tosca925 Posted September 30, 2007 Posted September 30, 2007 Ia any one using/seen UniServity cLc Learning Platform? I have been asked to have a look into it? Comments please?
Jake Posted October 1, 2007 Posted October 1, 2007 Havent tried it myself yet, but Uniservity is the platform which portsmouth LEA here have decided we will be using
Vegas Posted October 1, 2007 Posted October 1, 2007 We're using it here, check it out. http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupHomepage.asp?GroupID=21353
pete Posted October 1, 2007 Posted October 1, 2007 http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1322&highlight=uniservity They may have improved.
olcinm Posted February 17, 2008 Posted February 17, 2008 UniServity seem to be winning a lot of LA contracts. This could be because they have a good presentation team or because they can convince people that they do understand education. Key to use in primary school BY pupils including those that are just learning to read is the interface. This comes down to configurability and simplicity but even more so to the editing tools. A bog standard WYSIWYG (almost) HTML editor just does not cut it. What about cut and paste for graphics, painting tool so I can paint my contribution in a forum or audio input without the need for paint/record > save locally > click insert > find recording (click/click/click!) and click upload. Something like the flash based honeycomb system from SoftEase or 2Simple Java tools are what's needed.
beeswax Posted February 17, 2008 Posted February 17, 2008 @olcinm: I attended a short (1 hour) presentation of Uniservity a few weeks ago, as they have won the contract to supply a VLE to all our LEA primary schools. When I spoke to our LEA rep later about why he had chosen this particular VLE when it offered nothing that half a dozen others didn't, he said that he could work with this company and they really understood education. So that seems to answer your thoughts on why some LEA's choose Uniservity. It allows pupils to personalize (to a certain extent) the pages they view, and what some Year 7's were doing with their space put the surrounding Uniservity designed "blocks" to shame (they looked so retro). It didn't seem to offer any functions over and above those available in Moodle, so why should we pay £3.5K a year for something we have no control over, when some of that money can be better spent buying in Moodle expertise? When our EDIT team were part of the council they were all for a Sharepoint based solution throughout the borough. Since they were Tuped their views have changed.
FN-GM Posted February 17, 2008 Posted February 17, 2008 We have it, all it can say that its the biggest pile of cr*p i have ever seen. Moodle all the way for me. Sorry to be so blunt
mullet_man Posted February 18, 2008 Posted February 18, 2008 (edited) Were using it, but we are moving to StudyWiz very soon. http://www.school-portal.co.uk/grouphomepage.asp?groupid=47065 The problem is we are using it really just as a website for news, and not for the actual VLE purpose, biggest hurdle is the staff. Edited February 18, 2008 by mullet_man
antoeknee Posted February 18, 2008 Posted February 18, 2008 Hi Mullet-Man Seems some of the agreement has yet to be sorted out for us to use StudyWiz in Oldham so I'm not sure how soon 'soon' will be.
mullet_man Posted February 18, 2008 Posted February 18, 2008 Hi Mullet-Man Seems some of the agreement has yet to be sorted out for us to use StudyWiz in Oldham so I'm not sure how soon 'soon' will be. Our digital tech has been on the training, and was told early March for us to get the StudyWiz for us to use.
antoeknee Posted February 18, 2008 Posted February 18, 2008 Yep thats whats been said though I believe the agreement ain't yet signed and the storage allowances for pupils/staff are woeful. Seems that you'll have to pay for some add-ins! Also its ssems the MIS integration isn't what it should be, not live!!
mullet_man Posted February 18, 2008 Posted February 18, 2008 Yep, am guessing Oldham won't have paid for the best system. Are you part of the schools taking part in the first wave?
rama1712 Posted April 29, 2008 Posted April 29, 2008 Our LA Wirral has just signed up to this company and we are as a school going to be one of the first 10 schools to use it. But we have been having problems getting some tech info from LA so we thought we would ask here if anyone can help then please do as we will be able to put any other questions that arise from your answer to Uni when we meet in a few weeks. 1) How much space do pupils and staff get for there own area ie for eportfolios. 2) how much space is there per department/faculity for puting worksheets documents and resources. 3) Can users access there school work area throu Uni Ie if thay are working at home and forgot to drop work in to there uni area can this been done or will thay have to use a third party program link easylink. 4) What type of resources can you NOT use on uni system 5) What features/goodies is there that the school can use 6) Does anyone have any instructions sheets, informations sheets that we cna have that will help us explain it to our staff. Thanks in advance for any help Stuart P
conehead Posted April 29, 2008 Posted April 29, 2008 (edited) Our LA Wirral has just signed up to this company and we are as a school going to be one of the first 10 schools to use it. But we have been having problems getting some tech info from LA so we thought we would ask here if anyone can help then please do as we will be able to put any other questions that arise from your answer to Uni when we meet in a few weeks. 1) How much space do pupils and staff get for there own area ie for eportfolios. 2) how much space is there per department/faculity for puting worksheets documents and resources. 3) Can users access there school work area throu Uni Ie if thay are working at home and forgot to drop work in to there uni area can this been done or will thay have to use a third party program link easylink. 4) What type of resources can you NOT use on uni system 5) What features/goodies is there that the school can use 6) Does anyone have any instructions sheets, informations sheets that we cna have that will help us explain it to our staff. Thanks in advance for any help Stuart P The best place for info about it is the cLC area of Uniservity, the Connected Learning Communities bit. Once you have an account you can get into the help area and forum, so you can post your enquiries. The school "super user" can set quotas for the eportfolio size, I think the defaults are 20 and 50 meg. As all the School-Portal stuff is hosted externally to your school, you can access it anywhere. I reckon you can upload as much stuff as you want within reason, the main problem I see with it, is the interface is quite complicated and your typical teacher is going to find it too much trouble to learn how to use it. It looks like there will be a solution to the SIMS integration soon! UniServity - Capita partnership delivers great news to schools Edited April 29, 2008 by conehead more info
Edu-IT Posted April 29, 2008 Posted April 29, 2008 (edited) 1) How much space do pupils and staff get for there own area ie for eportfolios. You can set a limit and you can view usage. Space can be allocated on a user basis so if you want to allow some users more space than others then that isn't a problem. 2) how much space is there per department/faculity for puting worksheets documents and resources. I don't think there's a limit. I've just looked at our disk usage and it says unlimited. Your LEA may set a limit though on the amount of space you can use. 3) Can users access there school work area throu Uni Ie if thay are working at home and forgot to drop work in to there uni area can this been done or will thay have to use a third party program link easylink. No, you cannot access the network through the VLE. You can import users from SIMS though. 4) What type of resources can you NOT use on uni system What do you mean? Are you talking about file types etc? 5) What features/goodies is there that the school can use There's a lot of things which you can make use of such as forums, to do lists, markbooks. 6) Does anyone have any instructions sheets, informations sheets that we cna have that will help us explain it to our staff. I suggest reading through this to find out more about what the system has to offer. You can use information from this to create guides for your staff. http://www.school-portal.co.uk/help/manuals/default.html If there is anything else you want to know then post here or PM me and I'll try to help answer the questions you have. Edited April 29, 2008 by Edu-IT 1
penfold_99 Posted April 29, 2008 Posted April 29, 2008 Ia any one using/seen UniServity cLc Learning Platform? I have been asked to have a look into it? Comments please? We're Currently evaluating Uniservity. We're part of the first phase of the roll out. We have it, all it can say that its the biggest pile of cr*p i have ever seen. Moodle all the way for me. Sorry to be so blunt I have to agree with the above statement unless your a primary school where is it has more of a use. 1) How much space do pupils and staff get for there own area ie for eportfolios. You can set a limit and you can view usage. Space can be allocated on a user basis so if you want to allow some users more space than others then that isn't a problem. Within East Sussex there is a school quota of 50Mb per user ie (50Mb * (no. pupils + no. staff) this quota can be quota as per the school requirement into user/department quota. This size is too small if your school has used moodle as our moodle vle is about 5Gb and i know a school were theirs is 9GB. 2) how much space is there per department/faculity for puting worksheets documents and resources. I don't think there's a limit. I've just looked at our disk usage and it says unlimited. Your LEA may set a limit though on the amount of space you can use. See above answer. 3) Can users access there school work area throu Uni Ie if thay are working at home and forgot to drop work in to there uni area can this been done or will thay have to use a third party program link easylink. No, you cannot access the network through the VLE. You can import users from SIMS though. 4) What type of resources can you NOT use on uni system What do you mean? Are you talking about file types etc? Well any really large file, as uniservity slows to a crawl at lunchtime as every school is hosted on the same infrastructure. 5) What features/goodies is there that the school can use There's a lot of things which you can make use of such as forums, to do lists, markbooks. The Main thing is it doesn't do is integrate with sims, uniservity's biggest selling point is it's integration with sims but doesn't exist yet as confirmed by capita (because they haven't written it yet) 6) Does anyone have any instructions sheets, informations sheets that we cna have that will help us explain it to our staff. I suggest reading through this to find out more about what the system has to offer. You can use information from this to create guides for your staff. http://www.school-portal.co.uk/help/manuals/default.html If there is anything else you want to know then post here or PM me and I'll try to help answer the questions you have. My advise is if your a secondary school don't waste your time with it, moodle is a better option. There is limited integration with sims with will be extended in the next few weeks when i release a vb script to AD and SIMS.net with all the feilds required by moodle. I also have the documentation for the IMS interface of SIMS.net, i will be looking to create some moodle modules to make the integration better with sims.net with the end goal to allow moodle to write back to SIMS.net once capita finish the writing back part of IMS 1
Edu-IT Posted April 29, 2008 Posted April 29, 2008 Moodle is great, I agree. UniServity isn't that bad though.
reggiep Posted April 30, 2008 Posted April 30, 2008 Is it possible to create quizzes, assignments etc as can be done on moodle? So far all I see is the "all important" eportfolio!
Edu-IT Posted April 30, 2008 Posted April 30, 2008 Is it possible to create quizzes, assignments etc as can be done on moodle? So far all I see is the "all important" eportfolio! You can create surveys but not quizzes. You can create assignments though.
reggiep Posted April 30, 2008 Posted April 30, 2008 You can create surveys but not quizzes. You can create assignments though. Thanks, I guess I'll have to bin all my moodle quizzes when we move over to uniservity then
CyberNerd Posted April 30, 2008 Posted April 30, 2008 Thanks, I guess I'll have to bin all my moodle quizzes when we move over to uniservity then you don't have to move -just because the local authority bought it doesn't mean you have to use an inferior product. Keep with what you have until uniservity meets your needs. you might have a long wait.
conehead Posted May 1, 2008 Posted May 1, 2008 Thanks, I guess I'll have to bin all my moodle quizzes when we move over to uniservity then Can the quizzes you have done be tweaked to be scorm compliant, if so I think you would be able to import them into Uniservity afterwards.
olcinm Posted May 22, 2008 Posted May 22, 2008 Thanks, I guess I'll have to bin all my moodle quizzes when we move over to uniservity then Not necessarily. Moodle can export tests in several ways. If I was you I'd at least export them in various formats including doing a CSV dump via MySQL. You may have a problem with images or other files used in tests. I know there was a QTI import plug-ins for Moodle and so maybe there is a QTI export by now? All Becta framework platforms have to support import of QTI standards assessment items. HTH
Richie1972 Posted July 5, 2008 Posted July 5, 2008 Blackburn with Darwen has, I believe, paid a small fortune for this "VLE" on the recommendation of primary school teachers and NOT IT staff. To be honest, the system does look good for primary schools as it is very basic and has few features. However, as it is so limited, generally unreliable, doesn't integrate with the school's network and doesn't have decent SIMS integration it is pretty much useless to most secondary schools. We will be sticking with our Frogserver (FrogTeacher - Learning Platform, Personalised Learning, VLE, Digital Environment), which can do everything Uniservity can do plus a lot more.
antoeknee Posted July 6, 2008 Posted July 6, 2008 The use of StudyWiz in Oldham is not as we'd expected. The e-portfolios are a cost option to each school and the price quoted by SW is outrageous. We'd been hopeful that the e-portfolio would be a fully managed service but given the cost and our really slow net speed it just isn't going to work. Even hosting ourselves will be hit and miss due to poor net speed. Added to that the MIS integration doesn'e exist and when it does arrive it will be a module that schools will have to pay extra for.
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