This is a call out to NMs and techies in schools in Northamptonshire.
Some of you I may have already spoken with (and I'll be sending a bulk email later) but this it to give you and your school additional notice of the following.
The presentations will be 30 mins long with 15 mins for questions. There will be 40 mins at the end of the event for school and stakeholders to score and give feedback, to inform the final selection process.Northamptonshire County Council(NCC) Managed Learning Environment feasibility and implementation project 1st September 2007 - 31st March 2009.
Schools and stakeholder presentation event - Thursday 21st June 2007
Learning Discovery Centre
A full agenda is available on request (and will be in the NCC schools fact sheet at the end of the week) but refreshments on arrival at 8.45 followed by a briefing / introduction from 9.00 - 9.20 by Brenda Scoble and Kevin McHenry.
The 3 shortlisted companies (from a long list of 11) are Teksys, Research Machines and LP+.
The procurement has been done through the OJEU European Communities - Services - Accelerated restricted procedure. There was not a Becta Framework that we could use to secure the technology we wanted and others could not be used as this project did not fit into the required criteria.
The event will finish at 13.00
Schools wishing to attend should email ictis@northamptonshire.gov.uk to book a place.
We do want to try and get as many schools represented as possible and as wide a range of schools too (primary, secondary, special, etc).
I'd just like to thanks those who were able to attend the above session or who were able to speak with me about it beforehand. I would also like to thank those members who completed the MLE survey for me many moons ago.
A final decision has been made and below is the copy which will be put into the NCC Schools Fact Sheet at the end of the week.
A learning platform for every school.
NCC is pleased to announce that LP+ (Learning Possibilities Limited) have been selected as preferred bidder to deliver our county wide bespoke learning platform solution. The company has significant experience in creating LP+, acknowledged by Microsoft to be the largest and most advanced hosted Learning Gateway platform anywhere. They are committed to provide a hosted and fully managed portal-based modern learning platform for every school in the county, which is scalable for the e-learning, communication and information management needs of schools and the local authority, now and into the future.
LP+ was selected following a rigorous procurement process. This included meeting minimum requirements through a prequalification questionnaire, responding to technical and functional requirements, pricing, and presenting at the schools event on 21st June. Overall LP+ scored the highest and provided the most exciting approach, the vision for extending and enhancing learning, and commitment to working in partnership with Northamptonshire’s schools to contribute to personalising learning.
Once the 10 day standstill period has been completed and contract negotiations are under way, more information will be shared with schools including further details about implementation and support.
More information can be found on their website http://www.lpplus.com/.
Due to political reasons and possible legal action, I have withdrawn my opinions regarding the DLG.
Indeed Webman, I have experience of a county-wide VLE implementation and as you correctly envisage it is slower than toast. That's not taking into account the overloaded and constantly spewing errors of the county wan's content filters (which incidentally don't block a lot that they should).Originally Posted by webman
My gosh i'm in a ranting mood tonight. I'm going to have a pint.
Matt.
I don't mean to be a pain, but it occurs to me that other's outside the area could learn from this situation. Ideally, would it be possible to write up some kind of case study or white paper about the situation that has just transpired?
Enjoy your MS based VLE, I enjoy the Sharepoint and Learning Kit I have made
Hopefully that is one of the things that will be happening. We will be getting started on the implementation planning in the next week or so ... and even if I can't get a blog running I will get an NM or Techie, as well as a teacher, from a school involved in the first wave to do one ...I don't mean to be a pain, but it occurs to me that other's outside the area could learn from this situation. Ideally, would it be possible to write up some kind of case study or white paper about the situation that has just transpired?
Very interesting news on the lp+ homepage about the partnership with Shirelands.
Shirelands was one of the more successful MS Learning Gateway implementation that I was familiar with. Wonder what the reasoning behind transferring hosting over to LP+ was ?. Wonder if that's code for a merger of some sort - as I know the shireland gateway was beginning to or had been run as a commercial concern.
not exactly hot news as we knew of this back in July - interesting to see how they might roll out lp+ out to schools and lAs who insist on becta framework accreditation ?
Whats wrong with Moodle?
Nothing.
According to Becta, Moodle solutions are technically up to the job (they tick ALL boxes) but there is no support. Despite the many companies you can purchase Moodle support from, this fact was omitted from Becta's research and therefore Becta's framework excludes Moodle.
I believe "Microsoft financial incentives" play a large part in the decision making process.
Err, what's wrong with the Learning Gateway. It may not be everyones cup of tea but I bet the LP+ platform beats the pants off of any moodle implementation you can point to. That superiority comes at a cost but those who've made the investment believe its a cost worth paying.
Could of fooled me, BECTA has operated in a very anti-Microsoft/Pro OSS fashion (even to the point of zealotry) in some cases.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4558171.stm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10..._schools_deal/
but then
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/07/becta_ms_deal/
So I've just dismissed this behaviour as the schizophrenia you get in any large public body with competing departments with contradictory aims and goals.
Interesting. A lot of the push towards open source software and open source projects doesn't take account of actual TCO.
Why wouldn't a school or org with in-house .NET knowledge or with an existing sharepoint implementation extend that to use MS learning Gateway technologies to implement their VLE/Learning platform.
It really isn't a Microsoft vs Moodle or proprietory vs OSS debate. It's about choosing the right products for your situation and for your budget. Not every school has peanuts to spend on VLE projects. So when an LA or school goes with Microsoft for a project there's generally a good reason.
After all Sharepoint is the fastest growing portal/content management product in industry. It really has shaken up that sector once the domain of IBM and it's websphere product. What's wrong with sharepoint being adapted to shake up the VLE/Learning Platform space. It really needs it.
Just because a school or LEA has funds for Microsoft, doesn't mean they have to go Microsoft when it may or may not be the best product.
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