Digital Education at Trinity

Grammar SchoolBen Creamer

SynergyEvan Hughes

Trinity Grammar School

Ben Creamer

ANZ Regional Manager, Synergy

IT Specialist and trainer for 20 years

SharePoint Business Consultant

Synergy – SharePoint Consulting and Training

Evan Hughes

Director of ICT, Trinity Grammar School 27 Years Education IT/ICT experience Mathematics and Computing Studies

Teacher for 12 years Technical Project Lead - TNet

School Background - Trinity Grammar School

• Largest Anglican Boys day and boarding School in NSW

• Enviable reputation and tradition for serving the educational needs of boys and young men since 1913.

• Outstanding academic results, a caring pastoral program and an emphasis on both traditional and community sports.

• Multi-campus environment in Summer Hill and Strathfield (Syd)

• Over 2000 students, ~500 staff and ~1800 families, and a large community of alumni and ‘friends’

Project Background - Trinity Grammar School

• MS Svrs and clients and ~100 Mac clients • IT staff of 7 managing equipment and technical

systems• Library component housed textbooks (PDF and

executable) and other resources”• executable content required locally installed

components”• “no clear governance strategy as it had grown

through interest or necessity”• Intranet - Internal website, forms and shared

resources with limited granularity, centralised content mgmt

• Resources - Network shared drives• Not readily accessible externally (VPN) • Not easily Searchable

• Minimal Collaboration

Trinity – Project Goals• Single Information repository and Consistent

Interface

• Easier Administrative Management of Students

• Provide Digital Classroom / Portal / Collaboration space

• Allow access for Staff, Students, Parents and Alumni

• Provide Doc Mgmt on a common File System

• Decentralise Content Management – Intranet updates

• Improve search capabilities throughout the school

Trinity – Project Approach

• Researched other schools / previous solutions

• Findings showed an LMS and CMS required

• LMS - Moodle

• CMS - Joomla, MOODLE; CMS100, MS SharePoint

• Researched viability of solutions

• Project team performed Requirements Analysis –

12 meetings over 8 days with all stakeholders

• Wireframes were then produced to show

concepts

Project Details

• Initially SharePoint was only implemented as a

CMS

• Integration with Denbigh SIS/SMS was

established

• During implementation school direction changed

• iPads to be allocated to Yr 12 and teachers

• TNet – Launched in Term 4, 2010 on MS

SharePoint 2010

• Further improvements made and larger release

in 2011

TNet Homepage – SP2010

TNet Portal

• TNet - Trinity SharePoint Intranet and Portal

• Sections of TNet

• Home / Links

• Admin (Staff / Students)

• Collaboration– Extra Curricular

• Teamsites – Staff & faculty sites

• Virtual Classrooms

• Mysites / EOL / GSR

• Parent Portal – Online Reports

TNet Collaboration

Virtual Classrooms – SP 2010

Virtual Classroom Provisioning

• 1000+ required - Automated PS driven process

created

• Queries information from Denbigh.

• Exports to an Middle Tier SQL DB

• Create SP VC Sites

• Creates and manages AD security

• Applies customisations

• Maint Script – Adds / Del’s students from AD (2am)

• Maint Script 2 – Checks for new VC’s to be created

(4am)

Virtual Classrooms and iPad Challenges

• Most students have iPad’s• iPads cannot upload files without 3rd party

apps• Incoming email and content organiser as a

solution• iPads = ATT00001.htm file from email

attachment• Classroom sites have:-• Content organiser enabled.• Drop off library email enabled with

classcode Content organiser rule moves attachment to the Drop Box

• Files starting with ‘ATT0’ are moved to a ‘Delete Signature’ site.

• Information management policy in the ‘Delete Signature’ site deletes the ATT00001.htm files

Virtual Classrooms – Content Organiser

Virtual Classroom - Drop Box Requirements

• To allow student’s to electronically submit assignments and homework items.

• Students should not see the content from other students

• Once submitted students cannot modify their content.

• Teachers can modify all content to “Mark” assessments

Virtual Classroom - Drop Box Solution

• Each Classroom has a ‘Drop Box’ document library

• Solution developed to modify perms on files• Event handler fires on itemCreated and

itemCheckedIn events• Breaks permission inheritance / Remove

all permissions• Grants subsite owners full control• Grants the creator read access

• Thus teachers can mark / modify the submission and students have read only access to only the files they submit.

• Limited impact of item level permissions as classroom sites are recreated each year and limited number of files uploaded

Virtual Classroom - Drop Box permission script

Parent portal – Separate Web Application

• Parents can download student reports / parent

data

• View an aggregated list of homework and

announcements (Jnr School)

• Download students EOL and GSR docs (Jnr

School)

• Business data list web part and external content

type used to display the report in the portal.

• Most customised section of TNET

Parent Portal – Online Reports

SharePoint 2013 Upgrade – Feb 2014

TNet User Experience – Design Goals

• Multiple device support, especially iPads but including all others.

• Will need to support a future BYOD model

• Multiple resolutions / Multiple browser types

• Visually appealing

• Incorporate the Trinity ‘look’ with core colours

Branding and Responsive Web Design

SP 2013 Responsive Design ProcessWire framing

Draft mock-up

TNet Homepage Design

TNet Homepage Design 2

TNet Tablet Design

Tablet

TNet Phone Design

Desktop/Tablet navigation

Phone navigation

Virtual Classroom – SP 2013

The Road Ahead…

• Incorporating forms and workflow

• Enabling data integration to the forms and workflow from and to key databases

• Incorporating Office 365 OneDrive storage

• Expanding the functionality of the parent portal

• Extending TNet to service the Alumni and Community groups

Lessons Learned / Reflection

• Set Realistic Expectations when scoping the project• Small wins and build on that success• Take the staff with you / involve all participants• Education is different to corporate

• Collaboration has improved greatly• Services provided to students / parents improved

Questions ?

Contact Details – Ben Creamer

• Email• Bcreamer@synergyonline.com

• Phone• 0437 373 023

• LinkedIn• au.linkedin.com/pub/ben-creamer/2/453/969/

#auspc #nzspc

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