LGFL MLE - This made me soooooo angry.

[budgester]

Good old LFGL insult the people who are doing all the hard work again.

Check it out.

What sort of enthusiast are you ?

The Isolationist
The Enthusiastic Pragmatist
The Evangelical

So we've been running moodle VLE for about 18 months and now they call me some sort of software nutter.

http://www.lgfl.net/lgfl/sections/learningplatform/

Love and kisses

Budgester

[Chafftech]

We are on LGFL as well; basically we cannot use the Digital Brain at the moment because it is not suitable for secondary schools; It does not integrate with any systems and it is completely alien environment.

We have been told by our ICT secondary avisor that Moodle is against DFES guidelines. So at the moment we have no VLE.

[OutToLunch]

Seem to have missed category IV, The "I have thoroughly evaluated all the solutions and this open source product is as good as if not better the commercial solutions available to schools"ist... Obviously a typo! Submit it to Slashdot and watch the ensuing mouth foaming...

[webman]

What do they have against DIY kitchens? It's OK if you're a joiner - just like a competent IT Team can install and maintain Moodle (technically, not content-ly 8)). This bit annoys me:

Examples of the REAL costs (Considering the total cost of ownership):

Organisations/institutions wishing to use an open source solution for its learning platform will have to consider the following costs:

1. Development of open source product to design acceptable to whole institution. For example, many of these products are designed for Higher Education and might need adapting for use in schools.
2. Installation of a web server(s) able to cope with scaling and concurrent users
3. Installation and management of a database server(s)
4. (generally) Installation of a ‘php’ and ‘sql’ server
5. Technician/developer able to install and run a stable and scalable installation.
6. Maintenance of new releases
7. Full back-ups
8. Security of institution network (as the network will be accessed from outside the institution)
9. Training of staff

2-4, possibly 5, can and should be encompassed into one point.

6-9 have to be done with ANY platform, with 8 being a given with any network environment.

[CyberNerd]

hmm, any ideas who sits on thw LGFL advisory board? this seems to be particularly Anti Moodle without any coherent argument. " its good enough for universities but not good enough for you " ?

[budgester]

Seem to have missed category IV, The "I have thoroughly evaluated all the solutions and this open source product is as good as if not better the commercial solutions available to schools"ist... Obviously a typo! Submit it to Slashdot and watch the ensuing mouth foaming...

Am I that evil ? What do you reckon, would the LGFL stand up to a slashdotting ? Maybe the register would do a better job.

[TechMonkey]

@webman: Which kind of shows their bias. If they are pushing digital brain then it looks like their big reasons are schools don't need to worry about points 6-9. It's the usual make your choice and make an argument based on the reasonings you want to make your choice appear the best. Also the more points you can make that show alternatives in a bad light win the argument (in some peoples logic!)

I have looked at digital brain and ran away screaming! My local secondary (not who I work for) started using it and have now moved away due to expansion problems. We had a problem with them as a message sent internally at the secondary school with Digital Brain managed to get circulated to every person on their mail server!! An interesting bug.

I guess all we can do is keep lobbying to get Moodle included in tests. We are looking at testing Moodle out and implementing it soon and will hopefully be pushing our LEA to look at it as they have just started looking at options.

[CyberNerd]

Am I that evil ? What do you reckon, would the LGFL stand up to a slashdotting ?

lol, maybe the wider community should be aware of this, but aren't you provided by their pipe ? you'd be sort of DOSing yourself 8O

[webman]

A learning platform that runs solely from a hosted server is bad idea in my opinion because a) you need a reliable connection all the way over to their servers that could be at your LEA or on the other side of the world. If your internet goes down you're screwed. b) Use of bandwidth - speaks for itself c) putting the responsibility of the VLE into the hands of others - which may or may not be good depending on your requirements.

[Jake]

Didnt I read something on BBC website the other day that the LGFL was being scrapped due to essentially being crap??

EDTI :: Oh wait..no..that was the NGfL

[wesleyw]

I would have thought the sentence "Moodle is against DFES guideline" should be looked at seeing as they are only guidelines you don't have to do them also I don't remember reading that anywhere at DFes or Becta? Could someone point me to that particular point?

Wes

[budgester]

Didnt I read something on BBC website the other day that the LGFL was being scrapped due to essentially being crap??

EDIT :: Oh wait..no..that was the NGfL

I jumped for joy at that, then realised that the LFGL portal escaped the cull.

The internet connection is ok, apart from they never let you know when they are doing essential maintainence and don't even have a status page.

But the LGFL portal really is painfull to use, it keeps touting the fact that you only need one password for all off your access. Where in fact you just need one password to access the LGFL portal. So nothing different to any other website then. At least our own install of moodle if authenticated against our domain so the student do only have to use one username and password.

Regards

Budgester

[russdev]

right becta guidelines are those those bidding for money under vle scheme a school can choose any solution they like but they need to look at how the solution fits into there school..

russ

[Chafftech]

I would have thought the sentence "Moodle is against DFES guideline" should be looked at seeing as they are only guidelines you don't have to do them also I don't remember reading that anywhere at DFes or Becta? Could someone point me to that particular point?

Wes

Agreed, I have never had shown to me in writing, I think it is LGFL trying to kow tow everyone into digital brain simply because they bought it and dont want the money they spend going to waste

[russdev]

In fact dfes have said in no uncertain terms schools cn choose what they like but if they opt away from lea vle they need to say why...

I will dig out the details


As for moodle in fact moodle its self is not allowed but the fact that moodle dosnt have any finacial history that stops its bidding...

russell