Brought in content. Has anyone brought any VLE content? GCSE etc

[dany2010]

Hi,

Our moodle is almost ready for content and at our latest meeting the idea of buying content was brought up.

Things like revision content etc. Apparently the reason the last VLE failed before i started at my school was because of the initial load on staff.

Has anyone brought in content?

How was it?

Many thanks,

Dan.

[Marci]

TBH at both schools I've worked, bought-in content has been slim to minimal. At this one, majority of bought in material once loaded onto the VLE was unusable anyway (just didn't work well within moodle's scorm wrappers), so ended up being installed properly on the workstations. All the "good" stuff has been done in-house by each department.

[beeswax]

It can be quite daunting when faced with the rolling open plains of a new, unpopulated VLE, and it's been my view that using a selection of bought in material to prime the pumps and give teachers an idea of what can be achieved is a big step towards VLE acceptance. We use a variety of stuff including AQA Science, Boardworks, various ActivBooks, Edexcel material and Pearson publications, though the latter now simply provides a link to online material they host. Another source of ready made content is past exam papers. I know from the logs that this content is accessed on a regular basis.
Over the years teachers have become accustomed to turning to the VLE for setting homework/assignments etc. For new staff the VLE is a fact of life in that for them, it's always been there and so they are more accepting of it. It won't happen overnight.

[sonofsanta]

TBH I resisted the urge to buy content in, because too much is as bad as too little - it'd have overwhelmed everyone and 90% of it would have remained untouched.

We found that a lot of software we already had on workstations came with a VLE disc, though, particularly for Science, and that helped prove the usefulness to some people - within a year, Science had stopped buying textbooks and just bought the VLE equivalent instead. So check what you already have, and you might be pleasantly surprised.