Frog or RM's offering. Any advice?

[lew_bob]

*Frog or RM's offering?

 

Any one have any advice or warnings on these two offerings?

 

We seem to be in a position to get one or the other but i'm just feeling a 50/50 feeling towards them both so need some advice to help swing me so I can advise those above.

 

thanks,

Lew-bob

[andykemp]

Not seen RM's offering, but I have been quite impressed by what I have seen of Frog, and they seem to be generally well thought of on these forums...

[MicrodigitUK]

100% Frog there VLE system in way more advanced than the current version of RM Kalidos VLE.

 

And also RM are promising functionality that they haven’t even finished codeing yet, as there concentrating on getting CC4 stable first.

 

If you don’t believe me just get the Frog and RM in for a free demo (that’s what I did). RM has some nice mock-up screen shots but that’s about as fare as it goes.

 

For us it was a close call between an in-house moodle system and frog, but as I and my team don’t have enough time to tweak with moodle we are going for frog next September.

 

RM Kalidos was even below Uniservaty in brownie points when I did my VLE investigations.

[russdev]

When did you get rm for demo as all new features are sitting here on our klp. In my view the klp is advance compared to other lp mainly due to advance assessment stuff on it.

 

Give me a pm if want a demo of our rm klp I can do it either virtually or can come and visit my school.

 

Russ

[Sylv3r]

I've not used either in a working environment but I have heard positive things about Frog from this forum and further afield.

 

No matter which VLE you choose you need the right staff, training on board and to try and sell it as much as you can as often as you can.

 

We have had the use of the VLE in our school priorities this year and you ideally need the backing of someone on the leadership team to help push the product across all departments.

 

The school however needs reminding that this is an ongoing thing and will not have overnight success with a VLE which ever flavour you choose.

[MicrodigitUK]

When did you get rm for demo as all new features are sitting here on our klp. In my view the klp is advance compared to other lp mainly due to advance assessment stuff on it.

Russ

 

About 3-4 months ago with RM and when I and the ICT rep started talking about some of the fetchers, every other statement was not yes but this is planed for development in the near future.

 

Personally we have had older versions off Kalidos in the past and the staff have not got on well with the systems to the point where they where uninstalled

 

Frog just ticks all of the boxes for our pupils, staff and us as tech support.

[Steven_Cleaver]

We went with Kaleidos from RM here because the LEA were offering it at a reduced cost as they were trying to get all the schools in the borough using one VLE.We thought this would be a good idea all schools working on the same VLE supported by LEA & RM. To be honest we didn't find the system very user friendly, didn't really catch Staff or Pupils imagination we have spent about 18 months using the system & although it was OK some staff were using it in lessons etc it hadn't moved on very far. It is nice that it integrates with SIM's reasonably well.

 

We decided to have look around at this point as we didn't feel that we wanted to continue with Kaleidos & we had some issues over the proposed upgrade to the new version their were other reasons but I don't want to go into too much detail.

 

We have spent the past few months looking around & have decided to go with Frog we were really impressed with their presentation & they also set us up on a dummy system where you case can take a look at some of the functionality. We then visited a couple of schools that were using Frog & spoke to a number of people their we also went to a presentation by a couple of schools that had been using Frog for varying lengths of time. What impresses me most is the potential of the system for both curriculum & Admin the more we look at the system the more potential we can see, also they seem a very open to suggestions & idea. I have also seen a lot of positive things about Frog on the Forum & have done a fair amount of research.

 

But be aware Frog is not cheap in initial setup costs but as someone has already mentioned it is a good idea to get them both in & weigh up the Pro's & Con's. Personally if you have got the money go with Frog as I truly think this is the best I have seen as a VLE. You can also give staff\students access to school systems\apps via secure gateway at an extra cost.

 

Hope this helps.

[dsm]

Frog, no competition.

 

The initial costs are quite high but do talk to them. They will provide you with your own server which is housed in your school so access times are much faster and if the Internet went down, you could still use the resources on the VLE. They also provide you with a UPS.

 

Going back to the costs for the moment, I think most schools will find that if you price all VLEs over a 5 year period, Frog will actually cost you less in the long run so that's worth doing. You're not limited on user accounts either so if you need more users in the future you can add them without additional costs - most VLEs charge you more for this.

 

We have Frog and are just in the process of setting up their secure gateway feature. This allows staff/students to log in (terminal services style) from anywhere in the world and access the software you have on your network. This is great if you are using specialist software that students are not likely to have at home because they can use the software without buying it!

 

A few other Frog features:

 

AD integration

Access documents (home and network shares) from home

SIMS/CMIS integration

Parental Portal option - allow parents to log in to see forums, child's attendance, reports, detentions etc.

Forums and chat rooms

Easy to use toolkits which allow staff to create their own department web pages

 

 

Where abouts are you in the country are you?

[Linfit]

We are a Frog school and I would highly recommend it. It is very versatile, is developing rapidly, and the tech support is very good. The fact that the server is 'ours' and is in our server room was a real plus for us and should be a major selling point for anyone with even a slightly dodgy or slow internet connection. I have run several traning sessions for staff and they amazed at how quickly they can put together quite sophisticated content after just a couple of hours training.

 

BUT - its all about the planning, the ability to embed the VLE development into the schools overall development, and practical and serious backing from SMT. Without that, any VLE is a waste of time, and Frog in particular, because what you are getting is in effect a set of building blocks to create your own system rather than an off the shelf solution; it needs time, resources, and a serious commitment to get anywhere, not just the SMT signing off on the cost and then moving on to the next thing.

 

Its taken us two and a half years to make real progress, and in the last year things have come on a great deal, but we have a keen Head and an SMT member whose main focus is the development of e-learning.

[lew_bob]

Thanks for all the replies.

 

Yes we have had RM and Frog in already but I ended up 50/50 as one seemed to be technically good (RM with sims connection and other ILP bits and bobs) whilst Frog seems to have a much better chance of simply being used, thanks to its modern GUI and also seems to be just better at the whole new media side of things thanks to the building blocks.

 

ahhh decisions decisions

[gshaikh]

It's all about Frog,

[jamesb]

A few years ago I had to look at various different VLEs, and Frog came out far and away the best of the bunch.

[russdev]

Also look at what help you get implementing the lp I can only talk from rm view but certainly consultancy sessions the school got helped us roll and plan out our lp.

 

Russ

[john316]

We've had all the major players in in the past few weeks and we've seen the good, the bad and the damn right ugly! Frog was just heads above everything else and the preview of the 3.0 release looks fantastic. We're just in the process of signing off on the project with the hope of getting it installed before May Half Term!

[danIT]

Would love to speak with people actually using Frog, would love to see what people have done with the vast array of tools in terms of delivering learning resources for pupils.

 

I havent seen any yet, looks pretty, but thats about it?

 

I want to be proved wrong lol : )

[RyburnMark]

Would love to speak with people actually using Frog, would love to see what people have done with the vast array of tools in terms of delivering learning resources for pupils.

 

Apologies - I generally try to keep out of these type of discussions in case I'm accused of bias or advertising. However, I'm going to break my own rules just this once

 

See http://www.frogtrade.com/whitepapers or http://www.frogtrade.com/casestudies - both have a number of schools, what they are doing and contact details of key people to speak with there.

 

I'd also like to agree with a couple of other comments, which are absolutely true whichever VLE you have - 'Linfit' is right (16/04 below), you need buy in and drive from the top, and 'russdev' (17/04) is also spot on, the implementation and planning are key aspects of success

 

Cheers

[danIT]

Thanks for your comments and links, but id rather speak to a school using Frog that isnt on your list. I know that probably sounds a bit backwards but I want to see a normal run of the mill school.

[RyburnMark]

No problem - I understand your reasoning

[lew_bob]

RyburnMark what about ILP's?

 

I know frog does the learning part winderfully but my worry is regarding the future and online ILP's.

[Cobalt]

We've taken on Kaleidos thanks to a subsidised offering and we're now tied into it for several years I believe.

 

It's alright, nothing spectacular though. On the plus side, it's very intuitive and I don't think anyone can argue that it's difficult to use, either as a staff member creating content or as a pupil navigating. However it has a major flaw - Speed. If you've got a slow or unreliable connection, forget it. We're running a 2Mb connection due to costs of upgrading and it's very sluggish with just a handful of users, so getting an entire class on is going to be a no-no for the time being which is a big limiting factor. It seems reasonably responsive from home on my 8Mb broadband so it would probably be acceptable in schools with a half-decent connection.

 

The other problem is that student's logins are generated, meaning that we have no control over them. Ideally, we'd have liked something tied into AD so we could stick with a single set of login credentials for ease but again it's just another niggle and another set of passwords to constantly have to change.

 

I know that somebody mentioned in-house solutions like Frog can be used even if the Internet is down, and whilst that's obviously true, the same applies in reverse - Nobody can access it from home if the connection is down. Yes, I like services to be available in school, though it's important that VLE's can be accessed from anywhere, so again a lot rides on the quality of your connection.

[russdev]

Over usernames we decided in end to have our network logins the same as our portal usernames.

 

Russ

[Cobalt]

That may be an option in the future when our feeder schools send kids through that are already on Kaleidos (I believe all Primary schools in our area are now using this as their weapon of choice), though at present it would rock the boat to too much of a degree to be practical - Obviously the kids are familiar with the present choice of usernames and structure, and we also tie these to various other systems such as our printing card system.

[russdev]

Sorry should of been clear we kept old ones and started that with this current year 7.

 

Russ

[Andie]

(Sorry, Russ, I know you like kaleidos and keep saying it workks well, but...)

 

Our LEA got kaleidos so we didn't get a say in it. We had LEA provided training on it on version 1, which was horrible. Then along came version 2. It is better but, after having Kaleidos for at least 18 months, probably longer now, no one in the school I work in is using it. And I've checked with a few other schools - same thing. I think perhaps one primary in whole LEA is trying to make a go of it. Everything takes so long (loading a powerpoint took two minutes), there are too many steps, it has an annoying default home page, it isn't intuitive. Yes, it can take your users off of your MIS. But what's the point if the users don't then use it? If FROG set up a dummy for you to use, that's brilliant. Get some real live teachers to try it and if they like it go for it.

[Andie]

On the plus side, it's very intuitive and I don't think anyone can argue that it's difficult to use, either as a staff member creating content or as a pupil navigating. However it has a major flaw - Speed. If you've got a slow or unreliable connection, forget it. We're running a 2Mb connection due to costs of upgrading and it's very sluggish with just a handful of users, so getting an entire class on is going to be a no-no for the time being which is a big limiting factor. It seems reasonably responsive from home on my 8Mb broadband so it would probably be acceptable in schools with a half-decent connection.

 

The other problem is that student's logins are generated, meaning that we have no control over them. Ideally, we'd have liked something tied into AD so we could stick with a single set of login credentials for ease but again it's just another niggle and another set of passwords to constantly have to change.

 

 

I will happily argue that it is difficult to use! But I agree with the speed issue. And I'd forgotten about the pupil username problem: for some of our primary children, having to remember two different logins is a nightmare.