Ten years ago, when we started building the Beacon site, there weren’t a ton of tools out there for us to use. So after a year or two of having an HTML only web site, we started using PHP and MySQL to build the tools that eventually became the full Beacon portal. Now, years later, everything but the email client is still homegrown software at Beacon, and the portal really is a powerful piece of software. To this day, I haven’t found any software that gives teachers the tools they need to communicate with parents, students and colleagues as well as what we wrote. And there’s a ton of pride in that the software was co-written by students, teachers and sys admins… and that we designed the tools in collaboration with the users who needed to implement them.

But the software really is Beacon-specific, and SLA isn’t Beacon. I always had a goal of trying to find the time to take all the "Beacon-code" out of it and create a public release. Time ran out on me for that project, and now we’re looking to build SLA’s web portal.

Fortunately, in the ten years since we built Beacon’s site, educational open source software has come a long way. We’re already using Moodle to plan the school, and it will be our Course Management software when we open in September. And today, Stephen Downes linked to an announcement that Elgg is now compatible with Moodle, so of course I explored that. Amazing stuff, that. It looks like a wonderfully integrated blog and e-portfolio software, and those are two pieces missing from moodle.

Now, I need to find the pieces of the puzzle that allow us to create the parent piece — letting parents have easy access to student homework assignments is a big part of what I think is essential to any school web site. I figure if I don’t find an easy way to integrate that with Moodle, that’s something I can take from what we built at Beacon.

I’m still waiting to see if we have to go with an OSX server instead of a Edbuntu server. If we get to install our server of choice, we’ll also be piloting SchoolTool, which will be a HUGE piece of the puzzle as well. (There’s a reason we might not choose Linux… but I like that OSX still allows us to use the vast majority of the Open Source tools we want to use.)

I’m really excited to create Portal 2.0. The hardest part for me, honestly, is that I won’t be the person putting all the pieces together (o.k., I’ll have a hand in it… but I really can’t be the point person anymore.)

So… here’s the reader participation part of the entry… what am I missing in my thinking? I’m going to list everything I’d love to see in a school portal… let me know what I’m forgetting.

• Web-based email
• Web-based file access / e-portfolio
• All the moodle stuff (forums, peer assessment, online journaling, wikis, etc…)
• Blogs
• Teacher Reporting (easy ways for teachers to track student issues / progress across classes)
• Online Anecdotal Report cards
• Social Bookmarking
• Dynamic front page w/ easy updating of content
• Easy access to student academic information for parents
• Attendance and lateness tracking
• Online scheduling ability (o.k. — I can dream.)
• Online lesson plan repository

What am I forgetting?