OwnCloud for education: Make "Collabora Online" usable for schools via OwnCloud-extension?

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Hello everyone,

I had tested a demo from Collabora Online to consider the suitability for use as a collaborative software in school teaching. I have written my master thesis on classroom management software and therefor already contacted the team of Collabora Online. They told me I should post in this board.

The cloud office products from Google and Microsoft have been enhanced by a school management layer (create / manage student accounts, create classes, manage group work, create, collect and correct tasks/assignment ...). Those are classic features of a learning management system / E-learning systems like Moodle.

The core functions of Collabora Online are perfect for a digitized, modern lesson. The live collaboration is a great motivator for students. Unfortunately Collabora Online still lacks the managing component for the lessons. Would it be possible to develop such a component as an add-on for OwnCloud? As I understand, OwnCloud handles the users and the files for Collabora Online.

The schools are currently in a hard situation: The lessons should be digitized and you would like to take advantage of cloud features, including live collaboration, but you do not want to go to Google, Microsoft and similar manufacturers for legal reasons (data protection, privacy). We need a private cloud with appropriate lesson management tools.

An extension of Collabora Online / OwnCloud for schools would have great potential. Maybe there is even a chance for public funding. If a developer could confirm, that an add-on like the above is feasible, I would be glad to help establishing contact to german education ministries to negotiate a cooperation and point out the advantages. If a cooperation is not possible, maybe a development as a commercial product (add-on or special distribution) would be an option.

I understand, that OwnCloud has been implemented in a lot universities and schools. The integration of Collabora would be great for live collaboration. It would be sad to leave this important field to Google, Apple, Samsung and Microsoft.

Best regards

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Hi,

as feature request are rarely picked up / commented at this category its probably the best to create a feature request for that at the existing extension at https://github.com/owncloud/richdocuments

I doubt that someone will write a extension for a extension. Its probably the best to include something like this in the existing extension.

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Hello,

Indeed this sounds like a good idea and its very feasable from a technical perspective. Yes, public funding would be necessary to have anybody invest into this, the options however for that exist. ownCloud has had great success with Higher Education, but schools have not picked up much of our subscription services, therefor an iniative would be needed, maybe it can be combined with a larger Open Source Client pickup (there is an offering from our technology partner Univention for desktop clients in the schools eg.). Please contact me directly at hd at owncloud dot com for further discussions. Of course if people are willing to chime in with development don't hesitate to comment here.

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