Re-developing our intranet

Amongst other things, one of the projects that I'm really excited about at the moment is re-developing our school Intranet. Over the next few month's I'm going to try and use this blog as a diary of this re-development, in the hope that not only have I got something to look back on, but that others doing the same thing might be able to learn from our mistakes.

A bit of history first. When I started at school 2 years ago, there was an existing implementation of Moodle, hosted on a server in the school, that had been put together by some enthusiastic teachers, and the previous network manager. The Moodle site was being used, albeit by a handful of teachers, to deliver learning content but it really needed some development. As well as the Moodle site, there was a simple html page, also hosted internally, that was acting as the school Intranet. This page was a basic, boring, single level page with links off to .pdf files of school news, and some other limited sets of information.

One of the first things we did as a group was to decide that the Intranet site needed a re-design. In order to take advantage of some of the dynamic content that it offers, we decided to use Moodle as our Intranet. Looking back on things now, I can see that this has probably made things complicated as time has gone on and the uptake of digital learning has increased within the school, but for the last few years it has worked reasonably well.

So we presently have a Moodle site that is set as the homepage for all of the browsers in the school. It is used for delivering teaching and learning (the LMS) and also for distributing information such as school news, sports draws etc. through forums. We have recently setup Single Sign On on the site, so all users at school are automatically logged on.

What we are looking for now is to expand the 'Intranet' side of things to incorporate many more areas of the school, and in doing so, we've come to the conclusion that Moodle probably isn't the best place to do this. So once again, we are I suppose looking at reverting Moodle to be our LMS, and employing an alternative platform (perhaps Google Apps, which we have and use fairly extensively) to provide our Intranet. A mission statement (that I have just come up with!) is that it "is a 'one stop shop' where staff, students and the extended school community can learn and communicate in an effective, efficient and safe manner". Our 'Moodle Manager' and I are going to make a start over the upcoming holidays.

Dissapointed....

Yesterday I attended the "Future of ICT In New Zealand Schools" symposium, and it was unfortunately a real let down. I'd only found out about it the day before and was excited at the prospect of attending something with such a grand title. I took along one our ICT lead teachers and chatting with her and others afterwards, there was a definite feeling of confusion and that we had been a tad mislead by the title.

What the symposium turned out to be, was the launch of the new online version of the 'Computers in New Zealand Schools' journal (which in itself looks really good by the way). This was preceeded by a rambling presentation by Ed Strafford from the MOE on..... well, none of us were really sure what it was on actually (Sorry Ed...). There was then a panel presentation by three speakers, including Niki Davis, who I had heard before at U-Learn. Although there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the presentations and subsequent discussions, it just didn't all gel together and (comment if I'm wrong), most people left feeling a little dazed and confused. No fault of the speakers I think, more the organisation of it all perhaps.

2 things that stuck out in my mind were 1) Too many of the presentations I have seen by people from the MOE are badly organized 2) I am always amazed at the number of people involved in ICT that still use pen and paper for taking notes....

I did join the e-learning research network, which looks excellent, and I remain positive that what we are doing in our school with ICT is on the right track. I just feel a little deflated. I spend my days trying to help our staff understand the benefits of deep integration of ICT into their teaching, and often find myself defending technology to the naysayers. Sometimes though, I wonder if they are right....

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