[CoLoCo] Build a Better CMS for Schools

Fri Oct 4 17:54:34 UTC 2013

Thanks David.

I think the Google stuff is an interesting project but that, Coursera,
MIT's open courseware, and others are more focused on online delivery of
content. Basically online courses. What I'm talking about is a content
management system for schools. Courses, per se, would  not be the goal.
Rather, teachers build personal class pages that students use to find
homework, engage in chats, follow links, download rubrics, whatever. You
can do all that in an LMS but it isn't really the approach schools use for
their web-presence which is much more than just the teacher pages. It's
also all the district and school level communications as well. Schools are
buying a complete package. Look at Greeley schools website or Windsor.
Actually, Eaton schools is using Google Apps for the whole thing and it's
fairly nice but It's not complete.

Jim

On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 9:10 AM, David Overcash <funnylookinhat at gmail.com>wrote:

> I'm with Jim on this one.
>
> Nothing solves the school problem well because they start with something
> else and try to move toward education.  A real solution should start with
> education and move towards the other purposes it might be used for; i.e.
> the core of your application should center around the core of your use
> cases, not the other way around.  Given how easy it is to whip up web
> platforms and such nowadays, there's really no good excuse for not having a
> core system that focuses around education.
>
> RE: Groups.  I'd search meetup for groups related to Node.js, PHP, Ruby,
> or Python.  You may even want to try searching for design oriented groups
> to get someone involved in mockups and UX.  RMCAD is also a great resource
> for finding really enthusiastic students who are more than capable of
> handling professional projects.  I'd probably avoid PHP at first as you'll
> tend to get a better batch of web devs if you look elsewhere ( take that
> with a grain of salt, I'm primarily a PHP developer for my day job ).
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 9:01 AM, Jim Hutchinson <jim at ubuntu-rocks.org>wrote:
>
>> Schoology is based on Django too I think. I'm sure there are tools
>> already out there to build upon. Not sure a template is the solution
>> though. Part of the problem is the admin interface (meaning when teachers
>> build their content and pages). The wordpress dashboard is great. To my
>> knowledge non of the current school specific CMSs have something like that.
>> It's usually more like editing html pages with some wysiwyg features (html
>> is hidden). The result is very clunky and hard to get what you want. If
>> there is a wiki tool it's broken (school fusion) and blogging is more like
>> a messy blackboard type threaded discussion.
>>
>> Whether or not all this (and more) can be addressed via a template over
>> an existing tool I can't say, but my hunch is we would need maybe more a
>> mix of tools effectively blended.
>>
>> David - any specific groups I might target? I don't know where to begin.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 8:42 AM, Brian Fromme <brianfromme at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Jim,
>>>
>>> Google also has an open-source, Django-based framework, called Google
>>> Course Builder:  https://code.google.com/p/course-builder/
>>>
>>> Neal, I'm very interested in your experiences with edX for your course.
>>>
>>> Perhaps we can setup a virtual team to work together in some way, since
>>> there are probably several of us who are interested in this topic.
>>>
>>>  cheers,
>>>  Brian
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 8:32 AM, Neal McBurnett <neal at bcn.boulder.co.us>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi, Jim!  Good to hear from you.  I'm working with edX myself now, in
>>>> the class on AI I'm teaching at CU.
>>>>   https://sites.google.com/a/colorado.edu/csci3202/
>>>>
>>>> It's open source, based on Django :)
>>>>
>>>> I wonder if it wouldn't be best to work from a great general-purpose
>>>> CMS, and just provide an initial template suitable for a school.
>>>>
>>>> Random googling leads to others also:
>>>>
>>>>   https://code.google.com/p/classcomm/
>>>>
>>>>   http://mezzanine.jupo.org/
>>>>
>>>> -Neal
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 08:20:12AM -0600, Jim Hutchinson wrote:
>>>> >    I've worked with several of the popular ones (school fusion, sharp
>>>> >    school) and they are horrible. Messy UI for both the teachers
>>>> building
>>>> >    content and for the students finding it. Their social tools are
>>>> last
>>>> >    minute ad-ons and don't work well, are cluttered and not user
>>>> friendly.
>>>> >    The landing page is usually good but beyond that it starts to break
>>>> >    down. Schoology is one of the more interesting ones but they don't
>>>> seem
>>>> >    to have good insight into how it's actually used so has it own set
>>>> of
>>>> >    issues.
>>>> >    I know I can design a better one but I can't build it.
>>>> >    If anyone is interested in developing a potential business idea or
>>>> >    adding a new product to a list of current offerings please let me
>>>> know.
>>>> >    To be clear, I know nothing about business. I'm an educator,
>>>> >    educational technologist and instructional designer. I do know
>>>> schools,
>>>> >    students and teachers (i.e. the end users and customers).
>>>> >    --
>>>> >    Jim (Ubuntu geek extraordinaire)
>>>> >    ----
>>>> >    Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
>>>> >    See [1]http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
>>>> >
>>>> > References
>>>> >
>>>> >    1. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
>>>>
>>>> > --
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Jim (Ubuntu geek extraordinaire)
>> ----
>> Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
>> See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
>>
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-- 
Jim (Ubuntu geek extraordinaire)
----
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
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