timjwatts

Interesting. That of course is all very well - but if the choice is between a system that cannot be used by half the staff that meets govt requirements, and one that can but doesn't, then I know what my view on that is. Have just had another email back from Uniservity with some information which I will look into, Cheers Tim

Interesting... Got an email today from someone at Uniservity CC'd to a couple of East Sussex CC bods, saying they had seem my comments here and could they help. So I sent back a polite but fairly direct email outlining the problems and asking if there were any documented procedures addressing better ways of doing what we were trying to do. Cheers Tim

It's not so much that I mind doing stuff - I can do that on the train with my laptop + phone tether - that would be fine if there were 2 or so other parents with IT skillz. It's more that I don't want to lead them down a road where they'll get stuffed if I'm not around :-o I always remind myself that their job is Teaching (at which they are all very good - we're lucky like that) - but they're not hackers. I reckon there are probably 3 or so "have a go" folk on the staff - they will give up soon if we don't find a better solution. And the rest hate computers but might be persuaded to have a go if it is all swimmingly straightforward. I suspect few of them will take too kindly to another job (ie go attend lengthy training, read a book etc) and I'm not around in the day these days which complicates things, so customising moodle/joomla etc to leave them with a very pared down but really-simple-to-add/edit a page is a good start. If they really get into it, then there could be a case to switch features back on one by one. Cheers Tim

OK - thanks folks. All useful comments. I'll try moodle out of curiously and see if it can have the "advanced features" hacked off. Other than that, CMS-y is probably the way forward... Cheers Tim

Hi, OK - following on from the Uniservity thread, the Head has asked me to look at some alternatives. I'll be ringing the DB Primary guys for a demo account to look at but I don't have a good feeling about their stuff - the few sites running it I found spew a couple of dozen W3C validator errors and that is seldom a good sign. Frog: Rumours are it may cost too much; Moodle: Well, I can install and test it myself (that you opensource). But before I spend a huge amount of time, a quick question or two here might be in order: The required feature set for our school's use will be pretty much: 1) Simple web page creation; 2) Easy bulk photos upload and display; Ditto for newsletter 3) Private (aka password protected) and public pages at will; 4) Hosted service for small amounts of money including site backups. 5) Ability to turn off as much other functionality as possible so it doesn't get in the way and confuse people. Do you reckon, in a nutshell, with a hosted service, moodle would suit? Thanks in advance, Tim

Thanks for that. Strewth - so they might actually be *paying* for this!??... I shall have to ask the head... Personally I don't think they need much more than something media-wiki like - or some other very simple CMS. They certainly aren't likely to be making much use of any fancy workflows or "pupil-teacher engagement" features. All they really want to an easy way to publish web pages via a WYSIWYG and mark them as public or password-protected (pupils/parents/teachers). It is only a tiny school (around 80 on roll total across YR-Y6) so even having year-by-year permissions is overkill (especially as some classes are split and merged into the surrounding classes so it doesn't really make sense). BTW - I can't PM (lack of posts) - please could you email me at [email protected] and I'll answer your PM. Sounds like there would be a million simpler hosted solutions. Although I could host them something myself, it's better if I just get them to buy into a supported service - the village isn't very techno and without blowing my own trumpet, there are few others who could help if it all goes bang and I'm not around so I'm loath to make them dependent on just one person. I'd like to find them something that fits them better, they pay their fiver a month or so and I train them how to get the best out of it. After that they can run by themselves. Cheers Tim

Hi, I'm working with the Head of a local primary school (volunteer, very part time as I have a day job). East Sussex rolled out Uniservity to all the schools and our Head's been trying very hard to use it. I should add at this point, I'm a Linux Sysadmin and when I do websites, it's hand coded XHTML/CSS on top of perl/Mason so I'm quite comfortable with raw web stuff. I'm also fine with Wiki type platforms. I have to say, given the above, Uniservity has been doing my head in (as well as the Head's head). Some core concepts make sense - eg permissions via user sets. some other concepts make a lot less sense, eg "groups and sub groups" and resources. Linking stuff together (eg a movie into a page) seems very broken. Either I'm missing something or it is a horrible platform. Is this a good place to ask for some help - or is there a Uniservity specific forum somewhere (I did google)? I'd like to go through a few basic procedures and see if there are better ways of doing things such as uploading photos and slideshows and sticking them into pages. ========= On an aside, if I had more time, I'd suggest he ditched it and I'd run something more suitable as all he really needs is a very simple CMS type site. But it wouldn't be fair to offer a half-****ed solution and not be able to support it properly. It's also a *tiny* school and I'm not sure the budget would stretch to paying for say moodle hosting. Sadly I don't (yet) have a nice 1U server racked up in a datacentre otherwise I would host something - our village website runs off a Shuttle in my hall - not really solid enough for this job... So we're probably stuck with making the best of a bad job for now... Many thanks in advance, Tim