New VLE / Research / Problems

[Acritchlow]

Hi,

 

I've been doing research into VLE's and online school tools and wondered if any of the teachers and schools out there feel as though they have a good VLE which is easy to use and something they get good use out of?

 

I've been contemplating developing a new VLE to provide to schools but with the aim to cover some problems I currently believe may be needed:

 

Quiz engine with content built in to allow students to self-study - A similar system to replace the famous Mathletics systems but can cover other subjects.

 

All the usual homework/assignment/polls/communication tools and file storage.

 

Excellent mobile tools with Parent/Teacher/Student logins for iPhone/iPad/Android devices.

 

Can any teachers give any advice as to what they believe to be their current problems with VLEs if any?

 

I would want to work closely with the schools and offer a service to minimise time spent by teachers maintaining the VLE system.

 

I'd also offer a service whereby a school can tell me what piece of software they would find particularly useful/help them within their school and my team would develop the software as a module to the main system.

 

Would I be wasting my time?

 

Many thanks for all your time.

 

Andrew

[edmokeski]

I think there aren't a lot of holes in the market (want built-in quiz content? FrogPlay. want great apps? Firefly.), and I don't think it's a growing one, so I'd hesitate to enter, personally. If I see a hole, it's illustrated by Google's services. Classroom is brilliant, and has great deep integration with cloud storage and productivity tools. Sites is super-easy to use and quite flexible. Forms are alright for building quizzes etc. But they feel like a sort of loose confederation of tools, developed separately. The market hole I see is for something as easy, flexible, and useful as those tools, but somehow tied together better and with stronger central management and MIS integration. GAfE has some strong management tools, but a lot of it is just "here's an API, sort it out for yourselves" like Classroom. No good for a school that wants to handle their VLE by giving a teacher one or two classes' release time, rather than hiring a tech with instructional design expertise or teaching experience.

If I were looking to make something new in this marketplace, it would probably be something that builds on free services already available from Google and/or MS, but uses their public APIs to build better management tools and a tighter-feeling user experience, so as to be easy enough to be managed by a tech-savvy teacher with a near-normal teaching load.

Just my 2p.

[dhicks]

I've been contemplating developing a new VLE to provide to schools but with the aim to cover some problems I currently believe may be needed:

 

As pointed out above, there's no need to spend time developing yet another basic VLE infrastructure which you then start adding features to, Google / Microsoft / Aamazon now do that for you. Concentrate on creating applications that integrate data in all parts of their operation. Schools spend far to much time shifting data and results from one application to another, that should all happen automatically.

[mavhc]

What I want is a proxy for all these darned websites that don't offer oauth etc, and want yet another username and password for every child

[dhicks]

What I want is a proxy for all these darned websites that don't offer oauth etc, and want yet another username and password for every child

 

Indeed - or if the original poster is looking for stuff to develope, making Oauth-capable versions of the various ecucational software / websites already around might be a good place to start.

[philspokes]

I don't like to say you are wasting your time, but the fact is that there are over 600 VLEs/LMS on the market already, and as edmoeski says, very few gaps.

 

Agree with all of the above and I believe a modular system is the way forward, where you can pick and choose which elements you want, and easily develop new apps/plugins. Many companies are now doing this for their own systems, or for 3rd party ones.

 

A good example of this is RealSmart, who have already built a system that utilises Google apps and wraps them up in their Wordpress website and other VLE tools. Helps with the single sign-on solution too!

 

Most companies also work closely with schools to develop requests from their clients. eArete is one example of a company where this is at the forefront of their philosophy.

 

In a nutshell, it's a saturated and competitive market which is hard to break, but good luck if you take the leap. I'd be interested to see what you came up with!

[geekgirl]

I hope you don't mind but I was in this position looking for a new VLE for our school in January 2015. I did a lot of research and have attached my research to this post.

 

I hope it helps!

 

We were with It's Learning and in the end we went with Firefly.

VLE Platforms 2.docx