Buckinghamshire County Council
From Schoolforge-UK
Contents |
The Buckinghamshire Grid for Learning (BucksGfL)
The Buckinghamshire Grid for Learning is, at its most basic, the broadband network connecting schools in Buckinghamshire. On top of this are delivered a number of managed services to schools, the OSS components of which are detailed below.
Moodle in Buckinghamshire
In Buckinghamshire schools can have (if they want) access to a managed online learning environment service built using Moodle. Each school can have its own Moodle server, hosted at learning.schoolname.bucks.sch.uk . As well as this, the central Buckinghamshire Grid for Learning site runs on a Moodle server. These Moodle servers operate on a single sign-on (SSO) system provided by Atomwide and are Shibboleth compliant. The BucksGfL SSO system also provides access through a username of the form gbush@bucksgfl.org.uk to BucksGfL Webmail and a Adobe Breeze server for videoconferencing and collaboration.
The Moodle implementations are hosted on Windows 2003 servers rather than something like Apache. The SSO database is based on an MS-SQL server which populates Moodle's internal MySQL database every half hour with up-to-date user information.
Single Sign-On in Bucks
A single BucksGfL username will, in theory, allow any BucksGfL user to log in to any Buckinghamshire school's Moodle, or (for staff users) the central BucksGfL Moodle site. This will enable students to take courses at more than one school and still use a single username and staff to work on their own school's Moodle, other schools' Moodles and the central web site using the same single username.
The Future in Buckinghamshire
OSS Portfolio Tools
Future developments in this area are likely to include
- User-centred portfolio tool, possibly based around Elgg - this requires the Apache web server
- Integration of Elgg and Moodle
- Module to integrate MIS with school learning environments, possibly based on whatever Becta interpret as being the appropriate implementation of the SIF
Other LEAs doing similar projects
- West Sussex County Council - contact: Mark Granger, E-Learning Team
- Stoke-on-Trent - contact: Paddy Guest
More Information
If you would like to know any more about the project please contact Ian Usher, the E-Learning Co-ordinator for Buckinghamshire schools, via iusher[at]buckscc.gov.uk
