Primary School VLE questions

[snrweb]

Hi All, sorry if these have been posted before:

With regard to a hosted VLE for a primary, what is the average disk space used? The provider is charging for storage at a per GB rate so what is the average in use at any of your schools? To give an idea of size, it is a school of about 600 students.

In addition, our Internet connection is only 2mb which the provider is OK with. Is this viable in the real world? Is 10MB essential etc?

Most grateful for any reply and sorry if they are old questions.

[danIT]

I would say that a few GB will suffice for the first year, I'm guessing the company will allow you to top up your allowance when you need to so go low to start with. Perhaps 3GB as a starting point, if that's affordable!

Your bandwidth is low, but pretty standard territory for primaries across the country so you should be fine. Which VLE are you purchasing?

[snrweb]

Thanks for the reply. Viglen It's Learning seem the front runners at the moment but its not a done deal.

[platform55]

hi there, how come you are looking at ITS Learning? Any particular reason? Its that that last time we looked at it as a cluster of schools it was very poor, has it improved!?

We use LP+ Safari for KS1/2 schools and their other product for EY/KS1, its been cracking! It allows us t collaborate with other schools on their platform, integrate our existing content (2SIMPLE, espresso) etc.......

Did you look at LP+? I am happy to show you bits of ours to show you what we have done?

[danIT]

If your happy with It's Learning go for it, if schools in your area use it choose it, if you've used it before or staff in the school have used it before choose it,

If nobody in the school has any idea, go for what you think is easiest for your staff (ability) to cope with! Something they might be able to get quick wins with and gain confidence fast!

What ever VLE you choose make sure its right for you and your school!

I use Moodle and highly recommend it but its a free world (kind of) and its your schools choice.

Fundamentally make sure you have a look around, some might say ‘Its Learning’ isnt much to shout about - others may thinks its the best thing since sliced bread but get well rounded opinions. If somebody knocks it get them to proove it:

E.g. last time we looked at it as a cluster of schools it was very poor…

Poor performance, Poor interopability, Poor colour scheme, Poor accessability, Poor usability, Poor functionality enabling the cluster to share resources easily, not ‘primary’ friendly the list goes on.

Get value for money, how much is this implementation going to cost both in terms of licensing, support, training, consultancy, don’t just think in terms of getting a VLE into your school. How good is the support – Think up a techy question and see how quickly they can come back to you

“Is Its Learning SCORM compliant, and if so to what extent?”

Potential Answer: I cant aswer for Its Learning but heres an idea of the level you might expect from a expert support team.

“ Moodle is not 100% SCORM 1.2 compliant, so does not allow publishers who produce activities in SCORM 1.2 to make full use of the ability to save, and retrieve a saved action in a SCORM activity.”

“However some publishers make use of the cmi.suspend equivalent field “Value” in the mdl_sorm_scores_track table in moodle which has the ability to store 2 ^ 32 bytes of data often allowing for equivalent functionality to be achieved.”

If ‘Its learning’ is for you grab it by the horns and give it the red flag treatment!

[FN-GM]

I know a high school that does hosting for a primary school in the area. The primary school just purchased an SATA drive and put it in the server.

Ask high schools in the local area and see if they are willing.