BG Portal
In 2007, we introduced Scholaris, a product that uses SharePoint in order to provide our entire school community with an efficient way to share and collaborate online, whether from within the school or via remote access. To describe in detail the work that has been carried out in this area would take thousands and thousands of words. Therefore, I have done my best to describe the main areas briefly.
We are often asked how we are using Scholaris and SharePoint at our school and if we are happy with the significant investment that it represents.
At this stage, we have not made use of the Scholaris components due to a number of factors. However, SharePoint has certainly provided us with the platform needed to set up items such as:
- Easy access for users to webmail accounts
- Quick and easy posting of items such as staff notices, extras and pastoral care issues via blogs
- The ability for staff to submit notices for students that are displayed electronically via the Student Notice System
- Online selections such as student subject choices, sporting activities, staff duties
- Sites for the three sections of the school – Early Learning Centre, Junior School and Senior School
- Sites for departments such as ICT and Operations, including easy logging and tracking of service requests
In my role as Staff ICT Trainer, I am responsible for the creation of curriculum content on our Portal and to assist staff with the implementation and management of these sites. It has been particularly exciting to work with enthusiastic staff and to hear how their SharePoint site has “completely changed the way they teach”. I am certainly no “SharePoint Guru” and have loved hearing about the innovative ways that staff have been using their sites. This is particularly exciting when you consider that these staff have had little or no experience in developing online curriculum content. 
As part of the development of curriculum content on the BG Portal, we started with a site for the Early Learning Centre. It is certainly not a “traditional” SharePoint site and involved the creation of our own html to provide the students with an easily accessible list of favourite websites.
The second phase involved creating the Junior School Portal including sites for each Year Level, Junior School Library, Art, Music, Sport and Teaching & Learnng Initiatives. One of the advantages of using SharePoint, is the ability to create a site template which can then be easily replicated to create other sites. The Junior School site template included the following web parts:
- Announcements
- Calendar
- Links
- Picture Libraries
- Document Libraries
The web parts were then customized, depending on the type of site required. For example, “Announcements from the Head of Junior School”.
I am currently working on the third and largest phase in the development of curriculum content on the BG Portal – the Senior School Portal. This commenced with the creation of ten Faculty Sites to be managed by the Chairs of Faculty. The next task will be to create Department then Subject Sites (or Virtual Classrooms). A number of staff already have their own Virtual Classrooms and these will be “moved” so that they are located via their faculty rather than the current method which is a long, long list of sites ordered alphabetically.
The following elements have been crucial to the development of our Portal:
- Regular meetings with members of our leadership team and teaching staff
- Introductory and ongoing training and support to build staff confidence
- The support of key staff who have “embraced” the Portal and used it in innovative ways
We have certainly had some set-backs and delays with this major project! However, we continue to receive great support from staff with encouraging feedback. Staff are quickly realising the positive effect the Portal is having in the way they work, deliver curriculum and communicate with their students.
