Sarah Horrigan :: Blog

SchoolCentral  = COMPLETELY FREE

My name is Michael Chua from Zebra Mobile, and I would like to introduce you to a new, COMPLETELY FREE service called SchoolCentral.

SchoolCentral is a custom-built web based communication platform, built upon the latest Internet and mobile technologies.  This platform is not a call system, but serves as a mobile notification system, organizational tool, and communication hub between administration and the community.  SchoolCentral will enable administration to improve the districts communication with parents and students, and will measurably impact parental involvement, staff communications, school organization, and community out-reach.  Functioning as a supplement, this platform supports existing emergency procedures, providing different options of how important school information is sent and received.


10 Ways SchoolCentral Will Benefit Your School District:


1. Real Time Communication -SchoolCentral has the ability to send up to 9,000 messages per minute, via email, text message, web, mobile web or RSS.  Capable of notifying the whole community, faster than any call-system, some districts under 60 seconds.

2. Platform Independence -School administrators and community are enabled to decide how they want to receive and respond to important information. School notifications are sent via Internet or SMS.  If a district alert is sent from a cell phone, SchoolCentral deciphers what phone number it is sent from, and where it should be delivered.  More frequent messages of less importance can also be sent to notify families when an event such as an awards program is cancelled, or if their child on the soccer team is returning late from an away game.  Each member of the community now has the option to select what methods of communication are best preferred.

3. Communication Hub –SchoolCentral is a protected, moderated communication platform that provides each school, and groups within, its own online community.  Parents and teachers can connect easily and engage in what is most important to us, our students.

4. Tool For the Classroom – Everyone benefits when using SchoolCentral in the classroom.  Teachers are enabled to compliment a student for a job well done, or connect to a parent with underlying concerns.  Our filing system allows teachers to store documents of unlimited size, giving students the option to access school material outside the classroom, or to reprint an assignment accidentally forgotten at school.

5. Tool For Athletics –Coaches can instantly notify students and parents, if practice is cancelled, when riding on the bus, or standing on the field.   They also can address the community with the winning scores, stats or rosters.  Each sports team now has a web presence, and their own calendaring, filing and alert systems.  This enables them to share important notifications, drum up support, organize team practice and game schedules, or post pictures of the winning touchdown.  The potential is endless.  SchoolCentral’s group’s for athletics is a powerful tool, easily engaging parents and students throughout the community.

6. Easy to Use Calendaring –The RSS Feed calendaring system checks for new events or changes, and automatically updates every 60 seconds.  It also can be synced with Ical, Gcal, and Outlook.  Now all school related events are synced with your personal, work, and mobile calendars.  Besides Alerts, the calendar is the second most utilized feature in the SchoolCentral platform.  It allows parents with multiple children, to organize their schedule more efficiently with color-coding.  It also has a reminder and invite feature, easily allowing reminder and event invitations sent to friends via Email, SMS, RSS, and Desktop Widget.

7. Upload Your School News Letters -Our News Section is a big hit with Superintendents.  They now have the option to blog messages addressing the community without third party help.  School newsletters of any size can be uploaded, and the community has the option to be notified by text, Email, or neither every time new material is released.  This could save the district money by reducing cost on postage.

8. Easy Effort for Schools –This is an End-User-Based Platform.  There is no database management, staff allocation, or maintenance required.  Each member manages their own account, self-registering through a setup wizard, choosing how they would like to receive their school updates and information.   Zebra Mobile custom-builds every platform for each district.  Schools can choose what they want to use SchoolCentral for and we will make all the arrangements.  We customize the look and feel to your districts needs.  You can pick your school colors, and can even choose your own U.R.L.

9. 24 Hour Support -It is Zebra Mobiles commitment to accelerate, and provide your district with superior service and support, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

10. COMPLETELY FREE -We are currently offering this service completely FREE to early implementers, as a thank you for helping us get SchoolCentral started.



Please send me a message to arrange a short (10 min.) web demonstration.

 
Please feel free to contact my direct line listed below, or send me an email.

 

Warmest Regards,


Michael Chua
Zebra Mobile's
SchoolCentral Team
Direct line (513) 729-6973

mike.chua@yourschoolcentral.com

www.yourschoolcentral.com

I tried to change my password, to one that contained characters that aren't letters/numbers - as if often suggested.

I thought it had changed & realised it wasn't working. I then reset it & tried again. 

This time I saw the feedback & it does say "password can't be changed" & it says why. 

However, this was all the in body of a large block of text - and very easy to miss. 

If this still applies for version 1.x - is it possible to ensure that it's highlighted & put in red at the top - or something  - so that it's clear?

I also noticed that my Twitter password is showing up nice & clear when it reports what's been reset ... 

 

Hi

I have recently updated my external blog to WordPress 2.7 - and have noticed that the updates to here stopped at more or less the same time. (The last post to appear was the peunultimate one posted from the old versoin - but I wrote a post & then updated fairly shortly afterwards, so quite likely didn't give Eduspaces time to get the RSS feed)

In resources, my blog's still listed. If I click on the RSS icon, I get to see the new content as well as the old; however, if I click on the "view content" then I only see the old content (i.e. what's showing in my blog). Has anyone else got a similar issue? 

Roger James, Director of Information Systems and Gunter Saunders, Director of Online Learning Development are heading a JISC project called TOWLER: promoting student web 2.0 contributions with lightweight enterprise RSS. This project concerns widening student participation and increasing personalisation of the University e-environment. 

It aims to involve the 22,000 student body of the University of Westminster in improving the student computing services, through the use of ‘Google Apps for education’. The project started with students getting involved in design competitions, the first being to re-design the Google logo.

Throughout the year the developers will educate students on different aspects of the environment…next month is the Calendar, then Docs, Site and Personal pages in the months to follow. This will hopefully be a further opportunity for students to make their mark within the University.

For further information see the project website https://sites.google.com/a/staff.westminster.ac.uk/twoler/Home  

We have launched a new service hosted by Google for the University of Westminster. First year students automatically get an account when they enrol. Throughout the first semester 08/09 all continuing undergraduate and postgraduate students can sign up to Google Apps. Within the Westminster domain "my.westminster.ac.uk"  the following services are provided by Google Apps:

• Email
• Calendar
• Talk
• Sites (Staff only)
• Start page
• Google Docs

 

For more information on the Google Apps benefits and rollout follow this link http://www.wmin.ac.uk/page-16541

 

Hi, I am quite impressed with the format of the front page on this ELGG powered system, and am trying to achieve the same. Would the developer(s) of this site be willing to share their knowledge of how they managed to achieve this? Any help or tips would be extremely appreciated. I'm running the latest ELGG. Many thanks. Dean

Hi, I am developing an ELGG system (version 1.1), and cannot get the user registration to work.  The only method I have that works is by an administrator manually adding a new user via the admin panel. However this is not practical if there are going to be many users of the system. What is happening is that, even though the new user's details are recorded in the database when the new user registers, their accounts are not getting activated because no email is being sent to them to activate their account. I notice that the registration system is working soundly on this Eduspaces system....I am hoping that the developer(s) can help me out here.

Many thanks.

Dean

Hallo
I have uploaded on elgg community site new language pack for Georgian language.
Dear Administrators, please look http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/highlander/read/9324/georgia
and add it to eduspaces too.
Thank you much in advance!!!

Has the ability to post by email been removed? I've used it in the past, but not for ages & was trying to test it - and had forgotten what random address I'd set up. I can't find where I entered the details, though, now.

Introduction



The University of Westminster has used a virtual learning environment (VLE) for many years. The nature of VLEs is such that their use often reinforces a pedagogic model which does little to engage students in active learning (Sharpe 2006). The last academic year saw the introduction of 3 student-centred tools within the VLE (e-portfolio production tool, blog and wiki functionality). To date approximately 4,000 students and 50 staff have made use of these tools indicating some interest amongst staff in exploiting these more active Web 2.0 technologies with their students. With this interest in mind and with the realisation that the majority of Westminster staff, in common with those at other Universities, have only a limited experience of Web 2.0 technologies, a decision was taken to provide a Westminster-only social networking system so that staff and students could experiment with the utility of such an online resource for both learning and support. The Connect system (powered by Elgg) was therefore made available to all staff and students and provided a range of features typically associated with Web 2.0 systems including personal and community blogs, tagging, private and public communities, personal and community file storage and social networking capability including full syndication support.  The system has been used with pre-arrival students to help with their transition to university life and also by the student union who saw the opportunity to create dedicated communities for clubs and societies.  Elgg was chosen due to its open source nature based on the popular LAMP software, its thorough privacy controls and the possibility of import/export of FOAF. It was decided that Connect should be hosted internally for a number of reasons, these include; issues of content ownership, branding and avoidance of adverts.
For the purposes of this study, our specific research questions were: 

• Would students who already use social networking tools want to use and benefit from a closed, university-only social networking system?
• To what extent would students use such a system for socialising versus informal academic learning?
• Would academic staff unfamiliar with Web 2.0 explore the new technology to any significant degree?

 Research Approach

The study covered all staff and students who accessed the system between 10^th September 2007 and 24^th October 2008. The evaluation methodology included detailed questionnaires sent to all users of the system coupled with an anonymous analysis of the blog posts made on the system. In additional some statistical data (number of blog posts made by 1^st year students versus second or third years) was mined from the system database.
Quantitative data was collected via questionnaires in early October 2007 and in early January 2008 and then again in October 2008. The qualitative data, comprising personal blog posts and community forum posts were read and then categorised into types with the number of types being created spontaneously as successive blog posts were read. Once all blog posts were categorised, a summary of the different categories was written and related to the research questions posed.  

Results

The Connect system was launched in September 2007. By 8^th January 2008, there were 3,048 (approximately 2,300 students and the rest staff) registered users of the system. A total of 107 communities had been established and 508 blog posts made. The majority of students who accessed Connect were from the Business School, Computer Science and Social Sciences/languages. A much smaller proportion came from Biosciences/Health Sciences, Law and Architecture/Built Environment.

Amongst the undergraduates, more first-year students tended to access and use Connect than second or third years (first-year students comprised 34% of the total number of student users). More postgraduate students accessed and used Connect than either second or third year undergraduate students. 
Amongst students who accessed Connect, 44% had logged in regularly (defined as an average of 2-3 times per week). 80% said the main reason that they used Connect was to look for people with common interests and arrange meetings.

 

A high proportion of students, 49%, logged in only once. The most common reason for not accessing Connect more was that they preferred using other social networking sites, such as Facebook. Others mentioned that they used the VLE to communicate with their fellow students or stated that they simply did not have the time. An appreciable number of students surveyed (about half) didn’t feel the need or see the point in Connect as they attend the University everyday and can talk to their course mates face-to-face. 

Personal Blogs

Personal blog posts could be broadly divided into reflective contributions or contributions that were in some way providing or seeking practical information, help or support. The former type, which comprised 55% of the total, could in turn be split into reflections linked directly to the University and those which were focused more generally on life, personal problems or external news/events. Overall about 2.3% of users kept a blog with each user writing an average of 3 blog posts. Although more students than staff started a blog, students wrote an average of 2 blog posts, compared to 5 blog posts each by staff. Students mainly blogged to look for people with similar interests Staff mainly blogged about their work or the subject they teach or to give their opinion on something related to University life. 

Connect Communities

The communities established by individuals and groups within the Connect system could be classified into 3 broad types.
Type I were typically staff-led and were established to discuss or exchange ideas on an issue associated with the functioning or business of a staff department or sub-section of a department.
Type II communities were based around hobbies and interests.
Type III communities were those set up for the support of academic study, with about half being set up by students (and generally excluding staff), whilst the rest were staff-led or facilitated.

 

Staff and student feedback
 
Student feedback
Students were very evenly split about whether the Connect system was useful. Students commonly commented that Connect could be invaluable for making friends and supporting each other, especially within the first few weeks after arriving at the University.
A frequently-held view by those in favour of Connect was that the closed community that Connect provided was better than the more diverse groups presented by systems like Facebook or MySpace. Even in circumstances where external systems provide a group function - there is a Westminster Facebook community, for example - it was often felt that the local nature and feel of Connect provided a personal and collegiate environment. Others felt it was helpful to keep online social activities that are linked directly to university life separate from wider online social activity outside of University.

In the survey, some students considered that a University-owned social networking system would be a good source of educational help, although they pointed out that the institutional VLE (Blackboard) was the best place for that. Linked to this view was the perceived need to better integrate Connect and Blackboard in order to provide a seamless transition between the more formal learning activities and a space where students had greater control and autonomy. Although Connect was considered to be a space where students had greater freedom to do what they wished, there was very strong support from students for their tutors to use the Connect system as well, and for them to be part of at least some of the communities together with students.
Amongst students who thought that there was no point in having Connect, most cited either not having enough time or there being too many systems for them to interact with or, most commonly, they already used Facebook and Connect duplicated what they could already do on that system.
Staff feedback

While most staff reported that they had very little time to use Connect, 84% said that Connect has a role to play in helping students to build a community either prior to or after arrival at the University. Concerns were mostly about the fact students would have to duplicate efforts to maintain two sites and questions regarding access to Connect after completing their studies.

 

Conclusions and discussion

The results presented indicate that students can benefit in a variety of ways from the availability of a closed ‘university-only’ social networking system. However, it is also clear that one size does not fit all; whilst half of the students surveyed could see reasons to have something distinct from say Facebook, the other half could not. Selwyn (2007) describes how Facebook can function ‘in different ways depending on the preference of the user’. This degree of personalization seems to be fundamental to its popularity and is an important factor to consider when seeking to offer students a competing technology. 
 
Whilst a significant number of students have engaged with Connect in this first phase of development, only a small minority of those have tried to use Connect for overtly academic-related activities. In addition, groups of students that did start communities with an academic focus were not able to maintain them successfully. Panckhurst (2008) suggests the value of ‘specific, focused tasks’ when trying to effectively use a social network for direct educational benefit. It is generally felt that the future of learning lies in a carefully planned and integrated network designed to give autonomy to learners, whilst involving tutors in a facilitating role, stressing the importance of guidance rather than management in forming “communities of practice” (Lave and Wenger, 1991 taken from Panckhurst, 2008).
Data derived from the questionnaire suggests that students were keen to see tutors active in the Connect system and this could explain why students did not use Connect that much for academic purposes. It is worth noting that where academics have encouraged and worked with students to engage with Connect for academic purposes (e.g. the visual culture group), more significant contributions have been made by the students.  

References 

Panckhurst, R and Marsh, D. (2008) Communities of Practice. Using the Open web as a collaborative Learning platform, iLearn Fourm, Paris, France

Selwyn, N.   (2007)   ‘Screw Blackboard... do it on Facebook!  an investigation of students' educational use of Facebook', http://www.scribd.com/doc/513958/Facebook-seminar-paper-Selwyn

Selwyn, N. (2007) The use of computer technology in university teaching and learning: a critical perspective. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 23: (2) 83-94. 

Sharpe, R. 2006: The undergraduate experience of blended learning. The Higher Education Academy. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/projects/detail/lr_2006_sharpe