Schoolanywhere? SIMS + Moodle paid solution

[shadowx]

Hello again, hasnt been long...

Has anyone ever dealt with Schoolanywhere.co.uk? Their solution consists of a Capita partnered link between SIMS and moodle, full support and management etc... along with a nice interface and such.

The school is now seriously looking at SIMS Learning Gateway (SLG) but *still* want moodle to act as a VLE, due to the cost of SLG we are thinking we can save money and get a more useful product by dealing with School Anywhere, we would locally host it on our own hardware (probably) but i was really hoping someone might have used their solution and can tell me more about it. Their website and downloads are the usual sales blabber and all they want is to chase the idea of us buying it without providing much info along the way.

Even any links to schools which currently use the system would be handy as i can email them and try to find out a little more.

Anyone?

[danIT]

I really know anything about the SchoolAnywhere product, but I do know there is a similar product called ZiLink, info here and atleast there is a demo of the product: SchoolsICT - ZiLink. I think this is also being sold by SynergyLearning, acting as a reseller, but it was originally developed by SchoolsICT. Im pretty sure this solution was developed for a school rather than to meet a set of government requirments as well which helps.

[CyberNerd]

FWIW I'd also recommend the SchoolsICT ziLink product

[Mullaney18]

My primary school are currently Webanywhere customers, using both Moodle from schoolanywhere and front end website from schooljotter.

We have of yet to have utilised moodle its full capabilities as a VLE, because of our ICT co-ordinator taking on yet another project without completing it (with me only starting the school jut under a year ago), and we have also been inundated with similar companies offering VLE's with SIMS intergration (IE Frog Primary etc)

What we did have was a pitch from learnanywhere, webanywhere's new VLE, which look and feels alot newer with mounds of content management features and student interaction.

I do like the idea of an easy set up and go site, but the site costs £3000 over 3 years, which is more or less equivalent to what we pay for their moodle and front end jotter.

So before you make any decisions on their schoolanywhere, get them to show you their learnanywhere, its a relatively new product from them but watch the demo and get them to ring you.

learnanywhere

[shadowx]

Superb info, i will definitely look at the ZiLink site, i never buy anything (be it games, software etc...) without a trial and the ICT manager is the same so a demo would be nice.

With regards to cost, Mullaney18, is that £3k/3yr for the schoolanywhere or their Learnanywhere software?

Cost is obviously a massive factor at the moment and if the school is SLG (which i think is £3k+ per SINGLE year) we can easily recommend something that will cost up to that amount, but i fear Schoolanywhere will be the same as SLG per year.

What do you intend to use moodle for eventually? Are you going to use it to manage every class (eg year 5 maths group B) or just subject/year (eg year 5 maths) ?

Secondly, do you all run a full AD which handles authentication for the moodle system?

As it stands our students arent members of the AD but are managed purely from a Novell E-Directory/LDAP, the staff are only part of the AD for the sake of SIMS so a system that revolves around an AD may be tricky (which is why we really want an on site time limited demo) anything that can take LDAP logon is fine though.

Thanks

[Mullaney18]

Sorry shadow, the £3/3year was for learn anywhere (that may have changed). There might be an initial set up cost, but we only pay around £600 per year, plus around £200 per year for SIMS integration. Unless you pay for a design, which you might do if your like me, not graphically endowed, cause their standard moodle is ugly!

[shadowx]

Interesting, I know the price will be higher for a secondary school like us but it is still looking to be below the cost of SLG... I take it you are permitted/able to use third party, free, themes for Moodle? If this is so then i can easily hack one of the themes about to get what we want, im no designer but i can fiddle with code

Other than that we have someone that we can give a couple hundred for a nice design hopefully. Sounds interesting...

[douglas95]

Mullaney18

Which version have you got, the sim's integration or standard? Do you have the ability to instant message and edit files online? We are are also a Primary and at the moment are with RM Kaliedos, this will end in December and we have decided to go with Learnanywhere. Have had on-site demo, a quote, I am running a trial online with constant support for queries. They are after business but dont seem to be pushing it at present. Are you satisfied? We will be purchasing as a cluster and have been told the price will be severely reduced, are to be quoted soon. Was quoted £2500 (standard) or £3700 (sim's) for 3year package as an individual school.

douglas95

[Mullaney18]

Hi Douglas95

My Head decided we wasn't going to go ahead with it, I went to her with multiple solutions including edu2.0 and eschools and she threw the whole lot out.

I don't think they does. I know it has internal PM / Mails and some of the activities you can create for the classes are interactive but I don't think they have anything like google doc / MS Office online or what ever it is that imposes on your attachments.

It looked good but we had issues of if it would actually get used out of school and the SIMS online report causing more harm for parent and teacher relations.

Hope I've helped.