Fronter, don't make me laugh

[Face-Man]

I guess they don't like fronter

 

| Digital - teacher | Education in a technological world: Fronter, don't make me laugh

[john]

Very interesting read, think that may get bookmarked and brought out again.....

[leco]

They may not think much of Fronter - but they miss the point imo. Fronter is for pupils, young people have no difficulty in navigating, creating, communicating through Fronter. The information in the article is also incorrect in places. However, maybe it is just meant to be provocative (written from hearsay evidence and second-hand information), to generate conversation and discussion?

 

Fronter may not compare favourably with other solutions in certain areas but I don't find it a joke - yet.

 

btw - love the cartoon strip

[Jamo]

They may not think much of Fronter - but they miss the point imo. Fronter is for pupils, young people have no difficulty in navigating, creating, communicating through Fronter. The information in the article is also incorrect in places. However, maybe it is just meant to be provocative (written from hearsay evidence and second-hand information), to generate conversation and discussion?

 

Fronter may not compare favourably with other solutions in certain areas but I don't find it a joke - yet.

 

btw - love the cartoon strip

 

Kids wont be interested in a system which looks like the equivalent of web 0.0. I have to say I am concerned about the passwords, we already have issues with people remembering two passwords, and another on top with a completely different username is going to be password reset hell

 

 

The biggest gripe I have with the system though is how damn slow it is, creating content is a really time consuming process and even after that the page you have made is plain.

[localzuk]

I think the teacher in this case may have missed the point a bit. The thing with Fronter is that the themes are customisable to your intended audience, it isn't a document management system (so why would you be searching for a file anyway), and they are simply not looking at it from a teaching professional's point of view.

 

What they were doing was looking at it from a technologist's point of view. ie. poor design (which I would contest, as Fronter is quite good looking compared to many VLEs). It is a friendly system to use for pupils.

 

Obviously it isn't perfect, but it is better than some.

 

Regarding the usernames - this is more down to lack of strategy by the LEA. Somerset have implemented a Sharepoint site, which when we roll it out to pupils, will allow seamless logging in to Fronter, and it. Eventually, this will be extended to mean schools will use a central AD system (well, ADFS) to allow pupils to simply have the one username and password.

 

Personally, the only people who I've come across who don't like it are those who refuse to change their own teaching methods. So, rather than admit that they don't want to change, they'll slag off the new methods.

[leco]

I think it also depends on the age of the young people (and the atitude age of adults)

[Jamo]

Im from the somerset as well, I wasn't awake that pupils would be using the Fronter webpart in the Sharepoint site? This still doesn't deal with the point that then the kids will have to remember the SLP (Sharepoint) password as well therefore bringing the total to 4 user names and passwords.

 

Currently the Fronter webpart has been down more than it has been up as well meaning that manual log in is essential at the moment.

[localzuk]

Im from the somerset as well, I wasn't awake that pupils would be using the Fronter webpart in the Sharepoint site? This still doesn't deal with the point that then the kids will have to remember the SLP (Sharepoint) password as well therefore bringing the total to 4 user names and passwords.

 

Currently the Fronter webpart has been down more than it has been up as well meaning that manual log in is essential at the moment.

 

The fronter 'webpart' is simply a link to Fronter as far as I'm aware - namely, you click a link and it just logs you in.

 

And regarding pupil use, I do not see why not? The SLP will be rolled out to pupils, parents, governors etc... eventually, so what webparts and functionality each have will be up to the school.

 

Have you been to the Network Managers Conferences? The overall action plan was outlined there - namely the whole ideal of central AD and ADFS, to remove all the many logins we all have.

 

As it stands, it is obviously going to be a problem, but given time, I can see it all coming together nicely.

[Face-Man]

Thanks for the replies. If you see the school website for this blogger you can see why they might see Fronter as a step back in time http://www.porchester.notts.sch.uk/ . Now they don't seem to have had any Fronter training an first impression of Fronter are c**p but it can do a lot more once you get under the bonnet. see my post on http://www.edugeek.net/forums/virtual-learning-platforms/35134-how-you-using-fronter.html . Also the fact that upgrades are on the way to hopefully improve things should not be underestimated the new "goal" tool is very useful.

[localzuk]

Thanks for the replies. If you see the school website for this blogger you can see why they might see Fronter as a step back in time http://www.porchester.notts.sch.uk/ . Now they don't seem to have had any Fronter training an first impression of Fronter are c**p but it can do a lot more once you get under the bonnet. see my post on http://www.edugeek.net/forums/virtual-learning-platforms/35134-how-you-using-fronter.html . Also the fact that upgrades are on the way to hopefully improve things should not be underestimated the new "goal" tool is very useful.

 

So they use a selection of tools, spread out across various sites (google, wikispaces etc...). Rather than having a single collaboration site. I don't see the appeal of having multiple providers - it removes the whole point of the VLE, collaboration and easy transfer of information.

 

Not to mention that the design they've chosen would be classed as 'barren' and 'unfriendly' by many teachers I know of. (Along with their icons being random and non-matching, not to mention their use of tables and depreciated html tags).

 

It really is horses for courses.

[jpwright]

I think I disagree with nearly every part of the article.

 

After a ten minute viewing, the writer has become an expert on Fronter and can now dismiss the product as worthless?

 

All this article does is make my job harder if a teacher sees it online. Complete idiot.

[jdoyle]

They may not think much of Fronter - but they miss the point imo. Fronter is for pupils, young people have no difficulty in navigating, creating, communicating through Fronter. The information in the article is also incorrect in places. However, maybe it is just meant to be provocative (written from hearsay evidence and second-hand information), to generate conversation and discussion?

 

Fronter may not compare favourably with other solutions in certain areas but I don't find it a joke - yet.

 

btw - love the cartoon strip

 

if I leave my current school, in theory someone will be able to pick up the admin pieces fairly easily and keep the momentum for Fronter going. Don't think that'll be the case at Porchester.

 

when students leave Porchester and go to a secondary, they'll have to learn a new VLE. Presumably if leaving to a secondary in the same LA it'll be Fronter. So is he doing them a service or dis-service?

 

He should be working with his LA to sort out any issues re the implementation and be focused on producing good teaching material.

[Pottsey]

The biggest problem with Fronter is how SEN unfriendly it is. That and we just cannot find a use for it. So far it’s just a giant waste of money.

[sparkeh]

Its is hard to know if the writer has actually ever used Fronter and I find it hard to take any critique seriously if the writer has no actual experience of the thing they are writing about. This strikes me as an exercise in either justifying why there are not following the LA line or an attempt to show off how clever they are. Neither is necessary.

 

There is a learning curve with Fronter, some of this down to understanding the methodology, but nothing that can't be overcome by training. Then again any system will require training or it will be confusing and I am sure that plenty of training went into their own system before it was a success.

[Pottsey]

sparkeh said “There is a learning curve with Fronter, some of this down to understanding the methodology, but nothing that can't be overcome by training.”

I don’t agree no matter how much training you give some parts of Fronter just don’t work well enough. Take a look at the Calendar is has to be the worst online calendar I have ever seen. There are no decent printout options, it’s a pain to read, looks a mess and just doesn’t work when you have more than a few appointments on.

 

I agree with a lot of what the writer said. Many of our staff members say the same thing. Its slow and looks like FrontPage97 designed website when using the Fronter tools. The only bit I don’t agree with or should that be problem I have not run into is needing two or more usernames and passwords.

[sparkeh]

Take a look at the Calendar is has to be the worst online calendar I have ever seen. There are no decent printout options, it’s a pain to read, looks a mess and just doesn’t work when you have more than a few appointments on.

 

I agree with a lot of what the writer said. Many of our staff members say the same thing. Its slow and looks like FrontPage97 designed website when using the Fronter tools. The only bit I don’t agree with or should that be problem I have not run into is needing two or more usernames and passwords.

 

Ok i concede the calendar point, it does appear to be dreadful. But then we use SIMS for our calendar so haven't put too much time into looking at the Fronter calendar anyway.

 

Slow? Well to be honest any performance issues we have had has been down to Internet performance and not Fronter per se which applies to any Internet service but thats just our experience.

 

As for the design, well the themes can be changed. We have a selection of themes, some of them are indeed awful, but the LA designed adult theme is quite good and the pupil template is actually good for young children.

[Jamo]

Just to add to the Fronter wonderfulness (!?)

 

I have just noticed that the Java download app actually displays all the drives available, including C even to a non privaledged user, I have just tested this by saving over an exe file, which I had previously downloaded, with a video. I have just logged back on as an admin and the file has been replaced by a video!! O dear this is not good!

[booggerboy]

There seems to be a few issues here, which are being argued over:

 

1) Problems with Fronter itself - the blogger has a low opinion of Fronter, and has voiced this publicly. There's plenty of people out there who can stick up for it, and argue its pro's and cons. All platforms out there have stuff that's great and stuff that's not so good - they do need to be told this so they can get it right for schools in the future!

 

2) A school wanting to go its own way and not toe the party line. This is natural when schools have invested time/effort only to be told to use a product procured by LAs. If a school has its own solution that is acutally being *used* this should be celebrated and supported.

 

3) Transition from junior to secondary learning platforms. The general functionality of platforms is pretty similar product to product. Children that have used one at junior school shouldn't have a problem moving to a new one. There's no reason why dialogue between schools can't make sure things like username/passwords can't be synced between them.

 

4) LA wide platforms procured for 3-18 year olds are not a good idea. It's clear that LA's are finding it very hard to get their school's using platforms that are not suitable for this massive age range. Hopefully in the future either:

 

a) Platforms will be able to cope with this by having multiple skins/interfaces for each KS.

b) LA's will have a different strategy which takes into account the different skillsets of primary/secondary teachers and children.

 

I wouldn't be so quick to rubbish the opinions of the blogger in question - I believe he's had Fronter training and was turned off from the start. There are teachers out there with exactly the same experience with all LA provided training/platforms.

 

BB

[bonjour]

Fronter is essentially middleware. In order to get it looking good and functioning well you need someone with web design experience who can engineer a good VLE using Fronter as a tool.

 

It is a horrible, counter-intuitive piece of software, though.

[jimmy_2k]

no one in my school likes our Fronter VLE... Though some of the time I find that they aren't using it correctly