The following technical information is for IT staff wishing to have more control over Schoolshape products in their school. It is not necessary for the set up or use of Schoolshape. To learn more about Schoolshape products, please return to the Home Page.
Schoolshape requires no installation or set-up as long as the following conditions are met:
1. Ports 80 and 443 are open for outgoing http / https connections.
2. A modern browser is installed. We recommend Chrome, but we have also tested Schoolshape with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera.
3. The Flash plugin version 10.2 or later is installed.
For use with multimedia:
4. A microphone is correctly plugged in or installed and is selected as the default sound capture device. We recommend using an external microphone for best sound quality.
5. A web-cam is correctly plugged in or installed and is selected as the default video capture device (for video only).
For the best experience using Schoolshape, we recommend using a computer with at least 1GB of RAM, Intel Core 2 or better processor and a screen size of 1024x800 or larger. A 512kb DSL or better internet connection is also advised.
Technical Background
Schoolshape is a web application which runs in the Flash player. The host page (at http://lab.schoolshape.com/) downloads an SWF file via http which then attempts to establish a secure https connection to the Schoolshape server. When using multimedia functionality, the application will also attempt to establish one or more secure rtmps connections to the server to upload streaming media.
As the SWF file is the same for all users, it does not need to be encrypted. Downloading it unsecured via http enables caching, and lightens the load on your school's internet connection. This means that the 'Secure' icon that many browsers show when browsing secure sites will not be shown on Schoolshape's site. However, we can assure you that all school data, audio and video is transferred encrypted via https. You can inspect our SSL certificate by visiting https://www.schoolshape.com/crossdomain.xml.
If you wish to have more control over the use of Schoolshape in your school, we recommend that you create an admin account for yourself. You will then be able to add and delete a teacher/administrator/moderator or student account. You can also control account billing and update your school's information. Admin accounts are available free of charge and can be obtained by logging in as the principal teacher and following the instructions below:
Go to Admin -> Staff
Click 'Add staff'
Fill in your name, un-tick 'teacher' and tick 'administrator'.
Click OK and log out.
You can now log in yourself using your newly created administrator account.
If you find that the login page is loading correctly but that logging in fails, it's probably because https connections are being blocked by your firewall.
Most likely, you are allowing only https connections on port 443. Please allow rtmps connections on port 443 to enable streaming audio and video.
If you are using Internet Explorer 6, please upgrade to a newer browser. We recommend Chrome for best security and performance. Internet Explorer 6 does a poor job of handling memory and frequently crashes with a number of complex Flash applications.
Some Schoolshape users do have limited connection speeds. We are aware of this and are constantly working to improve their experience.
Schoolshape buffers recordings in memory to cope with network quality variance, but this can be overwhelmed on very slow connections. 'Can I use Schoolshape over ADSL?' below.
This depends on the Schoolshape product you wish to use and the number of simultaneous users. In the Examination System, speaking tests are conducted one at a time. As the audio stream is highly compressed, it poses no problems for ADSL users. In fact, we have a number of schools successfully submitting exams over ADSL. The Online Language Lab is designed to be used simultaneously by many students. Compressed audio streams are now only 5-10KB/s, and the software is capable of buffering several minutes of sound in memory at times of network congestion. In tests, we found that 30 simultaneous users on an 512Kbps upload ADSL connection caused no problems. (Students do not all upload streams simultaneously). You should not be concerned about conflicts with other users in your school unless they are also uploading big files. Schoolshape needs a roughly equal amount of upload and download bandwidth, and so will be limited by the upload speed of ADSL connections.
We are also working on a media caching server which you can install on a school machine. You could then get all the benefits and more of the stand-alone version, without having to maintain stand-alone installations. This should allow you to use even the high quality video functions on your ADSL connection, as all media will be served from within your school. If you would like us to move this up our priority list, please get in contact to let us know.