xF Site for My School

[Connor Smith]

I was discussing with my computing teacher today the idea of creating a school website for students to interact and for teachers to post class materials on the site, and everything we may need is all there in one place.
I was curious to know what you guys' opinions are on this? If I had to carry this through, It would need for me to purchase the resource manager, and a lot of customisation would need to go into that in order for it to suit the needs of the school.
If you know of any other Education management systems/software out there already out there, or perhaps have any advice, please let me know in this thread

Thanks again!

 

[Jake Bunce]

I have setup forums for school projects before. It can work very well. But first you need to make sure everyone is amenable to the idea. I have had successes and failures dependent on this.

I setup a forum for a software engineering project. It worked very well. We used it as a repository and a central place to access and post information.

Then later I setup a forum for a teaching class. Everyone agreed with my proposal, but after I set it up they all rejected it for made up reasons. Basically they were lazy.

So make sure people support the idea and will actually use the forum before you put effort into it... unless it's something you want to do regardless then go for it.

 

[Connor Smith]

@Jake Bunce - Thanks for you reply Jake!

I have a few questions about what you said:

1. What package did you use to achieve this?
   1. Did you custom code it?
2. Would you say xF would be an efficient way of presenting the site? If not, do you know of any other packages

I am going to have a meeting with the head teacher tomorrow to discuss it, I'll see how that goes

 

[Jake Bunce]

I was using vB3 at the time. Nothing custom with respect to this application. I simply setup a private forum on my existing installation and restricted access to our group of students. Nothing fancy. Just a forum with threads, posts, and attachments.

Yes, XF is very capable in this regard and I personally recommend it for new forums.

 

[Connor Smith]

I was using vB3 at the time. Nothing custom with respect to this application. I simply setup a private forum on my existing installation and restricted access to our group of students. Nothing fancy. Just a forum with threads, posts, and attachments.

Yes, XF is very capable in this regard and I personally recommend it for new forums.

I have used xF in the past, and the forum was pretty active. I found it relatively easy to manage. The only thing is, we (the school) would require for materials, resources, to be uploaded. The thing is, I don't want to spend cash on money and working on something that won't get used as much as I want it to.
Anyways, thanks for you response!

 

[Jeremy]

I currently use XF in conjunction with a professor or two at my school to run a few classes.

 

[turtile]

There are a few companies that make software for education (which have forums but are nowhere near as good as xenForo).

Blackboard webCT and there was another but I forget the name. I like Blackboard better anyway. Google Apps is free for schools too (not sure about high school).

While xenForo can do a lot, you're always going to have to deal with the school administration which will figure out some way to place blame on the software because they can't spend the time to think. And if you are dealing with public high school, have fun with that....

 

[Optic]

It's an interesting idea. You would want to integrate your school's existing network logins to work with the forum. Assuming you're using Active Directory, perhaps look at single sign on via SAML or LDAP.

 

[Fred.]

I just came across this. You might also give it a try.
https://www.jivesoftware.com

 

[Connor Smith]

I just came across this. You might also give it a try.
https://www.jivesoftware.com

Thanks, Ill have a look at that.

It's an interesting idea. You would want to integrate your school's existing network logins to work with the forum. Assuming you're using Active Directory, perhaps look at single sign on via SAML or LDAP.

Nub question: How would you think this would be achieved exactly? I'm not sure how SAML works exactly.

 

[Jeremy]

It's an interesting idea. You would want to integrate your school's existing network logins to work with the forum. Assuming you're using Active Directory, perhaps look at single sign on via SAML or LDAP.

There are libraries for this. It's a matter of creating records.