Content Sharing And Publishing At SCVi

Overview

We use a variety of methods for content sharing and Publishing at SCVi.  Within the school, Facilitators, Learners, and Staff need to share documents and Media.   Outside the school, we publish content for consumption by Parents, Learners, Staff, and the public.  With the transition to Google apps for education, we have the opportunity to consolidate many of these things under the scvi-k12 domain. We also want to take a close look at which publish methods can be found by web crawlers for search engines.  The purpose of this posting is to give some background and discuss options on how this might work.

What We Do Now 

Internally

Internally, we mostly deal with sharing content.  Here are some of the most common methods.

• Drop Box  : Documents shared between teachers and students
• Flash Drives : Most Learners and Facilitators carry Flash Drives for document and content sharing as well.
• E-Mail : File Attachments and discussions
• Network Attached Storage : Video and picture sharing.
• Google Docs : This is done on an ad-hoc bases using student's own e-mail addresses.

Externally

Externally, we are mostly focused on sharing information with staff, teachers, parents and the public. Here are some of the methods that are used.

• GoDaddy Web Site : The main school web site has a great deal of information
• Ed Line : Student grades, Attendance, and Assignments
• Yammer : Staff Discussions
• Constant Contact : Parent/Staff  E-Mail Notifications (Monday Message)
• BlackBoard Connect : Parent/Staff Email and Phone Notifications
• Google Groups : Discussions and E-Mail Lists
• Wix Web Pages: Communication to Parents and student projects (Example, Example, Example, Example)
• Prezi Web Pages :  Learners sharing content with Parents, Peers, and Facilitators (Example, Example, Example, Example)
• Google Docs : Communication to parents, Student Work 
• Facebook : Discussions, Photo Sharing (Example, Example, Example)
• Picasa Web Albums : Photo Sharing (Example) 
• Shutterfly : Photo Sharing (Example)
• Google You Tube : Video Sharing. (Example)

Focusing On Web Content

If you focus just on the Outward Facing web content,  many publish methods can be grouped into these high level organizations.

• Documents : Information organized by topic.
  
• Blogs : One person speaking to an audience in chronological fashion.
  
• Discussions : Back and forth discussion between people. Can be chat or e-mail.
• Photo/Video Sharing/Albums :  Really, just another  kind of document.
• Tasks, Planning : Calendars, To Do Lists, Events

 Most good social networking sites take pieces of these and tie them together.   There are a TON of different options.  Here are some we have looked at.

Service	Documents	Blogs	Discussions/ E-Mail	Photo/Video Sharing/Albums	Tasks, Planning, Calendar	Custom Web Site	Friends, Networks, Connections
Google	Google Docs	Blogger	Google Groups, GMail	Picasa Albums, YouTube	Google Calendar, Google Tasks	Google Sites	Google+, Google Groups
Facebook	No	Wall Postings	Chat, Postings, Messages	Google Albums	FB Events	No	Yes
Jive SBS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Tasks	No	Yes
MyBigCampus	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Moodle	?	?	Yes	?	Yes	Yes	Yes
Yammer	No	No	Yes	Pages	No	No	Yes
Edline	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
Joomla	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
GoDaddy	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?
Wix	Sharing	Yes	No	No	No	Almost	No
Word Press	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

 

Looking At Google

With the transition to Google apps for education, we have the opportunity  to consolidate many of these things.  Though, we want to strike a balance between flexibility, searchability and consistency.  It is still yet unclear where things will land. Though, here is a first pass at some of our ideas.

Scenario (Use Case)	Google Solution	Other Solutions We May Use
Facilitator Web Site, School Web Site	Google Sites	Edline, Others TBD ***
Learner, Staff, Facilitator  E-Mail	G-Mail *	-
Mail Lists, E-Mail Notifications, Discussions	Google Groups	Blackboard, Yammer, Constant Contact
Calendar	Google Calendar	-
Generic File Sharing	-	Drop Box, Ubuntu One
Documents	Google Docs	Open Office, MS Office, iWork
Tasks, Planning	Google Tasks	Trello
Photo/Video Sharing	Picasa, YouTube	Facebook
Social Networking	- **	Facebook, My Big Campus
Student grades, Attendance, and Assignments	-	EdLine

* With POP and IMAP support, some folks may not know they are using G-Mail.
** Google Plus is not included in Google Apps For Education
*** We don't want to be too prescriptive.  If someone has a passion for a certain technology, they should be free to try it out.

Installing Aleks Math on Ubuntu Linux 10.4

Our school uses Aleks Math on Ubuntu Linux.  For those trying to do the same, this can be a bit tricky.  Aleks Math only works with the Sun/Oracle version of Java. It does not work with OpenJDK that ships with Ubuntu.  In order to get it working, you need to do the following.

1. Install the Sun Version of Java
2. Manually install the Aleks plugin
3. Remove OpenJDK

1) Install the Sun Version Of Java
For a long time, I was able to install it directly with 'apt-get' using these instructions. However, things changed recently.  Sun Java is no longer available to be distributed by Ubuntu, because of license issues. This means it has to be manually installed by downloading packages and installing them by hand (ick).  Here is an overview of what needs to be done.

Download the following packages from these URL's.
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/sun-java6-bin/download
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/sun-java6-jre/download
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/sun-java6-plugin/download
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/sun-java6-fonts/download
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/sun-java6-jdk/download
 
Once they are downloaded, you can install them with dpkg -i.

sudo dpkg -i sun-java6-jdk_6-26-0lenny1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i sun-java6-bin_6-26-0lenny1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i sun-java6-plugin_6-26-0lenny1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i sun-java6-fonts_6-26-0lenny1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i sun-java6-jre_6-26-0lenny1_all.deb

2) Manually Install the Aleks Math Plugin
You'll need to download the AleksPack10.jar file from this page. Once you have it downloaded, copy it to /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/ext/. You need to make sure everyone can read it.  Typical commands might be. 

sudo cp ./aleksPack10.jar /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/ext/
sudo chmod 755 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/ext/aleksPack10.jar

You then need to tell your machine to use Sun Java:

sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun

3) Remove the OpenJDK
This one is a simple command.

sudo apt-get -y remove openjdk-6-jre default-jre default-jre-headless

If there is cleanup to be done,. try the following commands.

sudo apt-get -f install
sudo dpkg -a --configure

4) Test
Make sure Sun java shows up on this page:
http://javatester.org/version.html

Check your java version

java -version

Domain Name Strategy For iLeadSchools

Since its inception in 2008, SCVi Charter school has used GoDaddy hosted services for E-Mail and Web Content under the scvcharterschool.org domain.  All employees of the school receive a First.Last@SCVCharterSchool.org e-mail address.

SCVi is part of a growing organization and is involved in opening a second school in Lancaster California under the "iLead Schools" name. We are also looking at moving to Google Apps For Education. With so much changing, it makes for a perfect time to re-visit our hosting strategy and domain names. We are currently considering the following structure for our web and e-mail presence for the entire organization.

This diagram shows the structure. Each school will have their identity and autonomy but will have brand recognition under the iLeadSchools name.

• SCVi
• All current employees of SCVi will receive a new First.Last@scvi-k12.org e-mail address. which is hosted by Google.
  
• Legacy @scvcharterschool addresses will continue to work and will forward to the @scvi-k12. address.
  
• SCVi will be part of iLeadSchools but will retain its own identity within the organization.
  
• This is for multiple reasons
• There is equity in the SCVi name
• There is a strong school identity with Parents and Students. (SCVi sweatshirts)
  
• We are known as SCVi in several web sites, databases, and publications
• There is a local identity in the "SCV" initials.
• iLeadSchools
• ileadschools.org will be the parent organization and will have a web site that represents all the schools from a high level.
  
• Schools within the organization will optionally have their own web site which is linked to from the ileadschools.org web site.
  
• All employees in the organization will receive a First.Last@ileadschools.org e-mail address hosted by Google. For folks who represent the entire organization, this will be their primary mail address.  For folks working at schools with their own identity, this will simply be a forward to their school based address.
  

Site Organization

We are expecting that each domain will have a corresponding Google Apps domain. Though, this is still somewhat TBD. It is not yet clear if the ileadshools.org domain will need to be a google instance or not.  Each Google Apps domain has their own instance of the following.

• Google Sites : School Web Site
• Google Mail : Mail for that domain
• Google Docs : Documents and document sharing
• Google Groups : Mail aliases for the domain.
• Google Calendar : Web based calendar. 

There may also be multiple DNS aliases pointing to each domain.