Looking for a new VLE

[StevieTSS]

Hi all

 

My school is looking to introduce a new VLE, and I was wondering what experiences (good or bad) anyone has had?

 

We are looking for a VLE that allows students to undertake homework/exams etc. online, and the results can go easily back into SIMS mark sheets in ‘live time’. The VLE needs to know class structures/memberships etc. and offer the correct options to the correct groups.

 

Any thoughts welcome!

 

Thanks

[mjs_mjs]

Have you looked at moodle?

[StevieTSS]

Hi Matt

 

It has been tried before in my school, but before I joined. They mentioned having trouble getting the data back into SIMS, lots of converting to and from spreadsheets. Do you use moodle? Has this improved? How do you find it?

 

Thanks

[wesleyw]

Moodle + Webanywhere they will send you a server that will read from and write to SIMS .net keeping groups and timetables. They can do marksheet entries etc....

 

Wes

[penfold_99]

Hi all

 

My school is looking to introduce a new VLE, and I was wondering what experiences (good or bad) anyone has had?

 

We are looking for a VLE that allows students to undertake homework/exams etc. online, and the results can go easily back into SIMS mark sheets in ‘live time’. The VLE needs to know class structures/memberships etc. and offer the correct options to the correct groups.

 

Any thoughts welcome!

 

Thanks

 

Everything your wanting to do can be done with moodle and there are a number of providers who can offer MIS integration.

 

But before you look at the technical aspect of this project, there are more important issues of are your teachers ready to teach with a VLE and will your SLT be 150% behind it and follow through.

If any answers to these questions are no and you don't have a plan in place to make them a yes then it will have a massive effect of the impact of the VLE.

 

Also its important to as the question why, because something can be done its not necessarily good thing to be done.

[StevieTSS]

Thanks Wes & Penfold. It sounds like moodle has moved on since the school last used it.

 

Luckily enough teachers and SLT are going to get behind it, it has been requested by teachers in a strategy group run by SLT. But if we do it, we want to do it right and make something that will work for everyone. When it was tried before it didn't really work, so demand just faded away.

[JimmyTown]

Do you have a budget? If so it may be worth looking at FireFly.

[foofighterjim]

Saw FireFly at BETT, I was very impressed. The only drawbacks I saw at the time were lack of Office 365 integration and they seemed very focused on iOS and not at all on Android. They may have made improvements since then though as they seem to be a very forward thinking group.

[JimmyTown]

Office 365 Integration | Firefly - To be fair they do continue to develop their product, makes such a difference when you chose to invest money into a VLE.