How to help a school that has been closed

[Mordac]

It would not be as simple as you think. There's an awful lot of laws and regulation around schools and data sharing. Just bunging it up on AWS isn't going to cut it.

You could try : Google Classroom

... or do what I'm going to do .... leave it to the education authorities to sort out.

I'm going back 10 years or so, but I worked on a project at a school (an Academy, if that's relevant) that refused to put anything in the Cloud because they were concerned about data breach. I seem to remember schools back then were responsible if a breach happened, so those with means were taking no chances. This particular Academy seemed to have pots of money, and they weren't shy when it came to spending it. Their HP SAN certainly wasn't cheap, and it was a bitch to configure...

[cojak]

I would absolutely contact the school to understand what they are doing today and what they want/intend to do in the future before you do anything more.

It might save yourself a lot of work.

[jds 1981]

"Don't worry kids. Daddy set up an IT system so that you don't have to miss school for two weeks!"

... your kids, your kids' friends, your kids-friends-friends are going to love you.

You'll get black-balled in the playground if you are not careful.

... the teachers might not be too chuffed either!

Kids and teachers? If parents are working from home, they don't want to be getting their kids to concentrate on work at the same time. A few weeks of school isn't much in the scheme of things anyway.

[tomtomagain]

"Don't worry kids. Daddy set up an IT system so that you don't have to miss school for two weeks!"

... your kids, your kids' friends, your kids-friends-friends are going to love you.

You'll get black-balled in the playground if you are not careful.

... the teachers might not be too chuffed either!

[vwdan]

Having spent the best part of 10 years specialising in education IT and their systems infrastructure (not any more for the e-stalkers) I'll be nodding my head sagely and resuming my normal duties. Schools are a pain, teachers are a pain, educational IT is a pain, just no.

And nothing is as simple as you think.

Edit: I confess to having posted prior to reading any responses. If you've done previous work for them and you know what you're getting into, be my guest. Personally, the thought gives me shivers.

[eek]

Have you tried to configure Moodle? What makes you think you need to be an expert? I've installed it an am playing about with it. Doesn't seem any more difficult than the likes of SharePoint, Jira, Jenkins, Goolge Apps, Adwords, Google Analytics, etc. It's users, roles, groups, assets, permissions, etc, etc. Same problems, different domain. It really isn't that hard.



You must have missed this bit in my original post: "I have not yet asked the school ..."

After the school sent out a request to all parents, I have now delivered one IT project for the school and have been asked by the governors to investigate options for a second. My children have been there for a few years now. So I think I have some idea about what they have and do not have. And incase you have missed it, schools are struggling with budgets. You would be mistaken in you assumed that the council was happily providing their primary schools with all the IT resources they needed.

Thanks for the help.

You are talking to 2 people who know a fair bit about primary schools (heck I was chair of Governors after the school had a bad ofsted report) - as with a lot of posts it would have been nice to have known that the school had asked for help in the past and you had previously helped them. That would probably have resulted in different answers.

[schater]

And requires a blooming expert to configure it correctly.

To be honest - I would see what the school has planned you are just going to be seen as an interfering busybody.

Have you tried to configure Moodle? What makes you think you need to be an expert? I've installed it an am playing about with it. Doesn't seem any more difficult than the likes of SharePoint, Jira, Jenkins, Goolge Apps, Adwords, Google Analytics, etc. It's users, roles, groups, assets, permissions, etc, etc. Same problems, different domain. It really isn't that hard.

Have you asked the school?

They already have this type of stuff believe it or not.

You must have missed this bit in my original post: "I have not yet asked the school ..."

After the school sent out a request to all parents, I have now delivered one IT project for the school and have been asked by the governors to investigate options for a second. My children have been there for a few years now. So I think I have some idea about what they have and do not have. And incase you have missed it, schools are struggling with budgets. You would be mistaken in you assumed that the council was happily providing their primary schools with all the IT resources they needed.

Thanks for the help.

[northernladuk]

Have you asked the school?

They already have this type of stuff believe it or not.

[eek]

I've just found Moodle which might tick a lot of boxes.

And requires a blooming expert to configure it correctly.

To be honest - I would see what the school has planned you are just going to be seen as an interfering busybody.

[schater]

It would not be as simple as you think. There's an awful lot of laws and regulation around schools and data sharing. Just bunging it up on AWS isn't going to cut it.

You could try : Google Classroom

... or do what I'm going to do .... leave it to the education authorities to sort out.

Thanks, I'll take a look at Google Classroom.

I do not underestimate the laws and regulations around schools and data sharing. I will leave that to the leadership team. I just want to make them aware that there are these things out there. They can decide whether to use them or not.

I've just found Moodle which might tick a lot of boxes.

[Old Greg]

Sockie-19

52,235

[AtW]

Sockie-19

[Old Greg]

Give each family a Raspberry Pi and tell them to get on with it. They'll learn more than they would at school.

[tomtomagain]

Any ideas?

It would not be as simple as you think. There's an awful lot of laws and regulation around schools and data sharing. Just bunging it up on AWS isn't going to cut it.

You could try : Google Classroom

... or do what I'm going to do .... leave it to the education authorities to sort out.

[schater]

Not a contracting question, but one for the IT 'professionals' out there.

Schools in Hong Kong and Japan have closed, and I would not be surprised if a similar thing happen here. As a parent of primary school children I was wondering if there was something I could do now to help our school (if this were to even happen!), primarily around online services that would help teachers, students and parents. I don't know if these tools/services would be used, but there are heaps of software packages out there that could help. I have not yet asked the school, as I wanted to have a few ideas thought through first.

For example, I would imagine it could be helpful to have a system that allowed the teacher to upload homework, and all students in that class could access and download. Students (or more likely their parents) would then upload their homework. Students would not see other student's homework. The teacher could see all homework.

There are file sharing tools, like NextCloud or Owncloud (I think this is basiclly self hosted DropBox). And then there are heaps of open source LMSs, although I have no idea how easy/complicated/useful these would be. I have an account with a shared hosting provider (with unlimited space and domains, etc) and was hoping to install the software there. So I am looking ideally for free software, that I could install on your bog standard hosting provider (or maybe something on AWS).

Any ideas?