[TYPO3-edu] what makes t3 interesting for edu institutions

[Robert Brenstein]

>  >  > + Powerful newsletter functionality including categorisable content
>>  based on usergroups.
>>  That's not a good one. Schools send their information through printed
>>  papers. A newsletter is not the kind of communication tool that
>>  schools are using primarly.
>
>And this is what costs them a lot (time, paper, toner etc.) and has to be
>reduced at most of the schools/universities I know of. I don't think we
>should care too much about the past or the status quo but point out the
>alternatives that TYPO3 has to offer instead.

With this there is a lot of variation among different types of 
schools and among different countries or even regions in countries.

>  >  > + Multi-client capabilities (one BE serves different (sub-)domains)
>>  Hardly any school needs subdomains.
>
>Almost any bigger university does.
>faculty_name.university_name.tld is something very common for university
>sites.

In many instances those faculties will be running their own servers, 
but the capability to let departments or units manage sections of 
central server is important to advertise.

>  > Some other ideas (they are not perfect too):
>>  - TYPO3 offers you the best collaboration possible.
>
>No, it doesn't ;-)
>Collaboration is something that is still treated kind of stepmotherly in the
>TYPO3 developer community and there different groupware tools outthere that
>do the job much better than TYPO3 does.

Indeed, many schools use VLE, LMS, or whatever those are locally 
called, besides software specific for some collaboration. What Typo3 
needs is a seamless integration with at least some of them, like 
Sakai or Moodle, rather than trying to compete.

>  > - Offer your students and their parents easier ways to communicate
>>  (with the headmaster and the faculties & their teachers thorugh:
>>  Chat, boards and comments.)
>
>Same thing as for collaboration. IMHO This is not one of the USPs for TYPO3.

VLE/LMS are generally better since those things usually have to be 
dealt at departments, class, or course level.

>  > - Enable your students to learn at home through downloadable
>>  worksheets
>
>This is a really good one and it could be even better if you consider things
>like pb_survey as kind of a "pre-test".

Again, VLE/LMS are specifically designed for such things and offer 
more flexibility and control.

Robert