Sharepoint, anybody?!?!?

[british_government]

We have migrated to office 365 for email hosting and very successfully at that, which is my kind of project, clear expectations of outcomes and features, sorted! But now I have been given a slightly harder project and I will share with you the full brief before I ask my questions

 

"Setup Sharepoint"

 

You may wonder how I can have any questions with such a comprehensive brief as that? But here are mine for you!

 

Does anybody still use sharepoint by choice as VLE?

What would you expect VLE features to be?

Any pointers? Starters? I would love somebody to say "look at this link for loads of free web parts and workflows to make your portal perfect" but that seems more like a Moodle world to me!

Any Help? Please?

[zag]

You may wonder how I can have any questions with such a comprehensive brief as that? But here are mine for you!

Does anybody still use sharepoint by choice as VLE?

What would you expect VLE features to be?

Any pointers? Starters? I would love somebody to say "look at this link for loads of free web parts and workflows to make your portal perfect" but that seems more like a Moodle world to me!

 

- Yes we use Sharepoint as a VLE

- File storage, announcements, documents to students at home, blogs, surveys, online homework submission, calendars.

- We just setup a local sharepoint 2010 server and built it from there, its very easy, all GUI editing and no real need for web design other than a few buttons to make it look prettier.

- There are loads of 3rd party web-parts available but you can do most things with the inbuilt ones. The only thing we really find missing is online assesment but to be honest no teachers have really asked for that.

[british_government]

Thanks for the reply, the one thing I am really interested in is homework submission, how is this achieved?

 

Ours is sharepoint online as part of 365 so Im not sure if that gives us more or less features at the moment!

[zag]

Thanks for the reply, the one thing I am really interested in is homework submission, how is this achieved?

 

Ours is sharepoint online as part of 365 so Im not sure if that gives us more or less features at the moment!

 

365 should be exactly the same, but you will have to log in each time.

 

Homework submission is simply a "Student Upload" folder with the correct permissions in shared documents. Students upload their homework into a sub directory in there and teachers can download it or mark it whenever they want.

[TheScarfedOne]

Yep - Im a Sharepoint Intranet here as well. File store, news, calendars, discussions and blogs. Weve got local hosted too - now using SSO internally so no need to double logon. I think you can get the same with Office 365 - but you will need to instal ADFS. Person to speak to for advice would be @apearce...

[british_government]

Homework submission is simply a "Student Upload" folder with the correct permissions in shared documents. Students upload their homework into a sub directory in there and teachers can download it or mark it whenever they want.

 

Is it possible to have a folder where students can upload but not read? I looked into this but couldn't find a way.

 

We aren't at a time right now where we can use SSO and ADFS but that is another future project of mine for next academic year

[apearce]

hi - thanks for getting me back onto EduGeek - its been a while! ;-) Office 365 ADFS is authentication on premise which will give you access via a single username and password from Active Directory. ADFS required 2 servers as a minimum but Microsoft will tell you that you need 7 - 3 is best - easy to install and get going.

 

Theres a SharePoint features called COntent Organizer (I know I've spelt it in American but still....) which is a document library that is there for drop box and then based on a set of rules SharePoint will move the files where you want. Heres a video on configuration

 

 

Alex

[british_government]

Thanks Alex,

 

I have been looking at developing custom WebParts today,did Microsoft decide they don't want anybody to be able to do this? I have my copy of visual studio 2010 that I use every day without issue for other things but then I need to install sharepoint server on my machine, which obviously isn't server 2008 so I have to jump through hoops and hacks to get it to install, then suddenly Visual Studio takes a disliking to UAC so must always be run as administrator and it still seems impossible to really achieve anything. Maybe it's maybe, maybe I'm looking at this from the wrong way but surely writing a little asp web part shouldnt be this hard?!?!

[pritchardavid]

I'll be interested to see what the education services is like on 2013, should be much better than SLK (Sharepoint Learning Kit)

Just waiting for new servers to be approved, ordered and posted, then we can try this out.

[drewp]

Just starting to look at how we can use Sharepoint that comes with Office 365 as our VLE - thanks for starting the thread!

 

Does anyone know if Sharepoint will be upgraded to 2013 under Office 365?

[british_government]

Does anyone know if Sharepoint will be upgraded to 2013 under Office 365?

 

I am sure it will be, it already uses office metro style web apps, or whatever they are called!

[funkyfin2000]

I understand 2013 comes out in O365 in February but I could be wrong!? Anyone care to update? Alex?

[DaveCoop]

We used to use SharePoint here, but just never clicked with the staff. Not sure if you use Sims but the capita webparts are good for assessment and parental portal etc bit of a B*ll ache setting up and the price was £2.5k per year but its ticks the Ofsted boxes for assessment etc. no doubt someone somewhere knows something cheaper or better but it worked well for us.