realsmart cloud overview

realsmart cloud overview

realsmart cloud v 1.0

Table of contents

What is the realsmart cloud?! 4Sounds good, so what is it in real life terms?! 5

Your public facing website! 5

Your individual web identity! 6

Your toolkit! 7

So, what will it be in the future?! 8

Ok, so pedagogically, what is it?! 9

Ok, so technically, what is it?! 9

So why donʼt you sync users from Active Directory?! 9

Go on then, so why would I want the realsmart cloud?! 10

What doesnʼt it do?! 11

Building your website! 13Introduction! 13

What can I control?! 13

How do I change these things?! 14

Adding content to your website! 14

Changing the title and strapline! 15

Changing the logo and carousel pictures and descriptions ! 16

Changing the website menu! 16

Changing the sidebar widgets and links ! 18

Who can do these things?! 19

Intro to Smart Options ! 20

Is there anything I shouldnʼt do?! 21



What is the realsmart cloud?The realsmart cloud is a collection of services that are coupled together to create a cohesive whole school learning system.

Building on realsmart, your learning portfolio, the cloud provides additional collaborative services such as a public facing website, enterprise standard email and calendars, social communication, collaborative documents, intranet tools, and the ability to tap into unlimited web based applications that can add great value to your school in terms of pedagogical impact, choice and value for money.

Most educational technology companies are in a race to create the ultimate one stop shop, the system to rule all systems. Companies that create VLEs will court you with the dreams and ideals that their system will solve all your problems, that their system is the best at everything, when in fact the opposite is true.

On the whole, VLEs are cumbersome, expensive, need extensive training and maintenance, have roll out plans reaching over years, and offer not much more than file sharing. They are loving known as ʻthe filing cabinet in the skyʼ and fail to have much meaningful pedagogical impact without dedicated individuals spending inordinate amounts of energy getting it to do anything useful, other than share files.

Most schools will have experienced at least one or two different VLEs, and know this to be true. In the meantime, the world has moved on in terms of collaborative applications based on internet technologies.

Nowadays, software that requires training to be used, is seen as failed software.

User interface design can now feel like youʼve already used software youʼve never seen by offering hand holding contextual help that doesnʼt get in the way of the experienced user.

So called “Web 2.0” apps are markedly different in their ability to facilitate live collaborative creation tools where ever you are in the world.

They are simple, and easy to use, and a lot of software is actually free, and definitely world class.

But schools still suffer the same issues they always have. A schoolʼs requirements and needs are quite unique compared to many organisations. For instance, you cannot assume that all users are ʻresponsibleʼ, so they need to be ʻaccountableʼ. Most contexts require lots of users to be registered before the software becomes usable. And how can teachers co-ordinate 30 students at a time, moderating comments and managing the work that you can produce in a 50 minute lesson of registering, logging in, sharing and collaborating in one classroom. Oh, and the small issue of managing 1,000 kids and 200 staff that move around, leave and arrive with regularity.

These issues require a different approach. No one is going to create the one thing that does everything brilliantly, the one big red button that in one press will teach your kids everything. Thatʼs just silly.


But there is one system to rule them all. Itʼs called the internet.

Some companies try to sell you their dream of having their poor imitation of the internet in a box, but why settle for a box when you can have the world?

At smartassess, we never settle for a poor version of something better, we want to use the something better. We donʼt try to out do what has come before, we think differently.

And for not a lot, it seems you can have, well, pretty much everything.

When we said to ourselves, “what learning system would we put in place if we opened up a school tomorrow?”, we came up with the following things:

• realsmart (of course!) - our learning portfolio• a public website that was extremely easy for anyone to update• enterprise level email and shared calendars - because professionals should have

professional tools• collaborative documents• lots of tools to build content, including an intranet• an individual web profile to access loads of web 2.0 apps

• and all these things must be simple and easy and require little or no energy for anyone to set up and maintain,

• and provide choice for individuals to decide how they want to do things and who with,• and they should require no or very little training (ok, there will always be teachers who

need some training! See what we think about training below...)• and that all these tools will be within a couple of clicks reach,• and that doesnʼt assume our kids are dumb and that they donʼt use this stuff, like every

day of their lives...• and when the next big thing comes along, what ever it is, we want it...

I could go on, but we just made it happen instead.

And you know what?

We found it pretty easy to do, and we found we could use a lot of stuff thatʼs free to schools, or open source, and therefore we could pass all this goodness onto our realsmart schools for not very much at all.

Sounds good, so what is it in real life terms?Your public facing website

Every school needs a website right?

But how many school websites havenʼt been updated for months, maybe even years?

And does your website reflect the vibrant activities that your wonderful students are engaging in every day?


And are your documents, such as policies or prospectus, or newsletters up to date and relevant?

After looking at probably hundreds of school websites, and not really seeing very many that are any good at all, we came up with a framework that will work with pretty much every school.

You control EVERYTHING in the website, and we provide the structure. The website is powered by the fantastically simple Content Management System (CMS) called WordPress.

You can add content literally in seconds, and as many people as you want can add this content.

Better still, you can see who has added the content, which really personalises and brings the website alive, as well as motivating others to get in on the act.

You can really easily embed engaging visual content such as videos (Youtube, or Vimeo), slideshows (Flickr etc), and even documents such as PDFs and Powerpoints (Issuu etc).

Your website comes alive and organically grows into a real time documentation of school life. As you add new content, the older stuff gets pushed down until itʼs archived, but still easily available. And yes, you can keep the important stuff at the top!

The website allows you to keep all your information for all your stakeholders (general visitors, students, staff, parents and the wider community) together in a cohesive whole that really reflects your schoolʼs culture.

It also allows you to build links out of the website to, well, where ever you want people to go to next.

Better still, it provides your staff and students a single point to “log in” and provide personalised links to all your web services, tying disparate systems into a cohesive whole learning system, by providing you with an individual web identity.

Your individual web identity

Weʼve created a link from your school to the cloud (the internet). Weʼve done this by sucking data through a secure pipe into our user management system. So that every one (well, staff and students) on your Management Information System (MIS) now has an identity on the web that they can use to access loads of web services.

We call it your “smartpass” and it looks something like [email protected] - something like that.

This also allows you to control your avatar (picture that represents yourself), password etc all from one place.

Single Sign On (SSO)


mailto:[email protected]


Youʼll log in through your website to give you access to all the web services that we can automatically link to, which at the moment is:• realsmart• google apps (email, calendar, sites, documents)• wordpress• buddypress• and ANY applications you want/can get from the google marketplace (see below), such

as Aviary

If there are any applications you would like to access, please contact us, and we will tell you if / how we can do it for you.

These applications all support Single SIgn On (SSO) so you only have to sign in once, and you get straight access to them. Great!

But thereʼs more...

Google Account

Some applications donʼt offer SSO, but they allow you to log in using your smartpass.

For instance, www.wallwisher.com allows you to log in using a Google account. Well, your smartpass IS your Google account, so you can log straight in by entering your smartpass without having to register.

** OpenID

**As well as this, your smartpass IS your OpenID account, so any web apps that allow you to log in through OpenID, all you have to do is put openid.yourschool.net as your OpenID URL, and log in using your smartpass.** This has not been implemented - YET!

Email address

Some other web apps use your email address as your username, such as facebook and twitter, and guess what, your smartpass IS your email address, so you can register using your smartpass as your username.

But, remember, the password to these web apps will be whatever youʼve registered it as with that particular application.

So, you have one username to identify you in lots of web apps, which can be used to either tightly or loosely couple together all these disparate systems and make them useful to you.

Your toolkit

As well as realsmart (which we assume you know how good it is!), you get the following...


http://www.wallwisher.com

http://www.wallwisher.com

Google apps

Google apps include• email• calendars• contacts• collaborative documents which are:

• Documents (word processing)• Spreadsheets• Presentations• Drawings• Forms (questionnaires etc)

• sites (collaborative websites - more complex than rweb)• video• ...and anything you want to plug in from Google Marketplace ( http://www.google.com/

enterprise/marketplace/ ) such as Aviary ( www.aviary.com )

Please look at these links to find out more...

http://edutraining.googleapps.com/

http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html

BuddyPress

If you think that your staff at your school donʼt communicate between each other very well, then you have a typical school!

BuddyPress is set up to be your social communication tool between staff. Once logged in to your website, you access BuddyPress through the revealed functionality in your website.

In BuddyPress, there is an activity stream which captures everything that is going on in your school, like an internal twitter thatʼs also connected to the forever updating website content.

You can also form groups and have as many forums as you want to discuss and record internal activity, which also feeds the activity stream.

To find out more, have a look at...

http://buddypress.org/

So, what will it be in the future?As the realsmart cloud is built on industry standards that people are using, it will be able to incorporate any new web based technologies that come along.


http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/




http://www.aviary.com

http://www.aviary.com

http://edutraining.googleapps.com

http://edutraining.googleapps.com



http://buddypress.org

http://buddypress.org

More and more apps are talking to each other in better ways than before, allowing us to include them in your toolkit.

Technically speaking, if an app allows you to provision and authenticate users into it, it can be incorporated into the realsmart cloud.

If you find an app that you want to use, get in touch with us at [email protected] and weʼll let you know if and how it can be done.

Ok, so pedagogically, what is it?Your realsmart cloud is your whole school learning portfolio.

We learn through disparate portfolios. When we create things, we record and demonstrate our learning. As we record things, we assess what we know through reflection. When we collaborate, our self-assessment is informed by peer and mentor assessment.

Our public facing website is our schoolʼs learning portfolio. Within our logged in systems, we create more collaborative things within private groups.

It is the process of creating these things that we learn.

We donʼt want shiny, finished things.

We want to be able to create things quickly and easily and share them with our peers and mentors. We want to be able to evaluate our and othersʼ learning. And we want to spend the least amount of energy creating the deepest learning experiences.

Learning isnʼt ever finished.

Learning is a journey.

Ok, so technically, what is it?The realsmart cloud is a secure link from your MIS to our cloud services.

Our cloud services then provision users based on the information from your MIS into the cloud apps (realsmart, WordPress & Google apps).

Our user management system creates a single web identity (your smartpass) that is a realsmart account, a WordPress account, a Google account, and an **OpenID account.

Through these systems, you can leverage wider apps from one single point of log in.

So why donʼt you sync users from Active Directory?

For lots of really good reasons...




• It is complicated to set up• It can easily go wrong• Your MIS provisions AD anyway• You CANNOT have a live password sync between online services and AD (changing an

AD password wonʼt change online services until the sync has run)• It is easy to sync usernames from your MIS• MIS sync doesnʼt depend on how you run your network

This leaves you with an internal network that requires one password, and online services that require another.

Users can decide if they want to make both passwords the same.

If a user forgets their password, it is straightforward to change their password in both systems.

The choice is :

Change passwords in two systems & remember two passwords (if the user chooses them to be different)

or

Maintain AD and complex syncing protocols to result in a less than perfect sync (ie passwords arenʼt synced live - eg if a student forgets their password, changing AD wonʼt change online services until the sync has run - you would have to change both passwords anyway)

And thereʼs the pragmatic things too...

Do kids need to learn how to remember and manage passwords to online services?

How many people in your school can change passwords in AD? Would you like all teachers to be able to simply change a studentʼs password?

Go on then, so why would I want the realsmart cloud?If your website is shiny and “finished”, throw it away. It isnʼt working for you.

If your teachers donʼt know what other teachers are doing, and best practice is what some teachers do without others knowing about it, do something about it.

If your VLE shares files, and, ummm, stuff. Chuck it, even if itʼs ʻfreeʼ. Or even if it cost you £25k and two years roll out, still chuck it.

If only your technicians can do things to make things work around here, there is a better way!

If you want to get great value out of your existing ICT infrastructure, invest in your internet connection and get on the cloud.


If you want what ICT has been saying it can do for years, yet whenever you look at it, it doesnʼt actually do what YOU want it to do, get this. It really does work.

What doesnʼt it do?It doesnʼt give you a big red button that you can press that teaches all your kids everything they need to know.

It doesnʼt display things from your MIS in it. Your MIS displays things that are in your MIS.

You canʼt put things in it that it then puts in your MIS. You can put things straight in your MIS instead.

It doesnʼt get you everything for free. Only free things come for free.

It doesnʼt talk to every application you might want to use. Only loads of good ones that let you talk to them.

It doesnʼt make bad teachers good.

It doesnʼt tell kids off.

It doesnʼt go home at 3.15pm...



Building your websiteIntroductionOne part of your realsmart cloud is your schoolsʼs publicly viewable website.

The website and its functionality are designed by smartassess through the popular Content Management System (CMS), WordPress.

WordPress is a relatively easy and simple way to update website content quickly, and it also allows smartassess to provide mechanisms for you to manage and maintain any other web services you use, such as realsmart and Google apps.

You can find out all about WordPress here: http://wordpress.org/

What can I control?This is a typical website and what you can control:


LogoTitle and strapline

Carousel pictures and descriptions

Website menu

Website content Sidebar widgets

and links

http://wordpress.org

http://wordpress.org

How do I change these things?Your website will already be set up to have a log in box, and you will have been given a username and password.

When you log in with your username and password, you will get some extra links in your sidebar. If you are allowed to change the website, you will have a WordPress link that says “Website Admin” or something similar. If you want to edit your site before we have user data you will need to contact us for the holding site.

If you cannot do this step, please contact the person in your school that maintains your website, or if this is you, contact [email protected]

Clicking on this link will take you to your WordPress dashboard, where you can control the appearance and content of your website.

Adding content to your websiteThe main activity you will do with your website is add content to it. This can be done in two ways, through “Posts” and “Pages”. Posts are related content eg Newsletters, Activity days etc, and Pages are static content that doesnʼt need more than one post eg How to find us

You relate posts by selecting Categories to tag them and therefore link them together.

To display posts and pages in your website, you need to make sure a Menu Item links to either the related page or category.

To add a new post, go to POSTS > ADD NEW

A simple post will consist of a title and some body text.

You can add media such as pictures, video, audio etc using the tools above the post/page body text.

To embed web 2.0 items such as youtube or vimeo videos, issuu pdfs or powerpoints, google maps etc, create your items in the app of your choice, then copy the ʻembed codeʼ of your item.

Select the HTML tab at the top right of the post body text, and paste your embed code into the post.

You can PREVIEW the content before publishing it in the PUBLISH area (top right).

Here, you can also control when a post will appear / disappear, by controlling its publish dates.

The category “Front Page News” is the default home page category.




Changing the title and straplineGo to SETTINGS > GENERAL to see this screen:


Changing the logo and carousel pictures and descriptionsGo to SETTINGS > SMARTASSESS OPTIONS

Here, you can upload your school logo, and you can add as many carousel pictures and descriptions as you want to, or remove old ones.

The carousel pictures must be 960 x 260 pixels

Changing the website menuTo edit the site menu, go to APPEARANCE > MENUS

The website menu is made up of three things:

• Custom Links - Hyperlinks to whatever you want to link to• Pages - Which link to WordPress static Pages• Categories - This lists all the posts tagged with the specific category


To add an item menu, you create a link, or select a page or category, and add it to the menu.

The item will be created at the bottom of the menu, and you drag and drop the item to where you want it to be, dragging left to right creates an indented menu.

PLEASE NOTE: Do NOT create an item that is indented more than twice as it will not be compatible with future developments of the menu.

If you donʼt want a menu item to do anything (ie itʼs just a title or placeholder), create a LINK item and put # as the link

When creating your website, think about which areas will be pages (static posts that donʼt have periodic updates e.g. How to find us, Our Ofsted report etc), and which will be categories (things that will have more than one post e.g. Newsletters, Activity Days etc)

By default, your menu will have the stakeholders (About us, Students, Staff, Parents, Community) across the top. These will also be post categories that you can tag posts with.

About Us is for a general visitor, and links to the category “Front Page News”.

Try not to make big lists in the menu, such as POLICIES > (a big list of all your policies). Instead, create a page (or category) that displays the big list of things.


Changing the sidebar widgets and linksGo to APPEARANCE > WIDGETS

Here, youʼll see three widget areas on the right hand of the screen. These are for:1. SIDEBAR - For widgets that will appear on the website to users even if they are not

logged in2. SIDEBAR FOR LOGGED IN USERS - For widgets that will appear to ALL logged in

users3. SIDEBAR FOR LOGGED IN MENTORS - For widgets that you only want mentors to

see

You can drag and drop widgets from the left hand side to any of these sidebar areas, and if they have settings, you can edit them there.

Do NOT get rid of the SMARTASSESS SSO LOGIN FORM - it will already have your smartassess site ID in there. If you do get rid of it by mistake, you will have to contact us for this number.

You will mainly be managing LINKS in the widget sidebar.


Links have categories, like posts, and when you add a LINKS widget, you can choose the link category to display.

You create and manage your links by going to LINKS. Theyʼre quite straight forward to manage.

You can add an image to your links by uploading a 20 x 20 pixel image to your MEDIA and pasting the URL when editing a link in ADVANCED > IMAGE ADDRESS

Who can do these things?You control who can change what in WordPress.

When a realsmart cloud user logs in, their WordPress user (and other services such as Google apps) is provisioned (created), and given the “role” of subscriber.

It is up to you (or another administrator) to promote usersʼ roles.

WordPress has the following roles:

Administrators - have complete access to all functionalityEditors - can post, publish and edit all contentAuthors - can post and publish their own contentContributors - can create posts, but not publish themSubscribers - can only comment

All users can comment on posts that allow comments.

All comments are moderated (ie they donʼt appear on the website until someone has approved them). Administrators and Editors can moderate comments.

You have to be logged in to the website (ie you have to be a registered user) to make comments.

You can manage your siteʼs users by going to USERS > USERS.

You can manage your own profile by going to USERS > YOUR PROFILE.

You can change the way your name displays eg from John Smith to Mr Smith, or Smiffy if you prefer!


Intro to Smart OptionsUse the image below to become familiar with some terms used in the Smart Options plugin.

1) School logoYour own school logo can be uploaded - this is displayed in the header of all pages.2) Website titleYour website title can be changed in "Settings > General".The title can also be removed using the "Remove title" function in "Website Images"2a) Website sub-titleYour website sub-title can be changed in "Settings > General".The sub-title can also be removed using the "Remove title" function in "Website Images"3) Slide titleWhen adding images to your site slideshow you can give the slides a title.3a) Slide sub-titleWhen adding images to your site slideshow you can give the slides a description.4) AvatarThis image is traditionally pulled from your realsmart installation.Using the "Website colours" page you can change:5) Body text colour - this is the main colour that is used for text on your website pages.6) Link colour - This is the colour applied to text based links on your website.


Is there anything I shouldnʼt do?DO NOT change the THEME of your website. The smartassess theme is specifically developed with functionality built into the theme. If you want to change anything about the appearance of your site that isnʼt covered in this document, please contact us first.

YOU CANNOT add any WordPress plug ins yourself. If you want to add a plug in, contact us, and we can do it for you.

YOU CANNOT update WordPress or BuddyPress to the latest version. We will keep an eye on any updates and when weʼve thoroughly tested the upgrades, we will upgrade your site.

If youʼre unsure of anything, just contact us first on [email protected]

Enjoy!

The realsmart cloud team




Date post:	24-Mar-2016
Category:	Documents
Upload:	smartassess
View:	216 times
Download:	0 times