A web portal for a school

We took up a challenge, to set up and use a portal with only free software in a primary and secondary school in St-Jérôme, in Quebec, Academie Lafontaine school.

The portal has some public parts, managed by SPIP, and a private part managed by Horde, which contains the popular webmail IMP.

In the portal, you can find

  a webmail
  private and shared calendars
  a task manager
  private and shared adress books
  some home made modules (student’s schedule, etc)

But all this challenge wasn’t only technical. Pedagogical and personal aspects, and the way to put the portal in place are also important aspects of the experience and we will talk about it.

The portal is working since october 2003.