Creating the Walled Garden: Web 2.0 Apps for K-12 Districts

Version 11, changed by guest. 10/12/2006. Show version history

*NOTE: Based on the original list at http://www.mguhlin.net/blog/archives/2006/09/entry_2085.htm

A wiki in the hands of a healthy community works. A wiki in the hands of an indifferent community fails. The software makes no attempt to add ‘process’ in order to keep people from doing stupid things.
Source: Clay Shirkey

The following list is useful if you want to create a "walled garden" of safe Web 2.0 tools you can use within your school's intranet, or even Internet, but have complete control over. So, a quick review of the tools available for those who want to "lock" things down and eliminate social networking OUTSIDE of school environment during the school day:

Blogging Tools
Service Substitution: Blogmeister, Blogspot, Wordpress.com, Learnerblogs

b2Evolution: Enables you to control/moderate comments once certain hacks (ZIP file of hacks we use in my district) are applied, set up a "master" blog with multiple sub-blogs (each with its own RSS feed) inside, easy user management and assignment of permissions, and more. This is the solution we use for managing publication of online student writing and blogging (when it arises).
WordPress.org: Everyone knows about this tool, but it's powerful. I have hope that Multi-user WordPress will eventually work well.
Elgg: Blogs, e-portfolio and social networking; granular permissions.

Wikis
Service Substitution: Wikispaces, PBWiki

MediaWiki: Although I've looked at different wikis you can install on your own server, I keep coming back to MediaWiki for ease of use.
TikiWiki: Powerful wiki with user admin rights, but lacks the "open-ness" (as far as I can tell) that MediaWiki enjoys. Nevertheless, it can be powerful.
DokuWiki: Simple wiki that uses flat files instead of a database, very efficient for smaller projects. Inludes a few templates, good documentation, easy to learn syntax.
WikkaWiki: "a flexible, standards-compliant and lightweight wiki engine written in PHP, which uses MySQL to store pages. Forked from WakkaWiki. Designed for speed, extensibility, and security."
See also WikiMatrix to compare various wiki engines.

Content Management Systems
Service Substitution: web page editors like Dreamweaver/Frontpage
Allow easy management, creation, and editing of web pages and sites by non-techie users.

Image Gallery with Tagging and RSS Publishing Enabled
Service Substitution: Flickr

The Gallery
MediaChest (allows one to share multimedia elements, images/sound/etc)

Online Discussion Board
Service Substitution: Blackboard/WebCT

Moodle
phpBB - Electronic bulletin board.
Vanilla - Great looking standards compliant forum. Missing administration features such as deleting a user.

Frequently Asked Questions
Service Substitution: ???

phpMyFAQ

Online Survey Tool
Service Substitution: SurveyMonkey

Online Radio

Icecast

Calendar Management with RSS support

WebCalendar

*Although PhotoCalendar isn't a Web 2.0 tool, I thought I'd link to it...lets you create those "kinko's like" calendars with photos using your web browser. Easy and output looked great.

Social Bookmarking Tools
Service Substitution: Del.icio.us, Simpy, Blinklist

de.lirio.us this site was down at the time I tried to access it.
Scuttle
sa.bros.us

Social Networking
Service Substitution: Myspace, Xanga

Elgg

Maintaining Email Lists
Service Substitution: YahooGroups, Gmail Groups

*Not sure about these...Bernie Dodge suggested them, but I'm open to suggestions.

Bulk Emailing Software
Service Substitution: None really, I just wanted this category for bulk emailing!

Fairlogic's WorldCast
AnnounceList - distributes messages to a list of email. Not a replacement for an online group or mailing list, it might still be useful for one-way mailings/bulk emailing.
MailBatch
GoonMail
EmailSender

MySQL Backup Tools

Office tools