EduWeb Setup Instructions

• Downloading EduWeb from this Website and Creating your OASIS Export Diskette
• Exporting Student Information from EMU
• Creating an EduWeb for Your School
• Viewing/Editing Your New EduWeb
• Moving Your EduWeb to Your School's Fileserver
• Setting User Access Rights (Privileges) to the Various sections of EduWeb
• Other Helpful EduWeb Hints

Downloading EduWeb from this Website and Creating the EduWeb Setup Folder:

That's the first thing to do.  Using a Windows PC, click the Downloads button at the left, click the "Download Stu's EduWeb" button and choose the option to Save to Disk.  Select a folder somewhere on your hard disk, or just save it to your Desktop.  The downloaded file is only 4.4MB in size, so it shouldn't take very long at all.  The downloaded file is called eduwebstart.exe and this file is used to create your EduWeb Setup folder.

When the download is complete, double-click the eduwebstart.exe file you downloaded, read the screen, click OK, and it will create the EduWebSetup folder.  You must be logged on as a local administrator (on Windows 2000/XP or later) in order to install EduWeb.

When the EduWebSetup folder is extracted, some additional notes will be displayed.  Read the screen, then close the information window.  [TOP]

Exporting Student Information from EMU:

EduWeb does not use OASIS or ISP Console anymore to build the student intranet structure.  Instead, the web-based utility called EMU in the NSW DET Portal is used. You can extract the data it needs if you follow the simple steps in this brief PDF document (you may want to print the steps).

This has now created your EduWeb import file. It is strongly recommended that you open the StudentsRecord.csv file using Notepad to check it for errors - particularly to see if it contains any students that have left your school, or if any students are listed in the wrong grade or class. When you are satisfied with the import file, it needs to be copied into the EduWebSetup folder on C: drive and you can then use it to create an EduWeb for your school. [TOP]

Creating an EduWeb for Your School:

You now have six simple decisions to make:

1. What drive are you going to install your new EduWeb to?

2. What Scholastic Years do you want to include in the EduWeb?

3. Did you run EduWeb with your students in the previous year and do you want a link to that work?

4. Do you want to run a standard K-6 student setup or an enhanced High School student setup?

5. If choosing K-6 setup, do you want to have a Student Writing Portfolio created for all students?

6. Would you like a Teacher and Student Evaluation section added to each student's topics pages?  This is useful if you would like to use EduWeb as the basis of student digital portfolios.

The first question is pretty easy and by default, it's answered for you.  In the short term you should just install EduWeb onto your local C: drive and then MOVE it later to the desired location on your fileserver. 

The second question is a little harder.  How young is too young to be developing webpages?  The real question is how prepared are your teachers to take on webpage development with their students?  Creating a webpage is astonishingly simple.  With programs like MS FrontPage or Web Expression, creating a page for the school intranet can be as easy as typing a letter using a word processor.

What's likely to happen at your school (let's say you're a primary school) is the senior years will adopt it first, but once it takes off, expect the younger grades to also take it on.  In deciding what years to include in your EduWeb, remember, you can't add a year after it's been created (for a calendar year).  But what you can do is create all years and simply disable the links to those years or classes that won't be participating.  If they change their minds later, just re-enable them.

The third question is really only for prior EduWeb users.  With this latest version, you can choose to include a link back to the the previous year's student structure which is great for showcasing the ongoing development of your students' work.

The fourth question is the one that will require consideration and input from all staff, particularly if you are a High School.  The standard K-6 setup will produce one main webpage for each student with 12 topic pages linked to it.  This is the only option available with the K-6 layout and is the same as it has always been in EduWeb.  The new release allows for multiple subject groupings  to be created and linked to each student page, and each subject grouping can have a user-definable number of topic pages linked in.  So what you'll need to decide is the following:

• How many subject groupings does the school wish to use across ALL students?

• What ARE those subject groupings? - i.e. what will you be naming the groupings?

• How many topics are achievable in all subject groupings in one year?

There is no point over-designing your high school structure if your staff/faculties and students aren't able to actually deliver the content for all of those webpages.  Remember, the number of topic pages each student will have will be the number of subject groupings multiplied by the number of topic pages in each subject.  If a K-6 school can typically handle only 12 in one year, what's feasible for a high school?

The fifth question relates to the Writing Portfolio which is only available for the K-6 standard layout.  This option includes a set of six word processing templates to allow students to produce different text types and have them automatically linked to Topic 12.  The benefit of this is that only one topic page is then used up for the writing portfolio contents.  More information on using the EduWeb Writing Portfolio is included in the Using EduWeb documentation.

The last question allows you to decide whether or not you would like a method of evaluating students' work.  Each of the 12 topic pages created for each student can have an Evaluation section automatically added to allow for comments to be entered by both the student and the teacher.  While this area is not secure, and teacher's comments can be changed by the student, you may still find it useful.  If you do not want to have this evaluation section included, do not check the option box.

When you are ready to start, follow the steps below:

1. Double-click My Computer and open C: drive

2. Double-click on the EduWebSetup folder

3. Double-click on the eduwebsetup program

4. Read the screen then click OK

5. EduWeb will quickly read in all your students (if any errors in the data are found, you will be alerted).  The following screen will then be displayed:

6. Type your school's name in full at the top followed by your four-digit school code.

7. The year will automatically be entered as this year, but you can change it if you are living in the past (or the future for that matter)

8. Type the letter of the drive where you'd like your EduWeb installed (no colon required).  It is recommended you choose C: drive then move the finished structure to your server.  C drive is the default setting.

9. EduWeb will determine the scholastic years available in your StudentsRecord.csv file and allow you to select those you'd like to include in your EduWeb

10. Select whether you want to create the K-6 School Layout with 12 Topics, or whether you want the Subject-based High School Layout.  If you choose the standard K-6 Layout, skip to step 14.

14. As well as the layout type, there are four different colour-scheme templates available for the webpages that EduWeb will create.  To see what each combination will look like, make your template and layout selection and click the Preview button.  This will open your default browser and display a sample student page with the selected properties.  Close the browser, choose another combination and click Preview again to see the alternatives.  If you selected the High School Layout, you will see a non-working version of what the student pages will look like with your defined subject groupings.

15. With the K-6 Layout, if you wish to include a Student Writing Portfolio in every students' folder, check the Writing folder box.

16. Finally, check or leave unchecked the option about the Student Evaluation Section.

17. When done, click the Install Stu's EduWeb! button.  If you get an error message that you have chosen an "Invalid Drive Letter", please read the FAQ page at this site for details.  If you get an "Error Code 75", you'll also find the solution on the FAQ page.

18. If everything's OK, EduWeb will start creating the many, many webpages for your student-centred intranet.  Note that there is no status line that tells you how long it will take, but you should see various processing messages.  
    A typical school of 350 students might take a two or three minutes to install.  Be patient!  On Windows XP, for some reason or other, the messages may stop flashing on the screen, but the processing is continuing.  Just wait until you get the message that the installation is complete.

19. In the end, a message should appear telling you just how many webpages EduWeb has created for you on your selected drive.

20. Click the OK button to close Stu's EduWeb and display the opening screen for your new School Intranet.   [TOP]
    

Viewing Your New EduWeb:

Open My Computer, choose the drive you installed the EduWeb onto, open the EduWeb folder and double-click the index.htm file.  It should open your internet browser (IE or Firefox) and display the starting page. 

Click through each of the areas of your new school intranet to verify everything looks OK.  The Student Pages section in particular is important to check.  Inside that section should be links to each of the scholastic years selected during the installation process, and inside those should be the various classes and individual student websites.  [TOP]
 

Moving Your EduWeb to Your School's Fileserver:

• Additional guidance for this process is available in these notes (Acrobat Reader required)

• If you already have an older EduWeb structure on your server that you wish to keep, please follow the advice in this Update Guide

This process should only be performed by the school's network administrator.  EduWeb can be run from virtually any fileserver:

• Windows NT/2000/2003 Server

• Novell Netware 3.12/4.11/5/6/7 Server

• Apple OSX Server 10.1 or later

• GProxy/Sentral Server

• Virtually any Linux/Unix server using Samba Filesharing

Remember, EduWeb is best run from a Fileserver, not a Webserver - accessing EduWeb webpages should be using file:// protocol rather than http:// protocol.  The reason for this is it allows for standard network operating system access rights (privileges) to be applied and also allows for DIRECT editing of webpages using FrontPage, Web Expression, Dreamweaver or any other webpage editing tool.

To transfer your created EduWeb to the school's fileserver, follow these general steps:

1. Connect and logon to the server using the PC where EduWeb was created as an administrator or equivalent

2. Determine which server volume (hard disk) you want your EduWeb to be accessed from

3. Create a folder called intranet in that hard disk volume

4. Drag (copy) the eduweb folder from C: drive on the PC to the intranet folder on the server - you should end up with a copy of the eduweb folder inside the intranet folder

5. Make the intranet folder (not the eduweb folder) a network share -  this should allow workstations to access EduWeb on the server using the UNC path of \\servername\intranet - opening that path should display the eduweb folder.

6. For all Windows PCs, strongly consider mapping a drive letter to the intranet share to make access to the eduweb folder easier.  For Windows servers, this can be achieved in a login script batch file using a command like NET USE W: \\servername\intranet - for Netware servers, a login script command like MAP ROOT W:=VOL1:intranet - the actual commands required will be dependent on your desired drive letter mapping, server name and/or volume name.  With an Apple Mac or Linux server, mapping a drive letter on a Windows workstation is performed using Windows Explorer/Tools/Map a Network Drive  [TOP]

Setting User Access Rights (Privileges) to the various sections of EduWeb:

With EduWeb being a whole-school intranet solution, it is VERY important to set user access rights or privileges to the various separate sections (folders) that make up the EduWeb system.  The process for doing this totally depends on the server operating system being used.  The steps in Windows 2000 are very different to those in Novell Netware and likewise with Apple servers and Linux servers.  This document will NOT attempt to explain the step-by-step processes of applying access rights to folders.  For this reason, it is essential that this process be performed by a network administrator.

In general terms, EduWeb requires an absolute minimum of two separate logon accounts for your server, one for students and one for staff.  With this basic scenario:

• The STUDENT account would be allocated READ-ONLY rights to the EduWeb folder and below and Read/Write/Change (full) rights to the eduweb\2006 folder and below (the student area).  The STUDENT account also needs Read/Write/Change (full) rights to the eduweb\news\subs folder.  There should be NO access rights set to the eduweb\staff folder.

• The STAFF account would be allocated Read/Write/Change (full) rights to the EduWeb folder and below - including the student area.

With this setup, students will be able to view but not change most of the EduWeb intranet,  edit all files in the student area, submit news items, but not see any part of the Staff intranet section.  Staff have full access to all aspects of EduWeb.

While this configuration will be suitable for many smaller K-6 schools, it opens the risk of having students editing other students' webpages.  It also allows all staff to access and change all areas of EduWeb.  It is certainly NOT recommended for high schools and primary schools wanting to use EduWeb effectively for digital portfolios or other structured publishing work.  For these schools, the most secure way of protecting students pages is to allocate individual logon account names to the server for each student and allocating user rights to their own EduWeb path for each user.  Take a look at my two "Individual Student Login Wizards" I developed for Windows 200x Server and Novell Netware. 

The table below looks at each of the folders that make up EduWeb and details the access rights needed.  Rights marked with asterisks (*) have further information below the table:

* Full access rights should only be granted to the Student Pages if there is only one student logon account available in small school situations.  With individual student accounts, or class/year accounts, Full access rights should only be allocated to the specific student folders.

** A separate Group account for each group should be created with Full access rights to the appropriate group folder to allow member students to manage these pages.

*** A separate Photos account could be created to allow Full access rights to certain students to manage the Photo Galleries.   [TOP]

Final EduWeb Setup Steps: