Sentro Posted January 23, 2010 Posted January 23, 2010 Hi All, I’m really keen to provide students with a sort of internal social networking site which they can use to create their own pages and share work and thoughts with their peers and teachers with the monitoring and moderating features also. It would be good to host the system internally but could be externally hosted too, it simply has to be a ‘closed’ network to only our students and staff. Does anyone operate a system like this and could give me any pointers to either open source solutions or a commercial product. Thanks in advance!
tsimons Posted January 23, 2010 Posted January 23, 2010 Hi there, There are many community scripts out there, its just finding the right one and adaping it to your needs, as irsprint84 said you could use Sharepoint.. Take a look at this Social Networking | Hot Scripts or this one PHP Virtual Communities | Scripts & Programs | Hot Scripts Hope you find the right one! If you need any help let me know and ill help as much as i can. Tom
Sentro Posted January 23, 2010 Author Posted January 23, 2010 Thanks I'll take a look at those. We use sharepoint already for Sims Learning Gateway but I haven't done much investigation into it doing those kinds of things. I will certainly look into that also.
Sylv3r Posted January 23, 2010 Posted January 23, 2010 Edmodo will do the job your after and it has a look of facebook to it also. Edmodo - Free Private Microblogging For Education
Sylv3r Posted January 23, 2010 Posted January 23, 2010 ^^ I forgot to mention although its not available for internal use only this is something they are working on for the next release I believe.
SteveMC Posted January 23, 2010 Posted January 23, 2010 There's also BuddyPress - based on Wordpress (it's an official project of theirs too). Wordpress itself might be enough (although you'd probably want the multi-user variant of it, so you could have multiple blogs. Stephen 3
Edu-IT Posted January 23, 2010 Posted January 23, 2010 Try wordpress MU with Buddypress plugin Looks pretty amazing does that!
pwds Posted January 24, 2010 Posted January 24, 2010 Heard lots of good things about Buddypress and can strongly recommend Wordpress MU. Also worth noting you can extend Wordpress MU with BBPress and share common authentication and cookies between the two. I don't have any experience of linking this setup to Buddypress but would be happy to help the OP with linking WPMU and BBPress should blogs and forums be the requirement.
allan67 Posted January 28, 2010 Posted January 28, 2010 Is anyone doing anything with ELGG? ELGG and moodle integration seems to be taking us away from the VLE and onto the PLE. It provides thie social networking aspect with moodle being used to drive the content. I'm also interested to see if anyone is using ELGG and Moodle to this end
allan67 Posted January 28, 2010 Posted January 28, 2010 sharepoint On the subject of sharepoing has anyone found staff, students having difficulty using the mysite section for blogging. Its not as friendly as some applications out there. One thing i have looked at is Joomla. It's modules including community builder show some real promise and apparently u can authenticate with Joomla and Moodle using an extenstion (jforms or something like that)
dsm Posted January 28, 2010 Posted January 28, 2010 We use the Frog VLE (Frog Learning Platform | The UKs most advanced Learning Platform) which has integrated social networking features. Our students have a 'wall' on their front page similar to the Facebook wall. They can also add friends, upload profile pictures, talk in chat rooms, forums etc. You can make this content only available in school too if you wish using the 'If local user' component. We actually allow our students to access these features in school and out. It provides them with a safe social networking site for them to communicate with the friends. I realise you wouldn't buy Frog based on this alone however if you are looking at other things that you want to do in a VLE or web site this may tip the balance. Regards
CAM Posted January 28, 2010 Posted January 28, 2010 Our Fronter VLE lets users make their own simple user page (or entire site for the more proficient at using the editor) and set up forums only for staff, only for students or for both. Students can also send stickies to each other which are private messages and have their own user picture. Downside is no status updates or blogs.
Dodgex1 Posted January 28, 2010 Posted January 28, 2010 Joomla and community builder for free or Joomla and Jomsocial if you've got some pennies to spend. (Jomsocial is 50-100quid depending on version) i'll 3rd Wordpress and Buddypress too especially for the lightweight load
p858snake Posted January 28, 2010 Posted January 28, 2010 Posting this so I get subscribed to he thread.
LosOjos Posted January 28, 2010 Posted January 28, 2010 Posting this so I get subscribed to he thread. 'Thread Tools > Subscribe to this Thread'
garoc Posted January 28, 2010 Posted January 28, 2010 Keep an eye on Kwercus: Kwercus - the Secure Social Network for Schools - Home ...still in development I believe, but should provide us all with a reasonable/manageable social network platform for Schools....
p858snake Posted January 29, 2010 Posted January 29, 2010 'Thread Tools > Subscribe to this Thread' Not on the mobile skin
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now