Kaleidos - happy users of the Learning Spaces

[vle_lover]

It appears that many schools have Kaleidos, I don't seem to be able to find many positive comments about Kaleidos.

 

I really believe that VLEs work - the bit that is about student - teacher interaction or to be precise the "Learning Bit"

 

Having spent time with the Learning spaces uploading resources and linking them to courses, I find myself a bit underwhelmed at what I've got for the amount of effort put in.

 

Has anybody seen or even have a good Kaleidos implementation that say half the teachers use and half the students regularly use (at least twice a week).

 

I have heard of lots of people who have been told that it's ok in a school down the road, but have yet to talk to anyone directly, who smiles and is as enthusiastic as a Moodle user, apart from people who have been to a show and seen a demo, or paid 20k for the pleasure and now feel obliged to say it's great.

 

As I'm stuck with it, and it looks like a lot of people will be stuck with it if it wins the BSF contract, I just wanted a little reassurance that somebody has got it to work to some extent.

 

 

 

Thanks

 

Come on 70 views and nobody has anything nice to say about kaleidos?

Edited September 17, 2009 by vle_lover

[kitsch]

I'd love to be positive about Kaleidos... um...

[kitsch]

It appears that many schools have Kaleidos, I don't seem to be able to find many positive comments about Kaleidos.

 

I'll let you know when it happens.... I am a relative newbie with Kaleidos, but it doesn't seem to put itself across as totally and unconditionally brilliant.

 

Having spent time with the Learning spaces uploading resources and linking them to courses, I find myself a bit underwhelmed at what I've got for the amount of effort put in.

 

Yes.. it seems, to an inexperienced eye, a bit clunky and unwealdly. I'll come back to you in due course.

 

Really, I'm trying to be positive, but I'm hoping my smile doesn't become a forced, muscle-aching grimace... as I feel it might... very soon.

 

I am having to give up my humble little Googlesites offering that keeps my KS3 Technology work together (keystage3.info) knocked together from odds and ends in my little cyber-shed and am having, instead, to go and work in the big, complicated Kaleidos factory, so I have to admit I'm not in a totally receptive mood.

Edited September 17, 2009 by kitsch

[Dav3y]

We paid a lot of money for Kaleidos a few years back.

We stopped using it a couple of years back and that was definately a positive step

 

Of course it may be much better now if the full web version ever got released.

[OllieC]

I've been looking at Kaleidos today... looks like it could be good if used properly. So many bits and bobs really need full staff/student participation for it to work properly.... that'll be the hardest part. :/

I'm looking at it fairly positively atm though, we have a web/VLE co-ordinator so I'm sure it'll be dealt with properly if we get it.

[EduTech]

I've been looking at Kaleidos today... looks like it could be good if used properly. So many bits and bobs really need full staff/student participation for it to work properly.... that'll be the hardest part. :/

I'm looking at it fairly positively atm though, we have a web/VLE co-ordinator so I'm sure it'll be dealt with properly if we get it.

 

That is the same with any VLE you go for, the hardest part is getting staff involved and using the VLE you need alot of help from your Senior Leadership Team. We have now finally got them backing the development and we have done timelines etc and that is now what everyone will be working to. it will make sure that our curiculum is online by Sep 2010.

 

But yeah, you say "it will be good if used properly" but that is not only a kaleidos problem that is a VLE problem all together weather it is Kaleidos, Talmos, Frog, Moodle, SharePoint etc.

 

James.

[beeswax]

That is the same with any VLE you go for, the hardest part is getting staff involved and using the VLE you need alot of help from your Senior Leadership Team. We have now finally got them backing the development and we have done timelines etc and that is now what everyone will be working to. it will make sure that our curiculum is online by Sep 2010.

 

But yeah, you say "it will be good if used properly" but that is not only a kaleidos problem that is a VLE problem all together weather it is Kaleidos, Talmos, Frog, Moodle, SharePoint etc.

 

James.

 

Spot on. At the moment I sit in school applying different tactics to get staff using our VLE, but once a managed service becomes a reality will there be room for such a person?

[bossman]

We also paid a lot of money for the kaleidos VLE which the teachers were all enthusiastic about until I installed and configured it.................then I found out that they really didn't have a clue about what they were actually going to use it for and how to use it. It has been used by the maths dept for bits and bobs but not in real anger so we have ditched it in favour of Moodle which is being used in anger now and picking up pace.

[apoth0r]

Did you mention Moodle?.......

 

Isn't Moodle fantastic and free!

[apoth0r]

I have the big meetings over the next couple of weeks with curriculum leaders, little do they know, but they will be passing on resources for me to sort out for them. Then when they have used it a bit more I shall show them how to do it. It's a slow process but IT WILL HAPPEN!

[kitsch]

I've been looking at Kaleidos today... looks like it could be good if used properly. So many bits and bobs really need full staff/student participation for it to work properly.... that'll be the hardest part. :/

I'm looking at it fairly positively atm though, we have a web/VLE co-ordinator so I'm sure it'll be dealt with properly if we get it.

 

Unlike most of you probably, I am just here as an interested internet user/teacher and start with a VLE knowledge base of practically zero. I am one of the ordinary teachers you talk about. I LOVE the internet but am baulking at the level of work our VLE is going to cause and am having an attitude problem towards it. So what hope have (we with the) the Luddites and skeptics of this world?

 

I bet it wasn't tested on them. I bet they weren't consulted. Yet they are pretty well the ones deciding a system's future success.

[OllieC]

Unlike most of you probably, I am just here as an interested internet user/teacher and start with a VLE knowledge base of practically zero. I am one of the ordinary teachers you talk about. I LOVE the internet but am baulking at the level of work our VLE is going to cause and am having an attitude problem towards it. So what hope have (we with the) the Luddites and skeptics of this world?

 

I bet it wasn't tested on them. I bet they weren't consulted. Yet they are pretty well the ones deciding a system's future success.

I've passed the details for the test accounts onto a few IT teachers and I'm going to go through it with a few others. Also a number of teachers went to the meeting RM gave on Kaleidos a few weeks ago.

 

I do think we're going to struggle to fully use it, the amount of stuff in it requires a lot of commitment from staff from the looks of it and I fully understand how busy teachers are already. I think we'll at least get the IT staff using it properly first.

[vle_lover]

I've passed the details for the test accounts onto a few IT teachers and I'm going to go through it with a few others. Also a number of teachers went to the meeting RM gave on Kaleidos a few weeks ago.

 

I do think we're going to struggle to fully use it, the amount of stuff in it requires a lot of commitment from staff from the looks of it and I fully understand how busy teachers are already. I think we'll at least get the IT staff using it properly first.

 

 

 

I'm not sure there is a lot in the Learning Spaces part of Kaleidos, what you can do seems quite restricted and hard work to make happen.

 

The trouble with getting non teachers, or those that don't teach regularly, to look at it, is they don't sit down and consider a whole course and how you would present it using the VLE.

Kaleidos "as is" is not very inspiring to either teacher or student, and really hard, slow work.

 

I was hoping someone would say, "We use the Kaleidos Learning Spaces and it's great, we use Product A to produce scorm compliant activities and they work fine, recording the details of the activities for a student"

 

I was hoping I'd just got the "wrong end of the stick" with kaleidos and just not understood what it can do.

[funkyfin2000]

VLE Lover, if you would like to PM me I could give you some information on some schools.

 

A lot of the posts above are based on a technological view, and not from a "change management view" Typical from this kind of forum of course, since its predominantly Techie based.

 

The push for VLE/Learning Platforms has to be from the top. A top down approach you might say.

 

The SMT must enforce changes that are quick wins. For Example, how about rather than printing out cover and sticking it on the Staffroom wall, you publish it in the Learning Platform! Easy Really?

 

Some schools have meetings each week to go over the diary for the week after, pop it on the Learning Platform so its viewable and consultable whenever a teacher/member of staff wants?

 

Simple and quick effective wins are what are needed....bitesize chunks you might say.....

 

Oh yeah and of course, remember this software is about the Learners and Parents rather than the Teachers!

 

The problem with schools/IT Techs is they spend far to long procrastinating about products and things they have to do, which ultimately wastes time. Get on with the parts that work (and work for the school), and build on that with direction from your SMT and you might just implement a LP that is worth using!

 

Kaleidos in my opinion is just as good as any other VLE, it's how you use it and implement it within a school that is the key, and that is in the majority what schools arn't able to do. There are many different reasons why this is, but effectively its for the reasons above, the "change management" procedure isn't being seized and the bigger picture isn't effectively being seen!

[cookie_monster]

One of the problems with VLEs is actually getting people to decide how they want to use and develop it. We're putting together a group including the tech staff and a few teachers non necessarily technical teachers to decide what we want from it.

 

Unfortunately we moved from Uniservity to Kaleidos and the staff are not impressed I haven't used it myself 'yet' but the feedback has been very negative. I'm tempted to look at Moodle but I've got so little time at the moment worried about taking on something else to manage.

[vle_lover]

VLE Lover, if you would like to PM me I could give you some information on some schools.

 

A lot of the posts above are based on a technological view, and not from a "change management view" Typical from this kind of forum of course, since its predominantly Techie based.

 

The push for VLE/Learning Platforms has to be from the top. A top down approach you might say.

 

The SMT must enforce changes that are quick wins. For Example, how about rather than printing out cover and sticking it on the Staffroom wall, you publish it in the Learning Platform! Easy Really?

 

Some schools have meetings each week to go over the diary for the week after, pop it on the Learning Platform so its viewable and consultable whenever a teacher/member of staff wants?

 

Simple and quick effective wins are what are needed....bitesize chunks you might say.....

 

Oh yeah and of course, remember this software is about the Learners and Parents rather than the Teachers!

 

The problem with schools/IT Techs is they spend far to long procrastinating about products and things they have to do, which ultimately wastes time. Get on with the parts that work (and work for the school), and build on that with direction from your SMT and you might just implement a LP that is worth using!

 

Kaleidos in my opinion is just as good as any other VLE, it's how you use it and implement it within a school that is the key, and that is in the majority what schools arn't able to do. There are many different reasons why this is, but effectively its for the reasons above, the "change management" procedure isn't being seized and the bigger picture isn't effectively being seen!

 

 

 

I agree with the top down approach, and am very interested in seeing a reference site, with more than a third of the teachers and learners using Kaleidos Learning Spaces, but ...

 

I think the best gains to be had from the technology are the Learning and Studying bit, i.e. the Learning Spaces. The portal is ok for displaying information but not much else.

 

I might be a techie but I have been looking at the teacher and student interfaces, and I don't find it very inviting to use, from either a teaching / authoring or from a student / learning point of view.

 

It is just so painfully slow to use and just very clunky in nearly every way, just count the number of clicks and dialog boxes to do almost anything.

 

If we want to inspire our students into extending study time out of the class room by using the VLE, rather than just having it used in a ICT classroom it's got to be better and compete at least in speed with facebook, myspace, youtube etc, if not in looks and utility.

 

I agree entirely about the cover, it is a really good idea, but if you are moving from into a class room at the beginning of a lessson and it takes 5 minutes to logon to your LAN plus a minute to logon to Kaleidos and then say another minute to navigate to the lesson (if you are quick at it and not distracted by students), you have lost quite a chunk of your lesson and the students attention, plus perhaps there are materials / text books to collect prior to the lesson.

 

I think you have to look at what you want as a whole, from authoring the content to the delivery, and start using the technology in small areas to at least know what you want out of it, and be able to demonstrate best practice with your VLE of choice.

 

I think you need to have a target for success other than just installing it and training everybody on what it is, say as above 1/3 of teacher and 1/3 of students using it(for a predetermined amout of time per week) within 2 school terms. I don't even care what the numbers are I just want to see some.

 

I understand the attraction of Kaleidos and the other managed VLEs, in some ways it's really very good from the IT support point of view.

 

It's very limited in what can be changed, everything in it is manual (kaleidos), so no automated processes to go wrong, except the SIMS extract and upload.

Not much to configure except which of the Six colour schemes (not really themes) you have to choose.

Somebody else to call(blame) when it's on the blink.

The safe feeling that having a big name supplier gives the senior management.

Most of the time it's really easy to do what you can do, as it is so feature poor there is not much choice anyway.

 

I particularly like asking how do I do "this" to be told you can't do that.

 

I agree the Change Management process needs looking at but, when you are trying to persuade a large number of users that "Public Transport" is the only option when nothing goes where you want it to or at the time you want it to or reliably turns up, and it still is very expensive you are really up against it.

[beeswax]

A lot of the posts above are based on a technological view, and not from a "change management view" Typical from this kind of forum of course, since its predominantly Techie based.

Talking from personal experience, most of the staff at the school where I work as an IT technician didn't have a clue what a VLE was when I brought up the subject in 2005/06, and SLT for the most part still have a vague notion of what can be achieved. I may not be able to extrapolate my own experience across the whole of the secondary sector, but from the posts on here I don't feel as if I'm alone in thinking this. As a consequence, the change management was handled by me, and the VLE is now embedded in school life to such an extent that when the head presented SLT priorities for the coming year the VLE was at the top.

 

The push for VLE/Learning Platforms has to be from the top. A top down approach you might say.

On the contrary, the push comes from the grassroots, the end users, the pupils. In our school I'd helped set up a Photography course online, and with some bought in material we introduced the VLE to ICTAC staff before the summer break in 2008, hoping they would feed back to their faculties. There was an intensive month's training when school re-opened in September, and then the pupils were given sight of it in October. It wasn't until staff were being pestered by their charges, "Sir, why haven't you put anything on the VLE?" that the amount of work put forward, and interest in the VLE began to rise.

 

Oh yeah and of course, remember this software is about the Learners and Parents rather than the Teachers!

Who provides the material for the VLE then?

 

The problem with schools/IT Techs is they spend far to long procrastinating about products and things they have to do, which ultimately wastes time.

Some folk call this doing your research. Schools may be required to have a VLE, but taking the first one that comes along is not a good idea and can lead to both time and money being wasted.

 

In my experience, and it seems from contributors to these forums, running a VLE is often thrust on the IT technician; is it any wonder they procrastinate "about products and things they have to do"?

 

It's not my intention to rubbish any group here, or in school, we often feel as if we're the only put upon party in an organization whether we're teachers, technicians, admin staff or pupils.

Edited September 21, 2009 by beeswax

[kitsch]

If we want to inspire our students into extending study time out of the class room by using the VLE, rather than just having it used in a ICT classroom it's got to be better and compete at least in speed with facebook, myspace, youtube etc, if not in looks and utility.

 

Too true... regarding the Yumminess Factor, Kaleidos is the internet equivalent of a nylon suit... without the convenience.

 

I agree entirely about the cover, it is a really good idea, but if you are moving from into a class room at the beginning of a lessson and it takes 5 minutes to logon to your LAN plus a minute to logon to Kaleidos and then say another minute to navigate to the lesson (if you are quick at it and not distracted by students), you have lost quite a chunk of your lesson and the students attention, plus perhaps there are materials / text books to collect prior to the lesson.

Oh... give me a piece of paper I can just grab, please! A true understanding of technology is shown by knowing when it isn't the best option.

 

I agree the Change Management process needs looking at but, when you are trying to persuade a large number of users that "Public Transport" is the only option when nothing goes where you want it to or at the time you want it to or reliably turns up, and it still is very expensive you are really up against it.

 

Agreed. Tallying with the transport metaphor, I've decided that 'car sharing' is viable and found that it's far more effective time-wise to take worksheets written by members of the faculty, produce home-made in-house stuff in VERY basic sites on the internet, give it a simple domain name and tell people where it is. It takes a fraction of the time Kaleidos does. I produce it for my own use but it's usable by everyone. We all use the same worksheets for projects so it's instantly a shareable and universal resource.

 

If people wanted to put stuff there they are welcome to the username and password, but it is me who does the donkey work... as with Kaleidos.

Edited September 21, 2009 by kitsch

[kitsch]

The SMT must enforce changes that are quick wins. For Example, how about rather than printing out cover and sticking it on the Staffroom wall, you publish it in the Learning Platform! Easy Really?

We get them individually as a phone call to our faculty team room... even easier.

 

Some schools have meetings each week to go over the diary for the week after, pop it on the Learning Platform so its viewable and consultable whenever a teacher/member of staff wants?

And this one as an email.

 

Simple and quick effective wins are what are needed....bitesize chunks you might say.....

Well said... otherwise learning to use a VLE for us non IT-specialist teachers is a bit like having to learn a dictionary from start to finish as opposed to just gleaning the useful bits when you need them.

 

Kaleidos in my opinion is just as good as any other VLE,

Ruddy heck.... you mean they're ALL like that?

Edited September 24, 2009 by kitsch

[vle_lover]

So the summary is

 

Kaleidos not very good looking, clunky and slow, but not much worse than any other VLE when you take into account that the SMT don't really know what they want, apart from being able to say they have one.

 

 

Somebody must be using Kaleidos, though if you look at the number of posts to RM's own Kaleidos community site / forum, either everybody is happy or nobody is using it much as compared to the number of posts to Moodle forums.

Edited September 28, 2009 by vle_lover

[G-Jackson]

We've had KLP installed for about 19 months now - we were a pilot for Derbyshire who are rolling it out to all schools in the county.

We attend regular strategy meetings and, I must say that, the Primary Schools in our area put us in Secondaries to shame. They are pushing it forward from the top down and seem to be really giving it a good go. Most don't use the VLE side at present - just the Portal+ but they use it for administration and for teaching & learning.

We on the other hand are suffering from the usual problem of teachers not wanting to touch it with a barge pole and hoping that if they forget about it then it will just go away

 

As the KLP administrator I am trying to find a few people who will champion KLP and get things going so that I can then use them to show others but it's slow going.

What really annoys me is we are putting information on KLP for Staff but when you say to them it's on the Learning Platform we get "I don't have time to look on there" - My response now is - "Well I don't have time to walk round school and tell 90 members of staff the same piece of information"

 

I quite like Kaleidos as a communication tool and think it will get better - the introduction of Learning Spaces (although we don't use them yet) should be a good thing.

One thing I do like about it is the inter-connectivity - we are able to publish information to our Feeder Primary Schools and allow them access to our Transition Interest Space. Also a new Diploma course we've started has students on it from another local secondary school and they can pick up assignments and hand in work via the Learning Platform and take part in on-line discussions, which makes them a lot more integrated as they only visit our school twice a week.

 

I've no experience of other LPs/VLEs so can compare Kaleidos but IF we can get our staff to use it I think it would be a great benefit.

[kitsch]

G-Jackson, I share your frustrations regarding getting bolshy staff to look at kaleidos... but I can see where they are coming from, too. When we have something to communicate to staff, we tend to just use email.

[kitsch]

We on the other hand are suffering from the usual problem of teachers not wanting to touch it with a barge pole and hoping that if they forget about it then it will just go away

 

Then it will just go away... it is the silent majority who don't use it who will ultimately decide its future. In my thirty years of teaching I have seen many much better initiatives than Kaleidos go under simply because people wouldn't utilise them.

Edited October 1, 2009 by kitsch

[G-Jackson]

G-Jackson, I share your frustrations regarding getting bolshy staff to look at kaleidos... but I can see where they are coming from, too. When we have something to communicate to staff, we tend to just use email.

 

They won't use e-mail either

 

most of them seem happy to use endless reams of paper and do the same thing over and over again... e.g. Last Year we had 7 teachers come in one by one asking us to unblock YouTube so they could show a video to each of the Year 7 classes... I said - Why don't you upload a copy to the VLE and make it available to them? - Too much trouble... low and behold - this week one by one they've all been coming in asking for YouTube to be unblocked so they can show the same video

 

The thing is - our teachers may well want to hope KLP goes away but, as I said above, a lot of schools (Primary/Juniors) around here are using it and the kids love it so they are coming to us and asking why we don't use it...

 

I'll let you know how I get on with my champions so watch this space.

[kitsch]

 

The thing is - our teachers may well want to hope KLP goes away but, as I said above, a lot of schools (Primary/Juniors) around here are using it and the kids love it so they are coming to us and asking why we don't use it...

 

I can see Kaleidos working for teachers who teach topics across different subjects (i.e. primary teachers). The overlap and the interconnectivity needed would be well served by a VLE.

 

As a Technology/Art teacher in a secondary school, however, I have yet to be convinced that Kaleidos is better than what I am doing at the moment. I have found much easier and far less long-winded ways of sharing resources etc over the 'net than Kaleidos.