TESL-EJ features an article titled “An Open Source Portal for Educators” (June 2005) by Cheng-chao Su. The article gives a semi-technical overview of what an open source portal for a school may look like, and what components would be necessary to help foster a technologically-mediated collaborative learning community.

The article pieces together an open source portal system which includes a PHP/MySQL-enabled webserver, Wiki and Blogging software, a bulletin-board system, a content/course learning management system (e.g., Moodle) an a MOO engine (server & database). If you are hoping to gather the technical knowledge to put this altogether, this article is not sufficient in this respect. However, if you need easy entry into some of the technical requirements necessary for building an open source portal system, this article may be of assistance.