Re: [seul-edu] Site tools for Schoolforge

[Tom Hoffman <tom_hoffman@mac.com>]

On Thursday 29 November 2001 08:38 pm, cg@cdegroot.com (Cees de Groot) wrote:

> It'd be even easier today with the Zope CMF product,
> a sort of portal out-of-the-box with membership services and other cool
> stuff, and you have a gigantic pile of Zope products to adorn that all
> (there's a weblog, a yahoo-like directory thingie for organizing url's,
> addresses, etcetera). The advantage over PHP is that these things
> integrate a lot better.

I've started putting together a Zope CMF site for the high school where I 
work, Feinstein High School in Providence, Rhode Island.  
(www.feinsteinhs.com (yeah, I know, I inherited the url and haven't changed 
it yet)). It is still rather rudimentary, as I'm learning as I go, and I've 
been swamped by assimilating 150 new computers, etc in the last month, 
training teachers, etc.  

Anyhow, an added benefit to using Zope and CMF for SchoolForge would be 
increasing familiarity with Zope among educators.  I've come to the 
conclusion that in about a year I'll have an absolutely killer digital 
portfolio and assessment system running on Zope (it'll take a year because I 
don't know what I'm doing).  Also, the whole Zope product system makes it 
plausible that moderately clueful teachers can drop dynamic content tools 
like weblogs, wikis and polls into their class websites with a minimum of 
fuss.

I think Zope is potentially a great tool for schools, so I'd suggest using 
it.  I'm so completely and utterly swamped at the moment that I can't offer 
much "expertise," but that's my two cents.

--Tom