Is COVID-19 the Resurrection of the VLE?

[E_G_R2]

Hi,

 

just an idle thought but is the current pandemic going to bring back to the forefront of education the VLE (if it ever went away?)

 

Any thoughts for or against would be good to know.

[Norphy]

In my opinion:

 

VLEs can work well when:

 

• They are properly planned
  
• They are properly managed
  
• There are proper content manager(s) for them
  
• They are evangelised by a member of staff
  
• SLT gets behind it and ensures that people use them
  
• Students and staff are properly trained to use the thing
  

 

When they're forced upon the school (Anyone remember Digital Brain) or when the school puts one in because they're expected to or fail to do one or all of the above, they stagnate and die.

 

Now is not the time to put one in if you don't have one. These things need careful and thorough planning. Just bunging one in in a hurry will result in failure and a miserable experience for everyone.

[jmak]

Agree with everything @Norphy says.

 

Given what is available free through MS and Google, I personally can't see the need for a dedicated platform - they perform the functions that I thought were useful for VLEs and are easier to set up than Moodle.

 

As we don't know how long lockdown will last, it might be worth trying to get something going on a "rapid deployment" basis. Still needs planning, but it's potentially an opportunity where staff are more open to spending the time learning to use it properly and tech support teams might have more time to dedicate to implementing it.

[3s-gtech]

Moodle still gives that nice week by week ‘lesson plan’ layout with attached resources, comments, all by subject and teacher.

 

Ours would have been ideal for all of this, but it’s hardly used now so would have taken masses of training to re-energise it first - it isn’t nearly as simple as ‘log in to Teams, there’s your classes, go!’

[E_G_R2]

I've seen some posts from Teachers leaders talking about using VLE's but wonder if they are confused and view something like Teams as being a VLE.

 

We have Moodle but as far as I know only two teachers use it.

[Danp]

We already had Firefly in place (a VLE really) but I've rushed through the roll out of Teams over the past month or so. That has almost killed Firefly in that time! Teams is free (because we pay for O365 for email, other tools are a bonus) and Firefly isn't cheap.

[JATSO]

From my experience of using Moodle and Frog the teachers just couldn't be bothered with the concept of managing the platform and creating content and no one teacher would take responsibility for it and when they left it just fell by the wayside. The concept is good but without the dedication to make it work it becomes nothing but a folly.

[JonnyAlpha]

We are a two form entry Primary School and have had dB Primary's VLE in our school since I started as a student (2014), it was at the time used a lot but over the years as personalities left it fizzled away. I took over as Computing lead in 2017 and had every intention of bringing it back up to scratch, as I saw it as being the best way to introduce young learners to the digital world but in a safe manner. Our HT however announced that he was going to get rid of it - this thankfully never happened.

 

We tried to re-introduce it and had an extended trial on the additional curriculum resources, but without being allocated staff meeting time to re-introduce it, again it never took off.

 

Then came the LOCKDOWN......

 

Shortly after schools closed thier doors to all but children of key workers, teachers started asking "Can we use Google Classroom or Zoom for remote learning", I suggested that rather than try to introduce a platform that no staff are familiar with why not try and use what we already have.

I updated the VLE and we have rolled it out, the children love it and staff have now started to use it to set and monitor Home Learning.

 

I have attended a Google Education and Microsoft Teams Presentations and whilst they both have thier merit, for a Primary School I still think they are not ideal. The VLE is not ideal and does not offer the collaborative tools such as Video Conferencing and Chat, but IMHO it is more Primary School age orientated.

 

What I think is needed is a midway solution, e.g the look and feel of dB Primary's VLE but with the added grown up functionality, that way you can have one solution for every aspect of school life.

I just wish I was a developer with the ability to roll something out :-)

 

Just my tuppenth worth

[E_G_R2]

Interesting, Teams dose seem to be more orientated to secondary pupils IMO.

@JATSO our moodle remains the domain of just two teachers who use it but aren't interested in its upkeep. I've looked at what they do and it can be done in Teams but they are just set in their ways.

[bgarston]

Interesting, Teams dose seem to be more orientated to secondary pupils IMO.

@JATSO our moodle remains the domain of just two teachers who use it but aren't interested in its upkeep. I've looked at what they do and it can be done in Teams but they are just set in their ways.

 

Isn't that just always the case.

[chazzy2501]

Teams is currently getting a push like no other service we've ever used. The fact it creates the class groups through SDS is enough to help adoption.

 

We even have staff quizzes and are doing weekly briefings through it.

 

I got Teams running about 1 week before lockdown, thanks to rumblings here. without SDS it would have been a tough sell.

[JonnyAlpha]

The fact it creates the class groups through SDS is enough to help adoption.

.

Sorry - relative nube - SDS?

[MicrodigitUK]

Sorry - relative nube - SDS?

 

School Data Sync - with your school information management system, like Capita SIMS etc...