In these uncertain times of education funding there is not a lot of money to devote to web communications.  That’s why I am so glad that there are open source projects that make it possible to offer a robust and thriving online learning community without a hefty price tag.  I will try to offer an outline of what we have done to meet or exceed the needs of our community, students, and teachers.  This should be useful for any district that wants to save money and still offer first-class web communication tools.  I will try to outline our 3 year adventure with open source projects as a model for others.

District Website and Staff Intranet
Joomla – I recommend using Joomla for a district website and staff intranet portal.  Joomla’s ease of use, flexibility, and thriving community make it an ideal choice.  Setting up secure pages for staff is easy using Joomla’s menu system.  Joomla also integrates nicely with LDAP so you can only allow staff to register for the site via a district account.  This makes managing who has access easy.  The other nice thing about Joomla is that they have plugins or modules to do just about anything you would want.  Forms, calendars, video, audio, photo galleries, and more are just a download away and most are open source as well.  (District Website)

School Websites
Mindtouch Wiki – When thinking about creating a school website there are many things to consider.  The main concern is ease of use.  Many times a teacher volunteer will maintain the school website.  Having a tool that is simple and easy to use is most important.  That’s why our district chose Mindtouch Wiki for all of our school websites.  Any teacher can login to a school website and click “edit” on the page they want to modify.  This allows for a more collaborative process in maintaining a updated school website.  You can also use the district Joomla website and create sections for each of the schools, but this is not ideal.  Our experience is using a wiki for school websites has been the ideal solution for allowing schools to take ownership of the website.  (List of school wiki websites)

Classroom Websites
WordPress MU & Moodle – Teachers need a quick and easy way to update parents and students with homework and classroom news.  A blog is an ideal solution.  WordPress is one of the most popular blog platforms and their Multi User platform allows unlimited numbers of blogs made using the same code base.  There are also many plugins that will add calendars, email blasts for each teacher,  photo galleries, translations, etc.  Moodle is for the more advanced teacher who wants to have more of an online learning experience than homework information.  With Moodle, every teacher can create an online classroom that will allow students to interact and extend the learning into the home.  Both of these programs can be integrated with LDAP allowing control over who can login to create on the websites. (Teacher iBlog Websites & iLearn Moodle )

Additional Website Communication Tools
PHPMotion - Video sharing is just cool!  One of the most visited spots on our web platform is video sharing.  Teacher love posting and sharing classroom happenings and this is a great way to generate traffic on your site.  Students love it too!  Some teachers make assignments for students that require they make and post a video.  Having this ability and not relying on YouTube which is blocked due to some content forced us to create something for our teachers in-house.  We used PHP Motion to run our video sharing.  It works just like Youtube. (District Dtube Video Sharing)

Kaltura Video – Want to allow teachers to be able to podcast or record from a webcam to their blogs?  Want to allow students to actually EDIT videos right from the internet browser with no video editing software?  Kaltura Video is a robust video editing and sharing program.  It is truly innovative.  See an example of how teachers can embed a video into their blog and allow people to edit it here.  This software integrates into Moodle and WordPress via plugins.  Teachers can record and embed videos right from their web camera with just a few clicks of the buttons.  We just installed this last month.  I suspect this will see increased use in the coming months as teachers become aware of it.  Who wouldn’t want to be able to podcast or record a video message right from their browser with no special tools?

Big Blue Button – This is a video meeting/conferencing software package that is integrated with Moodle.  It allows for video, voice, document sharing, desktop sharing, and chat.  Every teacher can create their own meeting room via the Moodle plugin.  This is an ideal communication tool as it can be controlled via Moodle courses and teachers.  It is a very complex program but the developers have made the user controls very simple.  This is by far the best video/voice communication tool for Moodle.  (Try Out the Demo Room)

Buddypress – With Buddypress you can transform your WordPress MU website into a portal similar to facebook.  It adds a level of social networking.

Using these tools we have been able to create a thriving and exciting online learning community.  There is a tool or solution for just about anything a teacher might want.  I would even suggest that our web platform using open source might rival in features what someone might pay a pretty penny for if you were to try and create something similar not using open source.  The tools are out there.  It is just a matter of finding and using them to the fullest.

Did I mention that there is only one person supporting and providing training for all this?  That includes server/software maintenance and upkeep, teacher help questions, and training.  It’s not impossible to make open source work for your district as well.