Birchfield VLE content Packs

[TronXP]

Has anybody purchased this pack from birchfiled?

If so:

A)What do teachers/pupils think about it?
B)Was installation ok? Did any problems arise?

Thank you

[dhicks]

Was installation ok?

Specifically, just how SCORM compliant is "SCORM compliant"? The lady from BoardWorks (who's content I've used in the past and found to be excellent, by the way) seemed most surprised that I wanted a test file to import into Moodle. Do Birchfield have a free-to-use test file around somewhere?

--
David Hicks

[bossman]

@dhicks:

Apparently a full 30 day trial at Birchfield Interactive: Learning platform software

Supposedly compliant with every VLE platform

I am just looking into it at the Mo bit expensive just short of £5k but apparently they have spent £8million developing it.

[Sylv3r]

We have it here and we tend to use it with students as an independant learning tool rather then a teaching tool for use during lessons by the teachers.

[apoth0r]

Yeah we purchased it, setup in 5 minutes, good old SCORM

Good feedback so far!!

[LucyWalshaw]

Hey

We have had it here for about 3 months MFL department hate it, the other departments kind of like it their main criticism is the size, as in amount of content per scorm. the editor is ok but it requires a user name and password which i feel is a bit over kill. one other thing to note is the videos do not work in firefox unless you put them in the moodle repository.

Hope this helps

Lucy

[NewOrder]

Hey

We have had it here for about 3 months MFL department hate it, the other departments kind of like it their main criticism is the size, as in amount of content per scorm. the editor is ok but it requires a user name and password which i feel is a bit over kill. one other thing to note is the videos do not work in firefox unless you put them in the moodle repository.

Hope this helps

Lucy

Lucy is correct. I beleive it was not made for scorm but converted from something exisiting. Has anyone used it in anger with 30 kids logging on from school or home at the sametime.

Content needs to be snappy intuitive and easy to load.

There is content that started its life as work books then on to floppy discs, then CDs then networked and now converted to scorm.

Content should be developed for the app specifically.

[drw59]

We have it here and found that the editor is OK and easy to split the package up into smaller scorm packages for adding to a course at a more appropriate place. Most materials ok, A LITTLE CHILDISH AT TIMES BUT GIVES 'SOMETHING' THAT THE PUPILS CAN USE/LEARN FROM.
Ideally should be split up as most of our staff probably wouldn't bother, which means a waste of £5K

[kitsch]

Very little for my main GCSE subject (Design and Technology: Graphics), but nothing new there.
Pages can look a bit of a mess with too much 'clever' stuff happening (the VLE equivalent of when we used to use fifteen different typefaces in a computer document, just because we could). The experience can therefore be bit confusing.

[Quackers]

@dhicks:

Apparently a full 30 day trial at Birchfield Interactive: Learning platform software

Supposedly compliant with every VLE platform

I am just looking into it at the Mo bit expensive just short of £5k but apparently they have spent £8million developing it.

I went for the 30 day trial, then they tried the trick of trying to invoice us for the product, which is £1000's. I have never been impressed with Birchfield software, always been a pain to install, or looks dire. The VLE content did not impress me.

[TronXP]

They did the same to us, even though I returned the product. I will not be going anywhere near birchfield products again

[Cobalt]

I too went for the 30-day trial and unfortunately thoes teaching staff that we asled were not wholly impressed by the material at all. The main problem for us is that much of the content did not tie in well enough with the courses that we run, hence a lot of the money - and it is a lot of money - was for material we simply wouldn't use.

We sent it back with a thank you note and that was that - We are now looking into producing much of our own content with the aid of various other lovely bits of software, most of which are considerably cheaper even if they do require a bit more time and effort to get the end product.

[projector1]

has anybody been able to automate the client installation for the question editor software?

[plexer]

I've just been handed an email that was sent to the Head offering us a trial of it for 14 days with a 50% money off offer. Trouble is the offer expires on the 14th January so unless I have a time machine by the time I receive it there will not be enough time to trial it and make an informed decision especially as it is £2500

I guess they would also do the sneaky thing of trying to invoice us anyway, it's vle content so why can't Birchfield install it on hosted vle and give customers a login to be able to trial it???

Any more comments on the product itself would be useful in the list of subjects I didn't see anything specifically for SEN?

Ben

[bossman]

@plexer:

We trialled the product with all our teachers and took their advice not to purchase even though we were offered a 50% reduced price.

The teachers feedback was that most of the content did not cover their subject in the detail they wished and was not in line with our curriculum.

They are ultimately the people who will be using the content so they are the people to ask and when they say no it states to me that the product is not up to scratch as teachers normally purchase everything they see.

My advice is to trial first and let your teaching staff decide.