Using c5 to teach IT to young students

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Hello, I am a web developer who is going to provide volunteer support to a small government school in the northern area of Adelaide, South Australia.

The teachers of Year 6 and 7 (10yrs up to 13yrs) want me to work with their classes on IT topics; initially on blogging and all that entails, then building up a web site by the end of the school year (next December).

While I have years of experience in Joomla! sites I was thinking that I might need to go to Concrete5 (which I am still trying to come to grips with) mostly because of the simplicity, in page editing and the wide permission and access control.

My first thought is to run a central core version on the school network and also - because the young students cant always access the school's computer network - load a version of c5 on a USB key under pocket XAMPP. I have no idea if this can be done nor if there is a way to keep their portable version in sync with the master.

I wonder if any of the readers who have worked with c5 in schools and education might share your experiences with this product and whether, in your opinion, it would suit the task I am trying to achieve.

Cheers and many thanks for any advice and experience you are able to share.

Ian

ilox
 
Mnkras replied on at Permalink Reply
Mnkras
Well, what you can do, (if you have access to a live server) is host a central version, and have them each in their own directory (eg site or ip.com/<name>) so they can access it from anywhere, the syncing with a usb could get annoying,

I learned C5 extremely quickly.

If you tell us more about exactly you are going to want them to be able to do, i can try and help out.

Mike
ilox replied on at Permalink Reply
ilox
Thanks for responding. I am having a meeting with the two class teachers next week and after that I will have a much better idea of what their requirements will be and how I can best meet those needs with my skills. This is the first week back after our Summer holidays so you can imagine that we have to temper our wish to get this started with the need to stabilise the kids and their classes etc.

Today I gave the IT teacher (one of the two class teachers) the URL for my test site -http://concrete.loxtonfamily.info... - and also suggested he come in here and watch some videos. He seems very interested so this just might come together.

As soon as I know more I will be back to take up the discussion again.
frz replied on at Permalink Reply
frz
I think the xamp on a usb key might be hard to pull off.

If they have a server they can run WHM/cPanel on we're happy to give you a copy of our add-on for managing centralized concrete5 installs for free.

I'd love to just give you free hosting for these kiddos, but I'm afraid of what that policy will do to my check book in the big picture.

PM me and I'll send you some stickers and whatnot at least.
Mnkras replied on at Permalink Reply
Mnkras
Personally i made a shell/php script that i can create installs, so no need for cpanel, its not finished tho :( it can make new installs tho :)
ilox replied on at Permalink Reply
ilox
Thanks very much for the offer Franz. I have my own reseller server space and CPanel etc so making room for them isn't a problem. And I take on board that including the USB is just going to needlessly complicate the whole process.

As soon as they give me a go ahead I will be back to talk about centralising the core etc. I was talking to the IT teacher today about exactly that and he seemed very keen to learn more.
ilox replied on at Permalink Reply
ilox
Have been having a number of discussions with the teachers. So far they would like the site to reflect the whole school campus, not just the IT work.

Here are the kind of things we are thinking of:
1. A public 'face' of the whole school that will show selected blogs as story items. A gallery of art for the different classes. Notes for Parents etc.

The rest of the site would be open only to the school community on strict password control:
2. Reception to Year 7 Class pages - made by either the class teacher or perhaps trusted Year's 7's acting as Reporters for specific classes.
3. Years 4 to 7 Individual student 'blogs' made by the students themselves. These pages would have escalating levels of access and permissions as the knowledge and capabilities of the students developed. These would never be made public - only to be seen by the school community after logging in.

4. Permissions would probably range from Manager --> Teacher --> Reporter (see above) --> Students Advanced --> Students etc.

I think this means one main installation rather than an individual installation for each student though maybe for a handful of the senior experienced students there could be a full site set up for each of them so they can expand their knowledge.

We would need tools to help create the multiple pages for the students ~ 60 or so - only a small school.

At present the school is investigating approvals from the State body but we can be hopeful although the State body marked Firefox as non-preferred over Internet Exploiter <sigh>

I hope to have a clearer picture after next Wednesday and plan on beginning my classes on Thursday 24th Feb so there is still a bit of time to put together a structure and curriculum.

Any ideas and sharing of experiences would be much appreciated.
frz replied on at Permalink Reply
frz
yes this sounds like one big site with permissions tied to users, very doable. Lots of schools enjoy using concrete as a cms including NYLS.edu, BethanyWV.edu, CUNE.edu.. and many more..

http://blogs.medicine.iu.edu/webdev/tag/concrete5/...
ilox replied on at Permalink Reply
ilox
Update: The training in ICT Topics has started in the class rooms but the web site development will probably be in the second or third term - around August/September at this stage.

By that time we should be able to be given a much more detailed picture of the requirements and the security and organisational protocols to be followed.