SDCC & Moodle
Joe Horan, county manager of South Dublin County Council (SDCC), had a vision. He saw a future where everyone in the local communities of South Dublin County uses technology in innovative ways to improve the quality of their lives. Thus, the Connect initiative was launched to bring technology to the people of South Dublin through a range of projects that deliver free, easy to use, on-line services to help them achieve their learning, social development, personal and leisure goals.
Enovation Solutions is delighted to be involved in two of the Connect projects, namely Connect School and Connect Web:
1.) Connect School – strives to improve school attendance, participation in class and educational outcomes for the students at St Aidan’s Community School by developing an innovative learning culture.
2. ) Connect Web – provides free websites to community groups in SDCC enabling them to collaborate and promote services.
Other initiatives in the Connect portfolio include Connect Centre, which provides advice to community groups about how to use technology in community centres and Connect Me, which provides locals with access to information about relevant businesses and resources.
‘South Dublin County Council has always embraced technology, said Lorna Maxwell, project manager of Connect. The Connect project is another way for us to use technology to improve the way we provide services to our citizens.’
Open Source Technology
A project team was set up to manage Connect and one of the first steps they took was to decide which technology should underpin the projects. A decision was made in favor of open source software (OSS) mainly because it offers all the functionality and flexibility of commercial solutions without the per-user or licence costs.‘A number of people on the Connect team were familiar with open source products and knew that they worked as well as commercial offerings, said Maxwell. We also felt that the thinking behind open source was consistent with the ethos of the programme, which is all about opening up technology to users’.
Building the Platform
SDCC collaborated with Enovation to investigate the best OSS to suit the requirements of the projects. The powerful content management system, Mambo was chosen for the Connect Web project and the world’s leading learning management system, Moodle was selected for the Connect School project. The applications were chosen based on the following features:
Mambo
- Enovation developed a reporting feature to allow the Connect team to monitor which communities are keeping their websites up-to-date.
- Mambo has a simple but powerful template system that makes uploading new sites quick and easy.
- There are a wide array of plug-ins for specific needs available at little or no extra cost.
- The teachers at St. Aidan’s can quickly and easily upload content.
- Moodle has a Quiz feature which allows teachers to create on-line tests for the students to complete.
- Forum and Chat features encourage collaboration between students and teachers.
- Moodle allows teachers to monitor the progress of their students.
SDCC and Enovation
Enovation were well positioned to work with SDCC on the Connect project after having successfully collaborated with them on a number of other technology projects over the years.
‘We have developed an excellent working relationship with Enovation over the years and we knew that they had the technical expertise, particularly on the open source side, to help us implement Mambo and Moodle, said Lorna.
- Hosting – Enovation provide secure external hosting as well as managed internal services.
- Support – Enovation provide on-going support and maintenance.
- Training – Enovation provide full training to core users.
- Customisations – Enovation extended the applications to incorporate new features.
- On-Going Consultancy – Enovation provide on-going technical advice to help SDCC get the most out of Moodle and Mambo.
Success
The Connect initiative has certainly succeeded in opening technology up to the communities:
- Over 100 community groups have created their own internet sites through Connect Web.
- First year students and teachers at St. Aidan’s Community School already have their own laptops and are accessing Moodle on a daily basis in conjunction with other classroom activities.
The project has also succeeded in winning a number of industry awards including The Innovative Organisation of the Year Award in April 2007 and the Irish e-Government Award (Overall winner).
According to Gary Mahon, sales director at Enovation ‘SDCC are at the forefront of e-Government initiatives in Ireland and we are delighted to be up there supporting them. It has helped us bring open source technology to a much wider audience, particularly among the local authorities.’
