddies had it mapped as a drive and could update at will, and so on.

 

It really worked quite nicely..then he retired, and nobody has been active since (even though it's on someones "roles and responsibilities".

 

Since then, it's been dying a death. The bullying form is still in use, but that's it. I think I'll rationalise it as much as I can..some stuff is now just linked to the relevant parts of the Internet site.

[OutLawTorn]

Jamark Technology Consulting - Intranet Applications

 

Thats an intranet package that a few schools i work at use. Its all modular, so the schools can just purchase the applications they want

[kxv2020]

You could use Sharepoint [free version] if you've got windows server... it fairly good and may well meet your requirements.

[Domino]

We use sharepoint here,

 

serves a seperate page to kids and staff, you design the layout and all the content is user driven.

 

Been a huge success for us - no idea how anyone survived without it now......

[KarlGoddard]

another vote for Sharepoint. We're currently on v2 and as yet I haven't managed to migrate to v3 successfully.

 

it can be a bit quirky but if you get the security settings right it's pretty stable, fast and fairly easy for the numpties, I mean the teaching staff, to use. The kids can't edit any of the pages but I'm thinking of creating a pupil site with a dedicated editorial team made up of pupils as a trial to see if they can create, edit and moderate things themselves - had bad experiences allowing a year 8 class to create their own wikis...... :-)

 

Some of the features aren't very usable for a school environment though so out of the possible features you'll probably find yourself only using a minimal set of tools. the navigation is a bit

 

Big downside of v2 no file level restore - someone deletes a file from a library and you have to restore the site

 

No affordable integrated AV either.

 

But overall, I set up the intranet 2 years ago and it's been quite a success with several depts taking to it really well. Set up a test platform and play - you could have it up and running in a few minutes and a live site created within a day.

[Sirbendy]

Tis true, I suppose..Sharepoint is a definite possibility..heh.

[john]

Another SharePoint here but im a 2007 guy Its a great tool and the teachers like it for its ease of use and simplicity, again how we'd live without it now, well we would but our mailboxes would once again be over-flowing just need to get a decree down as we started the year well with things like sports teams on the vle no more mass emailing crap but its slipped again....

[Ben_Stanton]

Just (literally this week) implementing sharepoint as our VLE. I need to get to grips with it first, then pass on some knowledge to our 'Champions' who will then hopefully filter it down as and when necessary.

 

Although, having issues with the stupid SLK at the moment!

 

But - it's the way forward...

[gaz350]

we run our Moodle installation as our VLE + Intranet. Currently testing our beta site for the new school year.

 

we have links to eportal, OWA, searchstar(library system), department pages etc.

 

weather and bbc news rss feed on the left hand side.

 

General Notices/news in the middle.

 

Caledar/upcoming events/blog cloud on the right hand side. We have Dance and sport leaders, student council etc etc who we plan on providing elevated privileges with access to Blogs and maybe other areas they can edit. Tags from the past 30 days or so will be put into the blog cloud.