I am currently having a play with Alfresco Share as a possible option for an online collaboration tool for our teams. There is a nice feature in the site blog function that enables the posting of blog entries to both the team collaboration area and to an external blog. We have talked about the need for this sort of functionality in the past, so teams can maintain a blog which may be mostly for internal consumption, but with the ability to push some of the posts out to an external facing blog. It is great to see this feature implemented.

This entry was created on Alfresco Share running on my laptop, and was also pushed out to my external blog.

After an initial play around I am impressed with Alfresco and keen to have a detailed look at its document management features.

Yet another new system claiming to be the latest and greatest in online learning

http://www.schoology.com/

“The first course management system built on a social networking platform” they claim – but it is interesting to note that the key features of their new system that they highlight on their homepage are – manage attendance, upload documents and course material, and manage student grades – doesn’t sound awfully social constructivitist to me

I have just been looking at frameworks for reviewing IT systems in schools. We have used the ITIL version 3 framework as the basis of reviews in the tertiary sector, but I thought I would look at BECTA‘s adaption of ITIL for primary and secondary schools.

At first glance it appears to be based on the ITIL version 2 framework, which is ‘process’ driven. I like the version 3 approach which is instead ‘service’ driven. I think this was a sensible move on the part of ITIL. It is too easy for IT people to get focused on the processes and forget that the delivery of services is the key reason for IT to exist – and the version 3 framework helps to keep the focus on this. It is largely just wording, as the underlying processes of v3 are much the same as for version 2, but is still a worthwhile change in my view.

I wonder if BECTA are going to revise their framework to keep current with version 3 of ITIL. Must have better hunt through the above site to try and find out.

I was lucky enough to get a small contract in the middle east country of Bahrain a few weeks ago. It was my first time in the middle east, and it was a great experience. Click on the photo below to see a few snaps from the visit.