LGFL MLE - This made me soooooo angry.

[budgester]

Good old LFGL insult the people who are doing all the hard work again.

 

Check it out.

 

What sort of enthusiast are you ?

 

The Isolationist

The Enthusiastic Pragmatist

The Evangelical

 

So we've been running moodle VLE for about 18 months and now they call me some sort of software nutter.

 

http://www.lgfl.net/lgfl/sections/learningplatform/

 

Love and kisses

 

Budgester

learning_platforms_document.doc

[Chafftech]

We are on LGFL as well; basically we cannot use the Digital Brain at the moment because it is not suitable for secondary schools; It does not integrate with any systems and it is completely alien environment.

 

We have been told by our ICT secondary avisor that Moodle is against DFES guidelines. So at the moment we have no VLE.

[OutToLunch]

Seem to have missed category IV, The "I have thoroughly evaluated all the solutions and this open source product is as good as if not better the commercial solutions available to schools"ist... Obviously a typo! Submit it to Slashdot and watch the ensuing mouth foaming...

[webman]

What do they have against DIY kitchens? It's OK if you're a joiner - just like a competent IT Team can install and maintain Moodle (technically, not content-ly 8)). This bit annoys me:

 

Examples of the REAL costs (Considering the total cost of ownership):

 

Organisations/institutions wishing to use an open source solution for its learning platform will have to consider the following costs:

 

1. Development of open source product to design acceptable to whole institution. For example, many of these products are designed for Higher Education and might need adapting for use in schools.

2. Installation of a web server(s) able to cope with scaling and concurrent users

3. Installation and management of a database server(s)

4. (generally) Installation of a ‘php’ and ‘sql’ server

5. Technician/developer able to install and run a stable and scalable installation.

6. Maintenance of new releases

7. Full back-ups

8. Security of institution network (as the network will be accessed from outside the institution)

9. Training of staff

 

2-4, possibly 5, can and should be encompassed into one point.

 

6-9 have to be done with ANY platform, with 8 being a given with any network environment.

 

[CyberNerd]

hmm, any ideas who sits on thw LGFL advisory board? this seems to be particularly Anti Moodle without any coherent argument. " its good enough for universities but not good enough for you " ?

[budgester]

Seem to have missed category IV, The "I have thoroughly evaluated all the solutions and this open source product is as good as if not better the commercial solutions available to schools"ist... Obviously a typo! Submit it to Slashdot and watch the ensuing mouth foaming...

 

Am I that evil ? What do you reckon, would the LGFL stand up to a slashdotting ? Maybe the register would do a better job.

[TechMonkey]

@webman: Which kind of shows their bias. If they are pushing digital brain then it looks like their big reasons are schools don't need to worry about points 6-9. It's the usual make your choice and make an argument based on the reasonings you want to make your choice appear the best. Also the more points you can make that show alternatives in a bad light win the argument (in some peoples logic!)

 

I have looked at digital brain and ran away screaming! My local secondary (not who I work for) started using it and have now moved away due to expansion problems. We had a problem with them as a message sent internally at the secondary school with Digital Brain managed to get circulated to every person on their mail server!! An interesting bug.

 

I guess all we can do is keep lobbying to get Moodle included in tests. We are looking at testing Moodle out and implementing it soon and will hopefully be pushing our LEA to look at it as they have just started looking at options.

[CyberNerd]

Am I that evil ? What do you reckon, would the LGFL stand up to a slashdotting ?

 

lol, maybe the wider community should be aware of this, but aren't you provided by their pipe ? you'd be sort of DOSing yourself 8O

[webman]

A learning platform that runs solely from a hosted server is bad idea in my opinion because a) you need a reliable connection all the way over to their servers that could be at your LEA or on the other side of the world. If your internet goes down you're screwed. b) Use of bandwidth - speaks for itself c) putting the responsibility of the VLE into the hands of others - which may or may not be good depending on your requirements.

[Jake]

Didnt I read something on BBC website the other day that the LGFL was being scrapped due to essentially being crap??

 

EDTI :: Oh wait..no..that was the NGfL

[wesleyw]

I would have thought the sentence "Moodle is against DFES guideline" should be looked at seeing as they are only guidelines you don't have to do them also I don't remember reading that anywhere at DFes or Becta? Could someone point me to that particular point?

 

Wes

[budgester]

Didnt I read something on BBC website the other day that the LGFL was being scrapped due to essentially being crap??

 

EDIT :: Oh wait..no..that was the NGfL

 

I jumped for joy at that, then realised that the LFGL portal escaped the cull.

 

The internet connection is ok, apart from they never let you know when they are doing essential maintainence and don't even have a status page.

 

But the LGFL portal really is painfull to use, it keeps touting the fact that you only need one password for all off your access. Where in fact you just need one password to access the LGFL portal. So nothing different to any other website then. At least our own install of moodle if authenticated against our domain so the student do only have to use one username and password.

 

Regards

 

Budgester

[russdev]

right becta guidelines are those those bidding for money under vle scheme a school can choose any solution they like but they need to look at how the solution fits into there school..

 

russ

[Chafftech]

I would have thought the sentence "Moodle is against DFES guideline" should be looked at seeing as they are only guidelines you don't have to do them also I don't remember reading that anywhere at DFes or Becta? Could someone point me to that particular point?

 

Wes

 

Agreed, I have never had shown to me in writing, I think it is LGFL trying to kow tow everyone into digital brain simply because they bought it and dont want the money they spend going to waste

[russdev]

In fact dfes have said in no uncertain terms schools cn choose what they like but if they opt away from lea vle they need to say why...

 

I will dig out the details

 

 

As for moodle in fact moodle its self is not allowed but the fact that moodle dosnt have any finacial history that stops its bidding...

 

russell

[Irazmus]

As for moodle in fact moodle its self is not allowed but the fact that moodle dosnt have any finacial history that stops its bidding...

Which is daft as it's entire 'business model' negates the need for major financing. What do we have to do to prove that you don't need to throw money at a problem in order to fix it?

[pete]

What annoys me is the idea that a DIY solution is touted as "too technical". WTF do they think we're here for?

 

Cue muttering about 6K + 2K yearly for a hosted SIMS VLE. Why yes, actually I _do_ have reservations about your external webserver talking to my SIMS server that holds our finance data.

 

If a DIY solution does what the _school_ needs, there's no need for further discussion.

[Geoff]

Lancashire and Cumbria GFL's have deployed Moodle btw.

Open Univeristy has also chosen Moodle.

[mighty.grey.eagle]

Interesting to note that they quote the Open University as an informed source in their document and then, as Geoff has mentioned, ignore the fact that Moodle has become their VLE of choice.

[GrumbleDook]

A little bit of history with regards to OU and Moodle.

 

The OU have been using a commercial solution for many years, FirstClass (owned by Open Text) ... but they are given an almost free rein with the code for it.

 

They already spend a sizeable amount re-developing and existing commercial solution and the move to redeveloping an open source solution will actually work out cheaper for them in the log run.

 

A large chunk of the costs of development is not based around working with Moodle but looking into provider and alternative to the email facilities the FirstClass already provides. Also there are maigration costs.

 

Having worked closely with Open Text (FirstClass is our existing email and VLE solution) I am aware that commercial VLEs also require investment to be developed for schools ... this is one reason why we will eventually move away from FirstClass ourselves ... but we will be moving to a Learning Gateway based system for most things (part of a group collaboration between several schools), but will also have available other solutions ... Moodle and Joomla being the main ones.

 

Most VLEs can done DIY. I know of several EduGeek members that have setup chunks of LG on their own ... other have Moodle ... heck ... even Bodington (the VLE originally built by University of Leeds, now developed by University of Leeds, UHI, Oxford and Eton College ... and definitely not the northern beverage) gets used.

 

TCOs can be made to show every possible eventuallity ... they are another form of statistics. Part of this strikes me as an RBC / LA trying to cover their tracks because they are going to be spending more money than they need to on a solution that they think works but people at the chalkface know won't work.

[mighty.grey.eagle]

Thanks Tony for the OU background.

 

What people miss about the TCO is the cost of support. You would have to pay an absolute fortune to get the equivalent support of the Moodle community.

 

It was interesting at the Moodlemoot last year where an Oxford University speaker, talking about Bodington, confessed that a number of departments had set up their own Moodle systems for the extra features and in order to get control for themselves! At the time Bodington had blogs and Moodle didn't. That appeared to be the only thing in it's favour.

 

However if Bodington had had an extra "D" in the spelling I might have changed my mind But then again it has got stronger over the years, changed it's colour, got taken over by Interbrew, then they closed down the brewery.....don't get me started.

[budgester]

Thanks Tony for the OU background.

 

What people miss about the TCO is the cost of support. You would have to pay an absolute fortune to get the equivalent support of the Moodle community.

 

It was interesting at the Moodlemoot last year where an Oxford University speaker, talking about Bodington, confessed that a number of departments had set up their own Moodle systems for the extra features and in order to get control for themselves!

 

I think that this is surely at least one thing in moodle's favour, the fact that we actually have a real life usergroup. How many other VLE's do you know other schools that are using it. I feel that the LGFL digitalbrain is someones pet project and they can't see past it. The document says that they are trying to create transferable skills, and yet the only place that uses digitalbrain is the LGFL, whee as moodle is used world wide. It's a shame there are no hard numbers on the number of installs of each VLE.

 

Oh well that politics.

 

Regards

 

Budgester

[GrumbleDook]

Digital Brain is also used by E2BN ... and a number of other places ...

 

Whether it is used successfully or not is another matter. (I know of one sales rep who has left Digital Brain after he becames so frustrated that the work he was doing with schools was not being backed up by the quality of the product ... he has been very apologetic to every school he came in contact with.)

[webman]

I believe some catholic schools in this area use it, too.

[pmassingham]

Essex LEA does have a VLE 'project' underway. Some secondary schools are participating - we are not as we would have to pay for it. Moodle is a low cost alternative to those being sold commercially and we had no choice but to go down this route since are budgets are so tight. We are developing Moodle on a local web server that has a secure public facing IP. If the internet goes down, we will be able to access the Intranet and VLE. When it is up, then those and the website will be available on the Internet. Moodle currently fulfills all of our needs and we will use this to embed the VLE culture into the school whilst the 'political' aspects are being sorted - this of course means that we will have to pay commercial prices rather than open source 'costs' at some point. Why is it that commercial interests will always succeed against the open source alternatives? Rhetorical of course!