Using Moodle - Need SIMS Parental Access?

[frosty]

Let me know if you need a beta tester!

[penfold_99]

Let me know if you need a beta tester!

 

That could be a possiblility. What to you want parental engagment to be?

[frosty]

Personally just access to their child's Learning Platform courses\work, however I don't yet have SLT's views on this. I suspect this will be a debate that will run & run for a while!?

[Duke]

Looks like there's as much confusion on this as ever with no really clear answers. Thanks for all the thoughts from everyone and I appreciate the input on your product penfold_99.

 

I'd also be interested in where the parent accounts come from. If I'm having a single-sign-on then I want it to be from Active Directory, but SIMS would be much better placed to generate information for parent's accounts.

 

Biggest worry is that from a parents perspective, there might be a lot of 'blank' courses posted by tech illiterate teachers. That might then cause a backlash against VLE from the staff.

 

Exactly - how many of you have all your departments heavily using the VLE for all their courses? What about departments that don't have easy access to ICT, or value non-ICT skills (English - spelling and handwriting)? If we're saying parents need access to all their child's courses, how many of you think you'll be able to offer that?

 

Thanks again,

Chris

[Soulfish]

We've just rolled out Moodle within the last two weeks. Currently the two heaviest users are actually MFL and PE/Sports Studies. The ICT department have yet to actually use it properly!

 

All staff have been told that they have to start using it though and I imagine our SMT are going to start applying pressure to departments that aren't.

[frosty]

The ICT department have yet to actually use it properly!

 

To be honest my friend that is a good position to be in! You should never champion an IT department so saying to other staff look what MFL & PE are doing is more likely to enthuse than look what the IT department has done and get the response...'well they all know what hey are doing'!

[Soulfish]

It's more surprise that they haven't used it at all, when they were the ones pushing for the move from Uniservity to Moodle in the first place. I'm quite pleased that virtually every department seems to be starting to use Moodle in some shape or form with a handful being quite heavy users

[Devontechie]

Howdy folks,

 

We're using Moodle and have been for several years. We also use SIMS heavily but the two are not connected in any way (for logons we use AD).

 

However, as I'm sure many of you are aware, Becta have the 2010 guidelines that mean we have to allow real-time parental access to SIMS data. The Moodle forum thread about proper SIMS integration has been going on for years and never really got anywhere, at least not with an official tool.

 

As such we're in a bit of an awkward situation, as I imagine many other schools are. Do we go for the SIMS Learning Gateway and move to Uniservity, do we go with Frog, or is there a better option? The Frog threads on here are very mixed, and I've seen the words 'run away screaming' come up too much when researching Uniservity. Many people still seem to see Moodle as the best VLE, but in some ways it's just not a mature/developed solution for what we need for the future.

 

What is everyone else planning to do and what do you see as the right solution? Do you feel Becta and/or SIMS have supported schools enough on this?

 

Many thanks in advance,

 

Chris

 

School Anywhere Moodle Personalised Learning Platform VLE for Schools - Moodle Hosting, Support and Training

[Duke]

It's more surprise that they haven't used it at all, when they were the ones pushing for the move from Uniservity to Moodle in the first place. I'm quite pleased that virtually every department seems to be starting to use Moodle in some shape or form with a handful being quite heavy users

 

ICT use it for nearly everything here and we had a couple of people in Science who really liked it. Beyond that, uptake has been 'positive' but 'limited'...

[frosty]

Its a battle! One that I have been fighting for over 6 years! - **sigh**

[CyberNerd]

We've just rolled out Moodle within the last two weeks. Currently the two heaviest users are actually MFL and PE/Sports Studies. The ICT department have yet to actually use it properly!

 

All staff have been told that they have to start using it though and I imagine our SMT are going to start applying pressure to departments that aren't.

 

It really needs to be driven by the leadership team - they are paid to lead and school should have clear policies about VLE's - a start would be something as simple as 'all homework tasks must be published onto the learning platform'

 

As soon as staff see the benefits - assignment submissions, forums, targets, reporting, website creation, easily email groups of students etc then they will start using other features, leading to further use in lessons.

[frosty]

It really needs to be driven by the leadership team

 

Most members of leadership teams are non specialist and do not know the benefits\features. Getting an audience to tell them what the benefits\features are is another issue!

[Soulfish]

It really needs to be driven by the leadership team - they are paid to lead and school should have clear policies about VLE's - a start would be something as simple as 'all homework tasks must be published onto the learning platform'

 

As soon as staff see the benefits - assignment submissions, forums, targets, reporting, website creation, easily email groups of students etc then they will start using other features, leading to further use in lessons.

 

We've got a fair amount of support from the SMT, and all departments have been told that all resources have to be made available on the VLE. We've also got a lot of interest in quizzes for homework/in class and the fact that once created you can reuse questions for revision tests later on.

 

The recent addition of being able to view your home directory from within Moodle (through the SMB block) has also driven a lot of people to Moodle. Proving very popular amongst both staff and students so hopefully it'll also drive them to use the other parts

[penfold_99]

The recent addition of being able to view your home directory from within Moodle (through the SMB block) has also driven a lot of people to Moodle. Proving very popular amongst both staff and students so hopefully it'll also drive them to use the other parts

 

Have you got the lastest version of the SMB block? It now allows access to network shares just needs a little tweak to show on all courses.

[penfold_99]

Biggest worry is that from a parents perspective, there might be a lot of 'blank' courses posted by tech illiterate teachers. That might then cause a backlash against VLE from the staff.

 

You can hide the courses, the would also high the courses from the parents. Once the teacher has finished creating the course they can then make it avaliable.

 

There need to be a big push for staff to use or create courses on the vle between now and september.

[CyberNerd]

You can hide the courses, the would also high the courses from the parents. Once the teacher has finished creating the course they can then make it avaliable.

 

 

As I discussed with you previously, we would ike to hide the unpopulated SIMS courses from students - but in this case hiding courses from parents only half solves the problem. if teacher A) puts up loads of really good resources and teacher B) only puts up a couple of links then teacher B) isn't going to look very good to an outsider - even if they happen to be a very good teacher who just doesn't like using tech resources. ah - perhaps we should employ people to create the resources, then replace the teachers with cover supervisors

[frosty]

ah - perhaps we should employ people to create the resources, then replace the teachers with cover supervisors

 

Controversial - love it!

[TechMonkey]

Some of our departments are going the route of creating hidden courses with a years resources in. Teachers can then use the import facility to pull in the sections & activities they want to their own courses. This allows them to fill a course quickly but also the option for teachers to personalise their courses with added information, what order they want to do things in or added homeworks.

[rh91uk]

Have you got the lastest version of the SMB block? It now allows access to network shares just needs a little tweak to show on all courses.

 

Yep - we have. I installed it literally the day before Soulfish wrote the post. Just got to be able to sit down and actually expand the shares now!