Anyone use kaleidos in the Herts/Essex area?

[jdjunkie]

I would like to visit a school to see Kaleidos in operation. Is there anyone in the Herts/Essex area using it and would be willing to show me how they use it and talk to me about its advantages and disadvantages? We use Moodle at present and am being pressured into changing over.

Cheers

[Ric_]

Can't help you here jdjunkie but, out of nosey interest, why are you being pressured into changing?

Surely any pre-built content must be SCORM-compliant (therefore can be imported into Moodle), you already use Moodle so no re-training is required, Moodle has a lower TCO.... should I continue?

I have seen Kaleidos and it wasn't all that impressive... then again, can anyone get excited about a VLE/learning platform?

[GrumbleDook]

I can get excited about how it is used rather than the technology ...

Kaleidos is perfectly workable as a VLE ... and has a number of things going for it all depending on what you already have in place and what you actually want to do with it ...

It has a number of downsides (reported as slow, difficult to navigate if not set up right and sometimes just doesn't work as specified) but these things are improving (is anyone else actually worried that a number of things promised by major companies in education actually seem to be arriving ... and on time too? Perhaps they are just setting the timescales a bit better)

As the Bishop said to the actress, "it's not what you've got, it's how you use it!" (talking about the latest Fujitsu laptop he picked up ... you lot have disgusting minds!)

[Ravening_Wolf]

Kaleidos was used at my previous school - give the James Hornsby School in Laindon (Basildon!) a ring and ask to speak to Dan, the Network Manager. He's a good bloke and should be able to answer your questions! He is also far more enthusiastic about Kaleidos than I ever was

The contact number is readily available at http://www.jameshornsby.essex.sch.uk

HTH

[jdjunkie]

many thanks for the replies folks.


Ric - the main source of the pressure is coming from my network manager who fears that trying to host our Moodle VLE will cause him problems. We have an RM network and they are pushing him hard to have Kaleidos and are convincing him that this would cause him no problems at all!

[bossman]

jdjunkie: we have had kaleidos for ages since it was released and i thought it was pretty darned good providing the teachers were compotent enough. Little fiddly to get to grips with from a teaching point of view but once properly trained it becomes quite a useful tool.
Only our Maths dept uses it in conjunction with maths alive but it is used every day.
I was tempted to run Moodle alongside in case we changed our minds but LEA has come up with a one stop VLE for the whole county. Still tempted to run Moodle alongside just in case LEA trip up (usually do) but our systems co-ordinator has signed us up f to it for two years and i have no say.