School District Server - Won't Be Good Enough

With lots of help from a colleague at work I was able to try out our school district server. Unfortunately, I do not think it will meet my needs of providing an interface/storage space for all of my online curriculum.

Let me explain (for those of you who may be trying this at your own school site)

Starting this year (2013) the district changed over to a service provider that helps provide support/server space for the District Web Page (which also means the School Web Page(s))  As part of this new service the TEACHERS will be able to make "Teacher/Class/Activity" pages.

How it works: A teacher is given a username/login and is assigned a web page. They log in and use the PROVIDED TOOLS to create a web page. (This is very similar to those teacher pages that are provided for FREE, except that it is integrated directly into the school's web page.)

Here is an example of what my web page looks like when I log in:

The top, gray menu is the "design" menu which is only visible to myself (and any other web-master at the district office who has access to my page.) This menu gives me lots of options to personalize my teacher page. (You can add a calendar, teacher blog, information pages, insert photos, add more pages to link to, etc...) This provides a fairly easy method for just about any teacher to create a useful web page to be accessed by the students.

There are some aspects of this that need to be pointed out, however:
(1) The whole top of the page (above the gray horizontal line) is set in place and can not be changed by me. It is the school's header and the school page's menu bar.
(2) Because of (1) my page will essentially be running INSIDE of the school district's page. Therefore my page will have to follow the same text formats, etc. It will have the same background color (white, in this case) and the same "look" to it.
(3) There is NO ftp-server access provided. "ftp" stands for "file transfer protocol" and most web servers give the customer a means of logging in and UPLOADING FILES to their web site. (For example: movie clips, photos, flash files, pdf files, and their actual html web pages themselves). Because of the way our access is set up, we (the teachers) are only allowed to use the above-said menu options to manipulate our pages, WHICH GREATLY LIMITS WHAT WE CAN DO.

My plan is to use programs like Adobe Muse (supported with Adobe Flash, videos, etc) to create an all-encompassing Physics-classroom EXPERIENCE for my students. The limited server access provided by my school district, while suitable for just about any, everyday teacher needs, will simply NOT work for what I have in mind.

I will set up a basic web page (as shown) to serve as a doorway to my content site. The school page will have my office hours and basic information, while the content site (which I will likely have to pay for myself) will have all of my online lessons and practice activities.