Hi,

I discovered your forum through a web search and I'm confident this is the place to find knowledgeable, helpful people on these types of matters.

I am a secondary school teacher who also does a bit of web designing in his spare time. I teach ICT (computers, in UK education speak) and part of that is basic web design to 12 year olds. They spend 10-12 lessons producing a website which is saved and viewed from their local account. When they ask what the web address is so that they can show it to their parents from home, they are always VERY disappointed when I tell them it's not 'really on the internet'.

What I wanted to know is, how easy would it be to set up a service that allowed kids to easilly create a directory within a host domain (everything would be on one domain) and ftp their files up using a web browser interface?

There are a few safeguards that would have to be placed on this:
1. BEFORE ADDING A SITE: The school would have to set up a school account authorising their students to use the service. The kids could simply enter in a password to prove they are from that school (or validate through IP address? I dunno)
2. WHEN VIEWING A SITE: Each directory would have to be password protected so that the pages are only visible to those with permission from the website creator. As much as we tell our students not to place personal details on the site or about copyright, they often forget. (The site would dutifully give reminders about these things before the kids upload their site)

Is there a sevice that already does this kind of thing? Our kids are used to creating their own myspace/facebook/mebo pages, but at school they are building their page from scratch (and even getting stuck into the html if they're really keen!). However, they can't easilly get it hosted to show mum and dad!

I suspect it would take quite a bit of custom coding rather than just tinkering with an existing host management application. What do you think?

Although I am an ICT teacher, I am no programmer. I have a resellers account and would love to be able to launch it on the cheap for my students and other schools that probably have the same frustrated young web designers. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Cheers

Andy

Hello Andy, found your post randomly whilst searching for something else. In short.. hmm! Good question.

You could eitheir get your own server ( not sure how on the cheap it could be done, depends on bandwidth/hardware specs ) and say.. give each kid/class or year etc.. an account.

So you would have admin and in essence you would be reselling the space ( without the actual selling bit! ). Or you could just give each access to there own share which let's them upload/download.

But then the question is, monitoring what they do and allowing access to that site.

I'm sure there will be lot's of advice flooding in on how to do this and who you can host with, so should just be a case of whatching this space!

The main issue is controlling the public access of that site? If it's port 80 and hosted then it's visible to the world so you eitheir limit the access to that IP ( by source, or vpn etc.. ) or you need to be able to deny/allow any website only by the administrator.

Anyway good luck with the search!

Jim

Also, I don't know about in the UK - But I do alot of freelance etc. at my local school which I went to for my elementary studies. They're really big on privacy in NY and in the US in general, and need a consent form before publishing on the internet - just another thing to keep in mind.

++ POST 250! im neato.

I was debating this very same thing -- I was thinking, how cool would it have been to have a teacher that teaches the ('high school') students about eCommerce.

Think about it; First semester, teach the kids the ins and outs for industry standards, etc... then the second semester have them create the site and launch it..

It'd be a fun learning experience IMHO.

Hi Andy,

I doubt the websites your students are making take up more than 1 mb per student. Could you not just teach them to zip it up and email it home?

I am saying this, as with kids and privacy, one mistake could mean you loose your job as a teacher :( It could be easier and safer to avoid hosting it altogether. If you're still determined to do the hosting idea, talk to your Head teacher or bring it up in the annual teacher governor meetings (not sure if they have them in the US, thats if your from the US ;))

I figured I'd give my two cents here since I assist with auditing the cPanel Educational Licenses so I get to see what various educational institutions do. Some trends I've noticed:

- If a person isn't of legal adult age in a country, they don't have any personally identifying material (e.g. Name) on an academic website hosted on the server. Generally sites can be identified as "Group 5" if it is a group project or by some subtle but not personally identifying content of the website.

- Projects typically center more around building a website for a fictitious non-existent company rather than an assignment that posts one's electronic portfolio to the internet. Of course, I get nervous whenever a student performs too well and it really looks like a real company, until I visit other sites hosted on the server and see a dozen websites for "Bob's Bass Fishery" seemingly built by students with varying web design expertise.

- Often I will see faculty pages hosted on the same server as the students. Perhaps the site may host class homework and such. Typically, I see such pages attempting to lead students by good example by displaying buttons to verify W3C compliance and similar promotion of good practices.

Of course, you may want to seek assistance from your educational institution's legal council for anything you need clarification for, if you are unsure about something in the privacy laws.

Control panel manufacturers usually offer educational licensing to educational institutions, often at steep discounts. You may want to pursue that as an easy means by which to monitor and control access to the server, should you desire to password protect websites, specific directories or whatever the case may be.

Andy,

What do you use on your network? (i.e. Active Directory / Netware / etc).

I ask because we've done a simular thing for one of our education clients and it's actually pretty simple to achieve providing you have a web server which can authenticate your users using their network credentials...

You'd create a webroot, point it to an internal server in the DMZ for example, allow all to read and then give each user write access to their own directory underneath that, they can drop their files in via FTP or even a mapped network drive.

You can then allow access to this webroot remotely via HTTP except the users require their network username/password to be entered first. This way only someone with a logon for your school/college network can obtain access (for example someone at home showing their parents, etc). This should hit the nail on the head because you probably won't want anyone else to see the sites.

Hope that helps,

Dan

A bit late to the party on this one but why don't you get a domain name and get it hosted.

Each pupil can then have a subdirectory from the domain, eg:
student1.domainname.com

Make part of the tuition point out the bad parts of putting personal info on the web without scaremongering and you are giving them a go intro.

Slap a password on each subdirectory and then when they get home they can show off.

Ry

At my school, we had "Student ID Numbers". Where each student had a unique number and you could do something like:

137618.school_domain.com (or .edu)

At my school, we had "Student ID Numbers". Where each student had a unique number and you could do something like:

137618.school_domain.com (or .edu)

Be careful the student ID numbers do not contain personally identifiable information. I know some educational institutions in the United States use portions of one's social security number as their student ID and email address.