Introduction

Contents

1. Introduction
    1.1 The rock-bottom assumptions
        1.1.1 Main design viewpoints
        1.1.2 What students can learn
        1.1.3 User requirements
    1.2 The Website@School teams
        1.2.1 Core team
        1.2.2 Translators
        1.2.3 Code contributors
        1.2.4 Graphics
        1.2.5 Donors
        1.2.6 Testers
        1.2.7 Others

2. Features
    2.1 Civil liberties features
    2.2 Security features
    2.3 Features for blind and visually impaired
    2.4 Usability features

3. Available modules and themes

4. Supported languages
    4.1 Website@School program
    4.2 Website@SChool Users' Guide

5. Wish list

6. Useful links
    6.1 Downloads
    6.2 Etc

7. References

8. History

9. To conclude

1. Introduction

1.1 The rock-bottom assumptions

• Jürgen Habermas (1929- ), and his 'Theory of Communicative Action'.
  

  intro_jurgen_habermas.jpg

  "Habermas is a philosopher and sociologist in the tradition of critical theory and American pragmatism. He is best known for his work on the concept of the public sphere, which he has based in his theory of communicative action." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas

• Donald Knuth (1938- ), American computer scientist and his 'The Art of Computer Programming'.
  

  intro_donald_knuth.jpg

  "Donald Knuth is a renowned computer scientist and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. Author of the seminal multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming ("TAOCP"), Knuth has been called the "father" of the analysis of algorithms..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth

• Célestin Freinet (1896-1966), and Paolo Freire (1921-1997).
  A French pedagogue and educational reformer and a Brazilian educator and influential theorist on education are our indispensable guides when thinking about a website learning tool for education. Almost a hundred years ago Freinet already saw the possibilities of modern technologies in the hands of students for real life learning and communication, while Freires thoughts on reciprocity fit in the Open Source philosophy.
  

  celestin_freinet.jpg and paolo_freire.jpg

  Concepts of Freinet's pedagogy: - Pedagogy of work (pédagogie du travail): students are encouraged to learn by making products or providing services. - Enquiry-based learning (tâtonnement expérimental): group-based trial and error work. - Cooperative learning (travail coopératif): students co-operate in the production process. - Centers of interest (complexes d'intérèt): the children's interests and natural curiosity are starting points for a learning process. - The natural method (méthode naturelle): authentic learning by using real experiences of children. - Democracy: children learn to take responsibility for their own work and for the whole community by using democratic self government. (excerpts from Wikipedia)

  [...] challenging is Freire's strong aversion to the teacher-student dichotomy. This dichotomy is admitted in Rousseau and constrained in Dewey, but Freire comes close to insisting that it should be completely abolished. This is hard to imagine in absolute terms, since there must be some enactment of the teacher-student relationship in the parent-child relationship, but what Freire suggests is that a deep reciprocity be inserted into our notions of teacher and student. Freire wants us to think in terms of teacher-student and student-teacher; that is, a teacher who learns and a learner who teaches, as the basic roles of classroom participation. [...]. (excerpts from Wikipedia)

On the shoulders of these giants, a couple of dwarfs created something we hope is useful for education and schools: Website@School.

1.1.1 Main design viewpoints

Our practical experiences with the work of Celestin Freinet and Paolo Freire inspired the design viewpoints for a CMS for schools:

• A school CMS must be a place where students can learn. Learn to create and publish texts, learn management tasks and administrative skills, experience markup languages, run and ruin their own style sheets and learn basics of coding. On every level, from writing their first text to writing code, a school CMS must be a learning tool for students.
• The website of a school needs special qualities. It differs from the home site of the Jones family and also it's certainly not the site of an enterprise or a business. A school is not a company. These notions require features that differ from most other (fine) CMS's.
• A school website is the place on the Internet where students, teachers, faculty, parents, the School Board, several committees and other parties can find a place to express themselves and communicate with all kinds of visitors. A school CMS must enable all these stakeholders to use the CMS for their purposes. A school CMS must take care of all their cultural differences and similarities in the way they express themselves and communicate with their sometimes special audiences.
• Most schools are not that rich. Websites of schools must be managed and maintained by many persons. All of them have little or no experience as webmaster, HTML expert or systems administrator. Often a school is mainly managed by hard working female teachers who like to teach, and not to manage some CMS. These circumstances call for a very secure, robust and stable but KISS (Keep it Simple & Straightforward) CMS for all those users. And last but not least, also an exiting environment for wizkid students, eager to investigate a CMS.
• A school CMS needs excellent documentation. A comprehensive user manual with a flat learning curve. Furthermore, extensive developer documentation targeted at a technical audience. And last but not least, well documented, well written code.
• Visually impaired and blind persons not only have the right on accessible websites, they also have rights on accessible CMS management.

1.1.2 What pupils can learn

Website@School is a CMS, not only for school websites but also to learn about websites. It has a lot to offer for students, eager to learn about content, ICT and management. A short summary:

• International cooperation. When schools use Website@School each user can work with the CMS her preferred language.
• Experiment in a safe environment where it is possible to make mistakes -the basis of learning- without harming the school CMS.
• All incoming materials are checked for viruses (see requirements).
• Create and publish content.
• Do research with ICT tools.
• Learn HTML markup language in the plain HTML editor.
• Learn CSS with Bazaar Style Style (BSS) that students can manage themselves.
• Gain hands on CMS management experience in a safe environment.
• Learn to work in project teams. Learn to collaborate.
• Visually impaired and blind students can manage Website@School with braille terminal and/or screen reader.

1.1.3 User requirements

Website@School is not particularly difficult to use but it does require a willingness to read and follow the instructions. If you have a natural aversion to reading instructions, and your approach to new software is to click on every button you see until something resembles the desired effect, then Website@School is probably not suitable for you (Courtesy OmegaT User Requirements).

1.2 The Website@School teams

1.2.1 Core team

1.2.2 Translators

Websiteatschool Manual translators
Boyan Kirchev, Denitza Lambreva (Bulgarian) Rieks van Rooijen, Karin Abma (Dutch), Jean Peyratout, Marjolaine Audoux (French), Keli Tracz (Portugese), Anouk Coumans (Spanish), Hansje Cozijnsen (Swedish), Nasira Parveen (Urdu).

Your language here?
Yes! You can translate Website@School and help students, teachers and parents in your country. It is easy to do with our specially designed Translate Tool. If you have basic computer skills and know your mother-tongue and another language, please use our contact form on http://websiteatschool.eu.

1.2.3 Code

- Frederico Caldeira Knabben and his FCK- and CK editor. Frederico's site can be found at http://ckeditor.com/.
- Ger Versluis for his HV Menu which is used in the Rosalina theme. We tried to get in touch with Ger to ask his kind permission to use his code, but we received no reaction. @Ger: please contact us.

1.2.4 Graphics

1.2.5 Donors

1.2.6 Testers

1.2.7 Others

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2. Features

2.1 Civil liberties features

• Open Standards, Open Source Software under a General Public License. Freely available for everyone.
• Website@SChool complies with the 'Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications', also known as the 'e-Privacy Directive' or the 'Cookie Law'.
• No cookies at all are placed on computer of the visitor of a site or on other devices.

2.2 Security features

• Focus on security, robustness and stability. Please don't believe us, check it!
• Separation of program- and data locations in the file system.
• Separation of markup- and programming language.
• CSRF prevention.
• Virus scanning on all incoming materials (provided the server has a virus scanner). Clamscan is automatically detected.
• Lists of permitted file-, image file- and flash file extensions.
• Easy database backup.
• Extensive logging and status reporting with cut & paste for error reporting via e-mail.
• Well written, well documented, readable code.
• No frameworks

2.3 Features for blind and visually impaired

• Manageable with braille terminal and/or screen reader.
• Manageable without a mouse.
• In sites management per user available skins for visual impairments.
• No frames and almost no JavaScript.

2.4 Usability features

• Illustrated (over 500 screenshots) comprehensive documentation targeted at the school users ensures a flat learning curve.
• The User's Guide is a context sensitive help function in the program.
• Mouseover texts. Short information texts or pointers to keyboard shortcuts are almost everywhere.
• Excellent developer documentation created with phpDocumentor [*] from well documented, well formatted code.
• Unlimited number of websites [**]. If needed every group or individual can have its own website.
• An Area or Section can hold an unlimited number of identical modules, for example blogs, redirections, etc.
• Several standard themes. Well documented, easy adaptable with Bazaar Style Style.
• Easy creation of your own theme which makes every lay-out possible.
• Sites can be split into new sites, or merged. Sections and pages can be moved around to other sites and sections. These features enable quick changes to any new site structure or lay-out.
• Unlimited (!) number of password protected Intranets.
• Unlimited depth in sections, sub-sections, sub-sub-sections, et cetera.
• Sections and pages can be images, thus permitting navigation and use for illiterate or young children.
• Easy installation (also for blind users) with a well documented GUI (Graphical User Interface) and additional Users' Guide documentation. No need to install anything on a computer. Webiste@School is installed on a web server.
• Four editors: 1. CKEditor: WYSIWYG editor, satisfies all 'Section 508' requirements and the 'WcAG 2.0 level A principles' for blind users. 2. FCKEditor: for older browsers. 3. Plain HTML editor: to learn HTML. 4. CREW (Collaborative Remote Educational Workshop): a collaborative remote interactive real-time editor. Uses Websockets, HTML5 and (unfortunately for our blind users: JavaScript).
• Translate Tool: Easy translation of the program to a new languages or adaption of text strings by technically unexperienced translators.
• Demonstration data. Website@School can be installed with demo data (demo sites, users and groups) in every available language. Useful for experiments and learning to manage Website@School. Easily removable.
• Easy upgrading and maintenance with the Update Manager.
• Proxy friendly URLs (configurable), to save bandwidth. Interesting for schools having no fast connection to the Internet.
• Full UTF-8, i.e. no problems with diacritical marks as well as non-western characters.
• Breadcrumb trails with some intelligence (reduces mouse clicks).
• Fine grained Role Based Access Control (RBAC). Each site, section or page can have its own admin(s) with permissions from 'none' to 'everything'.
• BSS (Bazaar Style Style, our educational implementation of CSS) permitting unlimited differences in styles by user editable style sheets in sites, sections and pages.
• Pages have meta-data and can be visible, hidden, read-only, under embargo- and expiry dates and can directly link to URL's.
• Alerts on 'everything' for 'everyone'.
• Groups of users with different group permissions (Unix style). This enables collaboration and project based work.

[**] Yes, we know and agree with Jacob Kaplan-Moss in chapter Viewpoints, paragraph Links we like the article Teach, Don't Tell, but... see for yourself.
[*] Websites on a Website@SChool CMS are called 'Areas'.

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3. Available modules, themes and skins

Modules

• Aggregator: aggregate pages and snapshots. The aggregator collects pages and images an puts them on one page.
• Althing (weblog): A weblog with educational features like harvesing and reports.
• Confab (chat): A chat with educational features like reports and braille interface.
• Plain HTML editor: No frills HTML editor.
• Mailpage: send mail to departments or individuals. No unreadable CAPTCHA's, developed for blind users.
• My Page: login, logout and modify profile
• Newsletter: create and publish newsletters, on-line or via e-mail
• Redirect: to create a page that redirects to another site.
• Search: search the site for keywords
• Sitemaps: for all sites, one site or links to other sites.
• Snapshots: picture albums with thumbnails, manua- Mededelingenl viewing of images, full screen slideshow for shows on TV sets.
• Workshop (CREW): Collaborative Remote Educational Workshop. Remote real-time editing.
• Editors:WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get ) editors: CKEditor and FCKEditor in different versions.

• Theme Axis
• Theme Cornelia
• Theme Frugal
• Theme Rosalina
• Theme Ruta
• Theme Schoolyard
• Theme Sophia

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4. Supported languages

1. Arabic (ar): ready
2. Bulgarian (bu): 0.90.6
3. Chinese (zh): ready
   
4. Danish (da): ready
   
5. Dutch (nl): ready
6. English (en): ready
7. Finnish (su): ready
8. French (fr): ready
9. Frisian (fry): 0.90.6
10. German (de): ready
11. Greek (el): ready
12. Hungarian (hu): ready
13. Italian (it): 0.90.6
14. Papiamento (pap): ready
15. Persian (fa): ready
16. Polish (pl): ready
17. Portugese (pt): ready
18. Romanian (ro): under construction, translator needed
19. Russian (ru): ready
20. Spanish (es): ready
21. Swedish (sv): ready
22. Turkish (tr): unfinished, translator needed.
23. Urdu (ur): 0.90.6.
24. Vietnamese (vi): 0.90.6.

Manual Website@School

- English (complete)
- Dutch (under construction)
- Spanish (under construction)
- French (under construction)
- Bulgarian (under construction)
- Russian (under construction)
Latest versions (nightly builds) can be found on http://wyxs.net/web/was/

Check our http://websiteatschool.eu site to see if new languages are available that are not yet incorporated in Website@School.

You can help schools in your country by translating Website@School. The system provides an easy Tanslate Tool for 'on the fly' translating the program. Any teacher can do it.

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5. Wish list

• Please help other schools by translating Website@School in your language. We have a special Translate Tool that enables online translations. Creating a new language version is a piece of cake.
• Help us with feature requests.
• Help schools with developing and coding for Website@School.
• Please donate to the project. Your school can help to keep your school site sustainable. We welcome financial support of the project. See Donate to Website@School
• E-mail us the URL of your site. You can use the E-mail link at the bottom of the Home Welcome page in Website@School Start Center.
• Wishes? Please mail us.

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6. Useful Website@School sites

Main project site: http://websiteatschool.eu

6.1 Downloads

• JoinUp: Our download location at https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/websiteatschool/release/all. Here you find all Website@School program downloads, manual- and developer-documentation downloads.

  NOTICE:
  JoinUp is processing our publication request. In the mean time the latest version of the Website@School software and documentation can be downloaded via http://websiteatschool.eu/index.php/area/14/Downloads.html.

• Website@School: http://download.websiteatschool.eu
• Manuals of current version: http://manual.websiteatschool.eu
• Latest manuals versions: http://wyxs.net/web/was
• Nightly builds of today's updates of the manuals: http://wyxs.net/downloads/was

6.2 Etc

• Joinup project page & downloads: Clumsy site: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/websiteatschool/home. Decide if you want a .tgz or .zip. The downloads are alphabetical, so the first is the .tgz and the second the .zip. On the next page you are importuned with a Joinup 'feature'. At the bottom of the page is 'No, i prefer to remain anonymous - start the download.
• Newsletter: New versions will be announced via our own newsletter Website@School News at http://websiteatschool.eu/index.php/124/WebsiteAtSchool_News.html.
  You can subscribe to this low volume newsletter at http://websiteatschool.eu/index.php/124/subscribe/1/WebsiteAtSchool_News.html
  You can browse through the newsletter archives at http://websiteatschool.eu/index.php/124/volume/0/WebsiteAtSchool_News.html
• Support: FAQ, Email support and other questions, info, latest news on updates, see our main site at http://websiteatschool.eu
• Sourceforge project site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/websiteatschool.
  We do not provide downloads of Website@School via Sourceforge because of the Terms of Use from which we quote:

  Encryption
  You are aware that all postings of open source encryption code controlled under U.S. Export Control Classification Number (ECCN) 5D002 must be simultaneously reported by email to the U.S. government. You are responsible for submitting this email report to the U.S. government in accordance with procedures described in: http://www.bis.doc.gov/encryption/PubAvailEncSourceCodeNofify.html and Section 740.13(e) of the Export Administration Regulations ("EAR") 15 C.F.R. Parts 730-772.
  Source: http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sitelegal/wiki/Terms_of_Use

  Website@School may or may not contain cryptographic code depending on the definition of 'crypographic'. We do not have the time nor the inclination to invest our valuable time in researching whether we do or do not (or worse: maybe do) need to comply with rules and regulations that may or may not be compatible with those that are not completely foreign to us.

• BerliOS download site: To our regret we had to abandon this download location because BerliOS now also uses the Sourceforge infrastructure.
  Website@School can now be downloaded from Joinup.

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7. References

• Jürgen Habermas: The Theory of Communicative Action. Translated by Thomas McCarthy, Cambridge: Polity (published 1984), ISBN 0807015067. Advice: find a summary that is readable before starting with 'The blue monster'. More on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Communicative_Action
• Donald Ervin Knuth: The Art of Computer Programming. For experts. More on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programming
• Eric Steven Raymond: The Art of Unix Programming. The first chapters are quite readable and very interesting for a layperson. It can be found on http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/.
• B. W. Kernighan and P. J. Plauger: The Elements of Programming Style, 2nd Edition, McGraw Hill, New York, 1978. ISBN 0-07-034207-5
• Ross J. Anderson: 'Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems, Wiley Computer Publishing, Some chapters can be read online via http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html
• On Célestin Freinet and Paolo Freire. Tons of materials can be found on the Internet. Wikipedia is your friend.
  Freinet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9lestin_Freinet#External_links
  Freirre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire

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8. History

Website@School, born in 2006, is the successor of Site@School, born in 2002. The history can best be summarised in this cartoon [1]:

intro_good_code.png

Site@School is no longer supported: due to its rapid expansion it became unmanageable, unmaintainable, insecure and by grown knowledge, it used low standards in code quality. However, there was little need to change it's basic requirements. In that way Site@School was an excellent prototype. We only had to add long needed educational features that were impossible to incorporate in old Site@School.

[1]: Courtesy Mr. Randall Munroe of xkcd.com who permits using his comics for this use. Source: http://m.xkcd.com/844/.

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9. To conclude

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