TALMOS

[alan-d]

OK so far I'm hearing that costs are high and the sales reps are pushy, however I'm not hearing much about the system itself.

 

Is it any good? I suspect the answer is yes, but the big niggle I have at the moment is there is very little info from the TALMOS web site - the screenshots alone are only postage stamps

 

To be fair my ICT Coord is sceptical about it but is tasked with looking into it further.

 

Pushy salesman I can deal with (eat em for breakfast ), however if the system is right for us and a reasonable price negotiated, what technical issues should I look out for and raise questions about?

[alan-d]

@ Russ - sorry I started a new thread before I found this one - can you tag this thread http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=4748 to this one

[ChrisH]

Done

[Sylv3r]

We are starting to use it now- if you want to know more or need some advice let me know via email or PM. It's certainly an interesting system!

 

Hi

 

We are starting to look about as to what to chose for our VLE system. The Senior Management here are very keen on TALMOS but I have seen mixed reviews on this site. Can anybody PM with their opinions with the system, I will have a large amount of say in the direction of which VLE we choose and I don't want the school to be landed with something that is expensive and unusable.

 

Thanks

 

Andrew

[alan-d]

We are starting to use it now- if you want to know more or need some advice let me know via email or PM. It's certainly an interesting system!

 

Hi

 

We are starting to look about as to what to chose for our VLE system. The Senior Management here are very keen on TALMOS but I have seen mixed reviews on this site. Can anybody PM with their opinions with the system, I will have a large amount of say in the direction of which VLE we choose and I don't want the school to be landed with something that is expensive and unusable.

 

Thanks

 

Andrew

 

It looks very much as though we have put TALMOS on the back burner for a while and are gong to give our Moodle site a fair run.

 

The salesman is very pushy and it is understandable why some give in and buy the system. We found that the price dropped and the added bonuses got better each time the salesman rang, so whatever you do don't agree a price before at least the 6th call from him/her.

 

It looks a good system in that it ties in with Sims and Nova-T, however there is a big change to KS3,4 and 5 coming up in 2008 which means nearly everything you put in now will have to be redone in 2008. There is no easy way of updating the info ie schemes of work etc. The TALMOS rep was unaware of this fact and neither was the company by all accounts.

 

Nice system if you can afford it but be aware of upcoming changes - it would pay off to wait till post 2008 at the moment.

[GrumbleDook]

Yes ... the sales team are very pushy and that is one of the reasons why we told them to go away ... Kingswood was not so lucky (he is in the school just down the road).

 

One of the main selling points of TALMOS is that they will take your existing resources and materials and put them onto the new system ... I am still waiting to here how successful this is and how good (and usable) those converted resources are.

[kingswood]

The "stuff" goes on the TALMOS system nicely. We just purchased the excellent Brittanica module and everyone is impressed. But the system isn't actually *working* yet, even after I sent the providers an email outlining our desire to push ahead. They are, in fact, slow. Our spearhead department will make it successful, and I suspect with SMT now pushing the uptake of TALMOS and other VLE-like things going on elsewhere on our system this will be the year the staff actually see something happening with it...of course if we do see it going all will be impressed.

 

I had the good fortune of sitting down with one of the co-developers for over three hours one afternoon when it was installed, and he showed me some fantastic features. It's nothing you can't do with Moodle, and that would have been my personal choice, but I didn't get the say. The Head did. It's his call. In any case what TALMOS can do is pretty much unlimited. It's very modular and looks easy to update and use.

 

What I *will* do if you like is keep you all updated when we run it "proper", and could include screen shots etc etc for those interested.

 

Paul

[alan-d]

That would be useful kingswood - Thanks

[Sylv3r]

One of the main selling points of TALMOS is that they will take your existing resources and materials and put them onto the new system ... I am still waiting to here how successful this is and how good (and usable) those converted resources are.

 

That is one of the reasons I liked it, as I didn't want either teachers moaning in the first instance about having to put all their resources onto the system before we even get started using it and I also didn't want the job to fall to one of my technicians as a) it would not be a valuable use of their time and b) they probably wouldn't know which resource fits into which Keystage, unit etc.

 

@Kingswood

 

It would be useful if you could keep us informed cheers.

[DaveCoop]

HI Guys, Talmos isn’t as bad as it seems we have been using it for nearly 3 years. My biggest problem is there is no documentation or guidelines as when we signed up i would have nothing to do with it, as it was all remotely looked after, backups etc but that is not the case as we have to do the lot. It is our technician’s SharePoint design that they pinched for the design of their SharePoint site.

Shouldn’t they pay for that ?

Please contact me if you want any more information