Re: [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Re: [seul-edu] RE: [why schools don't adoptOSS]]]

[Harry McGregor <micros@azstarnet.com>]

On 28 Nov 2001, Stefan Ekman wrote:

> tis 2001-11-27 klockan 23.46 skrev Harry McGregor:
> > As far as teacher email goes, I would strongly recomend a web based
> > solution, either TWIG, or similar.  The biggest item I can see for the
> > educational area is to avoid tying to the desktop in any way shape or
> > form.  Now of course Evolution would work with NFS home directories rather
> > well, but it does not work from home, or from the airport, or from the
> > next school district.
>
> As I see it, it is no problem to combine the two. An IMAP-webb interface
> for mail, and evolution for more advanced mail and kalendar. If you use
> IMAP from evolution on your laptop, then you can read the mail in the
> next schooldistrict, and from the airport.

But you then have to let IMAP thru your firewall, and the teacher needs a
laptop (Most in my experince have no clue on how to run them...  and from
a system admin's point of view they are 5 times harder to deal with than a
desktop, since they need to work seamlessly both on and off the network
(ie coda filesystem, or nfs syncing, etc).

IMAP does help with the issue thos, since you could use Evolution on the
desktop, and the PHP GroupWare or TWIG, for when yoou are not on the local
network.  Training wise though, that doubles the number of mail
applications they need to learn.

> Otherwise is phpGroupWare
> (http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/phpgroupware/) a nice package to use
> as on-line calendar. It is good for school use as it handles groups and
> support-ticketing. Groups of teachers or students can be useful. Support
> tickets can be used for help requests from students etc.

Sorry, I had forgoten it's name, that is one of the ones I have played
around with.  We had deployed TWIG at Corbett, but that was before TUSD
blocked all incoming ports, changed IPS to a 10.0.0.0/8, and blocked
almost everything outgoing (heck port 22 is blocked OUTGOING, but port 25
is open).  Now we don't host any of our own emailo, and the teachers have
to use OWA on the districts exchange server (which was failing ever 4-5
days for at least the first two months this year).


		Harry
> /Stefan >

--
Harry McGregor, CEO, Co-Founder
Hmcgregor@osef.org, (520) 661-7875 (CELL)
Open Source Education Foundation, http://www.osef.org