Studywiz

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Permalink Reply by Bonnie Ahles on February 19, 2008 at 9:33pm

Hi Derek
I work with a group of 7 secondary schools in the Yarra Valley which is outside of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. We are all Studywiz schools. What would you like to know more about?

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Permalink Reply by Derek Pinchbeck on February 19, 2008 at 10:11pm

Thanks for the swift reply Bonnie.
I teach Grade 4 students and was hoping to get them to work collaboratively on a single piece of writing. The group writing tool does not seem to let them do this as it only adds their own work after I've published it rather than the task becoming a truly interactive collaborative one with ongoing redrafting additions and revisions over a set period of time.
Is there anyway of setting up such a task?
Thanks
Derek

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Permalink Reply by Wendy McCulloch on February 20, 2008 at 8:35pm

Hi Derek,

I work with Etech Group, the developers of Studywiz and conduct training, so I thought I'd share some of ways I have seen other teachers use Studywiz as a collaborative tool.
If you create a Gallery, students can upload their drafts into the Gallery, and download what other students have contributed, make additions and changes and then upload the new document. All version will remain in the Gallery so you can track developments.
You may also find a Discussion useful. Pose a question or topic, then each students can add their thoughts and redrafts, for everyone to see. Again you can track who has made contributions and track the changes.
Cheers,
Wendy

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Permalink Reply by Derek Pinchbeck on February 20, 2008 at 10:23pm

Thanks Wendy the Gallery idea sounds good. I'll look forward to giving it a go.

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Permalink Reply by Catherine McMahon on February 20, 2008 at 2:24am

Hi
Our school is brand new and has Studywiz. All teachers and students use it. The best part is efficient dissemination of information including assignments. As an English teacher I have moved to receiving student writing drafts via Studywiz, making use of the review function in word to edit/ comment etc and then send back. There are lots of other uses we have made of Studywiz and this is one only.
Cheers
catherine

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Permalink Reply by Bonnie Ahles on February 25, 2008 at 2:04pm

I am constantly amazed at the different ways teachers and schools are using Studywiz. We also use the gallery for collaboration and the use of poll is great for starting meaningful classroom discussions. Anyone have large numbers of parents accessing the system?

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Permalink Reply by Rhys Kidd-Scannell on February 26, 2008 at 2:03am

Hi Bonnie - I work with Etech Group in the UK.

I saw this post this morning and thought I'd share an idea that one the Primary Schools in Edinburgh came up with. The school use the gallery tool to add school newsletters as pdf files. Parents then subscribe to this gallery as a podcast so that all new newsletters are automatically downloaded to either iTunes or equivalent program. I wasn't aware that pdf's were compatible with iTunes until this school told me about this idea - I think its a great way to introduce parents into Studywiz and also saves the school a lot of money by saving on print costs, ink and of course its better for the environment :-)

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Permalink Reply by Bonnie Ahles on February 26, 2008 at 2:37am

That is great. We have given parents access to our deployments but don't have a lot of parents logging on. I was looking for tools, videos, RSS feeds etc that might encourage them to use the site. (Trying to make it look a bit funkier too!) I will bring it up at our next educators meeting.

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Permalink Reply by Bonnie Ahles on March 15, 2008 at 4:25pm

Hi Janet
Some of the things we are looking to include are of wider parent interest. Links to good sites on safe internet use for students, cyberbullying, open source software etc. and some general 'parenting your teenager' type sites. When I get the preliminary list together I am more than happy to share.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Kennedy on March 16, 2008 at 5:11am

Hi Derek,

I took a look at the StudyWiz web site, and it appears to be a Course Management System, an attractive looking one, with lots of nice features. Frankly, it looks pretty slick and I mean that in a positive way.

Can anyone tell me what their school or district spends on StudyWiz? What does it cost per student? What platform to you host it on? How does it compare to other CMS's such as Moodle?

Thanks,
Tom

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Permalink Reply by Tom Kennedy on March 16, 2008 at 9:28am

indigo196,

Thanks for the information. I am a Moodle fan and run a Linux server in our district that includes a couple of Moodle installations. We are primarily a Mac OS district but run Windows servers and desktops as well.

Your assessment of StudyWiz pretty much confirms my impression. I am not familiar with the Sharepoint Server but cost is a consideration and frankly I'm not a Microsoft fan. If I can find something that meets our needs in the Open Source or low cost community that is where I look first.

I will look at the LMS's from your post. Have you heard anything about Sakai? Its an Open Source "collaboration and learning environment for education." It is in use at Hampshire College where my wife works.

Again, your insight is much appreciated.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Kennedy on March 16, 2008 at 12:36pm

Haven't had much experience on Debian per se, though many distros use it as their base. I believe Ubuntu is one of them. For what its worth, I have fooled around with Linux for quite a while (since 1997) and for my money Ubuntu is hard to beat on the desktop. It has really raised the bar. I like RedHat on the server. I pay about $60 USD per year for the license and in return get a highly stable platform, easy to manage, with lots of features. I'm sold. At home I run Ubuntu and Mac OS X.
Cheers.

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