Has any one actually got Moodle and SLG working together?

[LucyWalshaw]

Hi,

i have been sifting through all the posts on here trying to find someone who has Moodle and Sims and has as a result gone down the Sims Learning Gateway (SLG) route and have it working! the are plenty of people who say they have purchased SLG and are awaiting install but i can't find any post with people who actually have it all setup and running. If you are the person i am looking for i have a few questions......

1. How well/easy does SLG integrated in to Moodle?
2. What data have you got from Sims in to Moodle? (we are really hoping that courses and "attendees" can be "imported" because i really do not want to manually set them up myself!)
2. Did you setup the integration yourself or did Capita?
3. How much did it cost you (SLG, Hardware and licences)?
4. What licences and hardware (spec) did you purchase?

Capita have quoted us £9,500 for SLG to be hosted with us, they briefly mumbled about Moodle integration and then quickly changed the subject. We have been left loving what they showed us but can't get clear answer to these questions.

Any help/answers people can give would be great

Thanks

Lucy

[GrumbleDook]

Hi Lucy

Good to see you.

SIMS > Moodle can be done a variety of ways so you really need to look at how little or a lot you have to do yourselves as a school.

The things to search for in here are posts about CLEO intergration between Moodle and SIMS (some good discussions on Moodle.org about that), have a chat with Alex Pearce (apearce is his username), there are a few scripts on here that can pull information out to populate Moodle too, or Salamandersoft has a connector that will do it for you (Richard is on here too or I can pass your details on to him tomorrow).

This would pretty much cover creation of users, classes, groups ... but more work might be needed on creating courses.

If you are looking at presenting parts of Moodle within Sharepoint then the web-parts on Codeplex are meant to do this, but I have yet to see them working properly. Those who do have it have had to recode some of it (I think Alex is one of these, but I also met with Warwick Technical College who have done it too ... a fair bit of work). These only work if you have a locally hosted moodle and a locally hosted sharepoint. Hosting either of these outside of your school breaks it.

I'll see if some of the other Moodlers at BETT have more information (and chat with Capita for you too).

Let me know if you or Terry need more info.

[LucyWalshaw]

Thanks for the quick reply Tony, are you down at BETT at the moment? i am going down on Friday, maybe we can arrange to meet up down their and discuss this further?

Lucy

[GrumbleDook]

I'm down pretty much all week, but away part of Friday. I will be back after lunch time though and I can try and see if I can arrange for you to meet a few people to discuss things though and catch up later in the afternoon before the coach leaves. If any of the others who are down at BETT on Friday would like to meet up about Moodle / SIMS / Sharepoint I'll see what I can do.

[apearce]

I'm working on SharePoint and Moodle at the moment and working on a post which includes how to install on Win2k3, IIS and SQL2005.

I've managed to do get my sharepoint and moodle working on the same URL through ISA with no coding and with the webparts.

I'll do another blog post on this when I've got an hour or so to right it all up.

A.

[kmount]

I'd be interested in reading that Alex.

[penfold_99]

Hi,

i have been sifting through all the posts on here trying to find someone who has Moodle and Sims and has as a result gone down the Sims Learning Gateway (SLG) route and have it working! the are plenty of people who say they have purchased SLG and are awaiting install but i can't find any post with people who actually have it all setup and running. If you are the person i am looking for i have a few questions......

1. How well/easy does SLG integrated in to Moodle?
2. What data have you got from Sims in to Moodle? (we are really hoping that courses and "attendees" can be "imported" because i really do not want to manually set them up myself!)
2. Did you setup the integration yourself or did Capita?
3. How much did it cost you (SLG, Hardware and licences)?
4. What licences and hardware (spec) did you purchase?

Capita have quoted us £9,500 for SLG to be hosted with us, they briefly mumbled about Moodle integration and then quickly changed the subject. We have been left loving what they showed us but can't get clear answer to these questions.

Any help/answers people can give would be great

Thanks

Lucy

Hi Lucy,

If you are only looking at buying SLG so you can integrate moodle, personally i would save £9500, have a look at Integrate Moodle, LDAP and SIMS.net - MoodleDocs

These instruction will cover most of your point and the cost is Free.

If you are having SLG for other reasons then you have have it hosted off site at a cheaper cost and the above instructions will still work.

[Gatt]

Would agree with penfold_99 - We have integrated SIMS into Moodle which now allows pupils to find their timetable online.
It does also automatically pull over all the classes and converts them to Moodle courses, and auto-enrols the relevant pupils into each class allowing a more granular approach to the participants of the course.
At the moment we are creating our own courses rather than using the SIMS templates but the option is there for future use..

It took a bit of time to get the integration to work, but should be easier now as the MoodleDocs have been updates to reflect some of the issues I had with it.

I don't know what SLG offers that this MoodleMod doesn't but I would recommend looking at it - and saving a heck of a lot of money in the process..

[LucyWalshaw]

have have it hosted off site at a cheaper cost

Hi

cheaper in the short term at £6,820 but at £4000 a year and £2320 installation cost (even is they host it) adding up to £14,320 (for 3 years) compared to £12200 (for 3 years if we host it) plus the added benefit of still being to access it in school if the internet was to go down and single sign on....

[penfold_99]

Hi

cheaper in the short term at £6,820 but at £4000 a year and £2320 installation cost (even is they host it) adding up to £14,320 (for 3 years) compared to £12200 (for 3 years if we host it) plus the added benefit of still being to access it in school if the internet was to go down and single sign on....

Hi Lucy,

It's better to have it hosted external from a parents point of view, as a parent will have a single login but can get information about there child(ren) if they are at different schools.

Is your LA looking at hosting SLG version? Our is and the coats are a lot less than what capita quote.

SLG only really tackles the issue of reporting to parents that needs to be in place by 2010. But with a few more moodle mods we could add whats required.