VLE - Are you still using yours as much?

[bert113]

Hello,

 

We've just received our annual renewal from our suppliers who support our moodle vle, and at just under £3000 I started to wonder if we're getting value for money.

 

I know that only a few of our faculties use the VLE in "anger" and the majority of users just use it as a thoroughfare to get to other apps / links. Students mostly use it to access their files.

 

I was just wondering how many schools (we're a secondary) still use a VLE and if you have ditched it what do you use for an intranet etc...

 

Thanks in advance

 

D

Edited March 22, 2016 by bert113

[DavidHolderness]

We're approaching renewal time with frog and i am making a big push to move away from it. I think the time of the VLE has well and truly passed, when i was a teacher I hated using them and now as a technician i hate them even more. You're right, all students want is their files and curated links, something that shouldn't have a 3k price tag attached!

 

I'm a big believer in path of least resistance methods and want everything to be integrated into the schools office 365 infrastructure, and for that reason I'm going to be pushing for a product like Teacher Dashboard for Microsoft Office 365 to take over.

[FN-GM]

We don't have any at all in any of our schools. Instead Google Docs & Google Classroom are used. However all schools do use Office 365 for email, as Gmail is rubbish!

[unixman_again]

We still use ours extensively. At the mo, it is largely a glorified network share, with staff dumping mostly word and huge powerpoint files on it. This is going to have to change, with staff using it properly, that is entering content into the VLE rather than uploading files. We have a huge push towards tablets, mostly Android, and they are finding the files are either too big to download and/or they won't open when then do. We also have some courses, where work has to be submitted via the VLE.

[Arreks]

We use Firefly constantly. Both Staff, Students and now Parents use it on a daily basis. My team use a section on there as a knowledge base essentially, whilst Staff have their own departments and info they upload.

[danbuntu]

Isn't google classroom a VLE?

[Sylv3r]

We don't have any at all in any of our schools. Instead Google Docs & Google Classroom are used. However all schools do use Office 365 for email, as Gmail is rubbish!

 

Sorry to hijack this thread slightly, I am interested in doing what you are doing using Google Classroom but continuing to use Office365 for mail. Are you still able to fully use Google Classroom as I thought it required the use of Google Mail as part of it's integration. Have you remove Google Mail for everybody or are people still using it but under a different domain to their Office365 mail.

 

Thanks

[witch]

Our moodle broke some time ago and we haven't bothered to reinstate it as it is not used at all

[Snuffkins]

We used moodle a long time ago. Eventually just used Sharepoint, but we are now moving to use Office 365 and Teacher Dashboard. So far it's doing everything we need of it.

[TwistedHelixis]

We use a combination of Google Drive, Google Sites and Google Classroom

[FN-GM]

Sorry to hijack this thread slightly, I am interested in doing what you are doing using Google Classroom but continuing to use Office365 for mail. Are you still able to fully use Google Classroom as I thought it required the use of Google Mail as part of it's integration. Have you remove Google Mail for everybody or are people still using it but under a different domain to their Office365 mail.

 

Thanks

 

Gmail is turned off for every user. When Google Classroom sends an email it just goes to the address and is routed over the internet. The exact same way you email anyone externally.

[mthomas08]

We still heavily use our Moodle but it's more in house with the SIMs link.

 

Issue from our side is we have things like SLG, RealSmart and a few other services like Kerboodle. The dream world for me would be all those systems in one, which would mean our Students dont need a dozen usernames/passwords.....

 

Our SLG and Parent Pay systems have been proven to work and well, with Parents too. We are most likely pulling the plug on RealSmart which was a waste of money. SLG seems to be more and more relied upon and likewise like Kerboodle.

[tj2419]

I have a question about the schools that do not have a VLE or moved to sharepoint or google classroom.

 

Do you have parent logins? e.g. parents access assessment and attendance information. As i cannot see a way to integrate that with google or microsoft classroom.

 

That's the main thing that holds us back moving away from moodle as we have it linked with sims for timetables etc.

[CAWJames]

We use Moodle for everything, it is the heart of our student offering, blended learning and all that. We have had it in place for 6 or 7 years now, and it goes from strength to strength.

 

We don't pay any support on it, and have a full time VLE technician. All looked after in house. 2 virtual servers, 1 CentOS 7 VM for live VLE and another CentOS 7 VM for a test version. They are rock solid and we provide it 24/7, next to no downtime, unless planned.

 

We have it integrated with e-Stream as well, so we can use lesson capture with the encoder and have it nearly automatically publish straight to a carousel on the correct course. We also use it for internal exams. We were praised by Ofsted in our use of it.

[asc]

Shut down our Frog box about 6 months ago....

WisePay for Payments

ClassCharts for Attendance and Behaviour data

Kerboodle for Online Textbooks (this replaces SORN files in Frog)

Everything else in between is handled by Google Docs, Sites and Classroom!

I gave a talk at BETT about using Google Sites as VLE - if you PM me I can send you the slides!

[dblight]

Same here, frog being switched off soon and some of the data being migrated to Google Classroom. No need for a full blown VLE anymore. We never changed to FrogOS/FrogLearn or whatever they call their latest iteration these days!

[maark]

We went away from its learning to google classroom which staff are using a lot now and is good and free.

Don't understand the problem with gmail - most staff use the sync tool to Outlook because they like Outlook and are used to it which works well.

[armadillo]

Same here, frog being switched off soon and some of the data being migrated to Google Classroom. No need for a full blown VLE anymore. We never changed to FrogOS/FrogLearn or whatever they call their latest iteration these days!

 

Hi, we are thinking in leaving frog and use Google Classroom, how id manage to migrate the data from Frog?

 

Thanks

[kennysarmy]

Moodle VLE here embedded very well in to the daily school life.

 

Staff/Student and Parents accounts.

 

All homework is set via the VLE and parents can see students timetable, attendance and look at their courses etc.

 

News items added to the front-page get alerted to parents via email.

 

Of course there is some duplication with items on shared drives added to the VLE - but is that a bad thing?

[zag]

As someone who is just beginning the Frog journey, i'm yet to be convinced its worth the cost or investment of time from departments.

 

The real question is what benefits does it have for student learning?

 

Our SharePoint site is also nice but does it really improve they schools teaching? Or is it just used to share files? Is that a good use of it? Loads of questions.

 

I'll be thinking about those questions some more when our contract runs out.

[CamelMan]

We dropped Moodle a few years ago - staff not interested and was just used as a way to share files for students - you can replace that with Google Docs / Classroom, Office 365 etc.

 

We are O365 and Im waiting to to see how Microsoft Classroom stacks up against Google before committing to either.

[mavhc]

Any web based system must be entirely usable by the web, web editor etc. Downloading and uploading Office files is a waste of time.

 

If it takes more than 2 clicks to create something it's badly designed. See Google forms (good) vs whatever pre ajax thing you have in a VLE. There's a reason no one uses it.

 

Multiple choice tests take too long to create, who's going to think up 3 wrong answers, and are a terrible educational tool anyway.

 

Can't write maths, science, engineering or draw diagrams easily with computers, so that's all out.

 

Can be useful for English, commenting on essays as a teacher; other essay related subjects, History, Religious Studies etc.

 

We're getting to the point where something like Geography is possible, photos, diagrams, but graphs still suck.

[tj2419]

We have decided to jump on a pilot with a new company to the UK. We use O365 across the school so we was trying to hold out for dashboard. We met with a company at the trade show in Jan and they seem to deliver exactly what we need. They are a partner of MS and have embedded the functionality of a standard VLE inside O365. Parental App with instant notifications for homework, school notices, etc , Attendance, assignments with a hand in tool, grade books and ILPs, Utilising the existing O365 tools such as calendar, email, OneNote.

I'll keep you posted to how we get on. Dashboard was never going to write back to Sims but these do.

We have 980 students so for us £1200pa is cheaper than £5k which we was paying.

 

What's the company name please?

[limawhiskey]

We still use Frog throughout the school, but a few years back we created a post for someone to work on it extensively and he's been great at working with departments and developing the Parent Engagement Portal. Even our public facing site is built on Frog.

 

We still find staff in departments doing their own thing, but that's down to (lack of) training IMO - e.g. a lot of new staff in the department and they just don't know how to use it so fall back to shared files and powerpoints, or someone has the bright idea of getting a departmental assistant to create a website, for example.

 

Transition to Frog Learn has been tricky with all the legacy stuff in Frog3 but starting to get department sites moved over now.

 

Gmail is rubbish!

@FN-GM - why do you find it rubbish? We've just migrated to Gmail and it's great (ok, we were using Frog Mail before)!

Edited August 9, 2016 by limawhiskey

[FN-GM]

 

@FN-GM - why do you find it rubbish? We've just migrated to Gmail and it's great (ok, we were using Frog Mail before)!

 

Just a few points

 

Lack of an address book

Lack of email encryption - have to use a third party at a cost

Outlook plugin is rubbish

Public folders (or similar)