timbo343 Posted January 14, 2014 Posted January 14, 2014 We have decided to ditch fronter as it was slow, clunky and not used. One of the teachers has mentioned at their last school they used edmodo which i have looked into, it seems ok however all the videos seem to be aimed at the US and i was wondering if anyone on here or in the UK is using it and how are they finding it? Does it work as a VLE even though its free? With budgets as they are at the moment, i thought about starting up a moodle server again and hosting internally however when im told that budgets are tighter than a ducks backside.. i feel that installing a moodle server might not be the best idea, also, trying to get funding for a virtualisation project is proving difficult at the moment, infact trying to get any amount of funding is hard even though im told we want IT to be driven forward.
synaesthesia Posted January 14, 2014 Posted January 14, 2014 We're considering the use of Edmodo moving away from Moodle for various reasons. Moodle is awesome but without the right staff to champion it's use it's falling by the wayside, and Edmodo's apparent ease of use, easiness on the eye etc it's worth our time looking. However it's no straight swap, we'd need to find online reporting systems (such as going back to SLG) to cover what we have with Moodle currently. Early days yet though, we're same point as you in trying to figure the best way forward.
LukeC Posted January 14, 2014 Posted January 14, 2014 I'm also in the same boat were getting rid of Moodle and looking at alternatives. Im considering doing something in SharePoint with office 365.
rdk Posted January 20, 2014 Posted January 20, 2014 Even though Edmodo does have a school registration with some controls available to admins, it really works best as individual teacher-class-students combination. it is very quick to learn and quite intuitive. Especially good for younger kids.
fiza Posted January 20, 2014 Posted January 20, 2014 We use Edmodo - The IT Teachers here use it extensively. From an Admin point of view you would need to register your school and then get teachers and students to register & login via the school sub site rather than directly at edmodo. school.edmodo.com rather than edmodo.com you as admin would then provide a school code so that teachers could register. The teacher would then set up classes and give the students a class code to register with their class. Teachers should disable the class code when not registering students. Other than setting up the school on Edmodo I don't get involved. Teachers deal with their own students, resetting passwords etc. If they use it correctly you can login as admin and see all users listed. See conversations going on. It has a facebook style timeline where most recent activity is shown. Here we had issues with teachers forgetting to get the students to register on the school sub site. It doesn't stop them joining the classes but it stops them appearing in the admin side.
Seb1780 Posted January 20, 2014 Posted January 20, 2014 From an Admin point of view you would need to register your school and then get teachers and students to register & login via the school sub site rather than directly at edmodo. school.edmodo.com rather than edmodo.com you as admin would then provide a school code so that teachers could register. Setting up the school site takes a couple of days to process as edmodo checks the validity of your claim, but it's a one off thing and no real overhead to maintain. Getting teachers to use your site is a completely different matter; especially those that have independently already set up an edmodo account on the generic site.
actech Posted January 20, 2014 Posted January 20, 2014 We use Edmodo (secondary college) and the students love it. It works well on iPads (which all students have) and easy for the teachers to self manage their classes. Most of the staff find it easy to use and there are some good tutorials etc available for those who struggle.
fiza Posted January 20, 2014 Posted January 20, 2014 Getting teachers to use your site is a completely different matter; especially those that have independently already set up an edmodo account on the generic site. Yes this is exactly what we found but then we did do this ar$e about face. Teachers started using Edmodo and then it became clear that it was popular and we should have some control. Nobody approached us to ask us to set Edmodo up. If you make sure all teachers register with the school site and all students login the same way from the get go and put a link on your website to the subsite or something then its less of an issue.
synaesthesia Posted January 20, 2014 Posted January 20, 2014 Is there any difficulty with temporary/supply staff? We seem to have a high turnover over ICT teaching staff currently and to say it's a PITA with Moodle is an understatement! Separately, Edmodo also appears to lack on some of the things other VLEs build in/have modules for such as reporting from the MIS. What are people using in place of that?
actech Posted January 25, 2014 Posted January 25, 2014 Setting up the school site takes a couple of days to process as edmodo checks the validity of your claim, but it's a one off thing and no real overhead to maintain. Getting teachers to use your site is a completely different matter; especially those that have independently already set up an edmodo account on the generic site. There is an option in Edmodo to forward all connections from specific IP's to your school subdomain. We have it set that way so when we get students to create accounts at the college they are automatically enrolled in our school group. It is in the school account settings. 1
BlackTie Posted January 27, 2014 Posted January 27, 2014 What do people feel about the general move away from a centralised VLE to Edmodo (or whatever)? Is there really a need for a VLE any more? What do people feel are the risks as well as the advantages of an "unmanaged" cloud based solution like this? And if we're sticking with VLEs, should we be advising staff not to use Edmodo/WordPress/whatever to avoid fragmentation. Keen to hear the thoughts of the wider community...
Seb1780 Posted January 27, 2014 Posted January 27, 2014 What do people feel about the general move away from a centralised VLE to Edmodo (or whatever)? Is there really a need for a VLE any more? What do people feel are the risks as well as the advantages of an "unmanaged" cloud based solution like this? And if we're sticking with VLEs, should we be advising staff not to use Edmodo/WordPress/whatever to avoid fragmentation. Keen to hear the thoughts of the wider community... This is the issue vexing me at the moment. We have a very poor strategic view here and most stuff that happens is reactive, normally in response to something one or two teachers have found that becomes the latest answer to all our prayers. We have abandoned our VLE as unworkable, although this is problably more due to willingness rather than technical issues. We have several teachers using Edmodo, DropBox, $cloudservice with no co-ordination nor plan for future use. As the Data Manger this lack of co-ordination concerns me, it feels like there is so much opportunity for a massive foul up and I am just waiting for a call from a concerned parent to land on my desk. I'm not advocating lock down, but equally I am keen to see some thought going in to what we do, how we do it and how we ensure it is secure and lawful. Post BETT I am aware of a lot of "solutions" to replace the functionalilty (in whole or part) of a formal VLE, but some of those solutions have the security of a sieve. That's my thoughts, it'll be nice to hear others.
pcstru Posted January 27, 2014 Posted January 27, 2014 What do people feel about the general move away from a centralised VLE to Edmodo (or whatever)? Is there really a need for a VLE any more? Was there ever - apart that is from ticking a box because government said schools must have one? Cynicism aside, well implemented, VLE's seemed to be rated by schools. The problem was so many implementations were poor. What do people feel are the risks as well as the advantages of an "unmanaged" cloud based solution like this? And if we're sticking with VLEs, should we be advising staff not to use Edmodo/WordPress/whatever to avoid fragmentation. Keen to hear the thoughts of the wider community... I think the problem of 'unmanaged' is one of quality. Schools are making substantial investment in quality processes around teaching and learning in the classroom - is that potentially risked by a proliferation of unmanaged side channels. What image does it present of the school if a students experience of e-learning resources are highly dependent on the teachers technical ability and enthusiasm?
icetech Posted January 27, 2014 Posted January 27, 2014 Totally agree with pcstu above. I think any VLE including Fronter would succeed if given the appropriate time and investment and led from a Senior Management Team. My daughters School - the pupils know more ICT than the teachers who lack in IT confidence... Once the skills of the teachers are addressed then ICT will flourish in classrooms
GeekyPete Posted January 27, 2014 Posted January 27, 2014 If you suffer from lack of williness in with present VLE don't go O365 and Sharepoint. I woud only really go down this road if I wanted to be an underpaid developer or an overpaid student. Eitherway you probably wouldn't have the time to maintain the site so it would all come to bite you in the A$$ anyway. I wouldn't go sharepoint without atleast a part time member of staff to manage it.
BlackTie Posted January 27, 2014 Posted January 27, 2014 Interesting thoughts above. As well as saving myself the cost, I'm trying to balance a flexible approach (within reason) to allow teachers to use the IT systems in a way best suited to their requirements with a responsibility to provide a unified approach...
mark100 Posted January 27, 2014 Posted January 27, 2014 We are looking at getting rid of Moodle and moving to wordpress, Currently evaluating different plugin/themes. Moodle is a solid platform and works well as if some else has said, you have a driving force behind it, if not like ours it just sits there holding documents. Wordpress should hopefully be able to give students a personal blog and a good learning environment to host all the course material. Our ICT department use edmodo, with success but I cant see how it could be scaled up to support a whole school/college.
rdk Posted February 2, 2014 Posted February 2, 2014 What image does it present of the school if a students experience of e-learning resources are highly dependent on the teachers technical ability and enthusiasm? I think schools are destined to be in this position regardless of the school implementation of Moodle/Fronter/Edmodo/GAFE etc
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