What VLE?

[vle_lover]

I know this has been asked in the past, but I would like a feel for what VLEs are being used now and how well they are working.

 

I guess the questions to ask are

 

Which VLE?

Inhouse or Hosted?

What percentage of Teachers are using the VLE, 10%, 50%, 90%??

How easy is it to administer?

Does it integrate with the MIS properly?

Is it expensive ?, I know how long is a piece of string but....

What do you use if for, - notices, lessons, homework, quizes, coursework, revision, reporting to parents?

 

Are any good sites on comparing VLEs around, I've looked but it's all a bit loose.

 

Thanks

[danbuntu]

Which VLE?

Inhouse or Hosted?

Moodle Inhouse

 

What percentage of Teachers are using the VLE, 10%, 50%, 90%??

 

Technically 100% due to our recent moodle based ILP. However active tutors are about 70%

 

How easy is it to administer?

 

As easy as any other LAMP/ WAMP based CMS

 

Does it integrate with the MIS properly?

 

We coded up a lot of stuff to work with our MIS (NG Correro) so it currently does a lot of what it needs to for us and we're constantly looking to do more, timetables are the next thing

 

Is it expensive ?, I know how long is a piece of string but....

 

Moodle is free and open source. So it costs disk space, hardware and my post to run and develop it. I'm doing a load of other development and systems integration type work as well though.

 

What do you use if for, - notices, lessons, homework, quizes, coursework, revision, reporting to parents?

 

all of the above. also texting out to students, ILP's, intranet stuff, student resources

[edutech4schools]

is it for primary or secondary?

[featured_spectre]

Which VLE?

We use netmedia.

 

Inhouse or Hosted?

Hosted by our LEA

 

What percentage of Teachers are using the VLE, 10%, 50%, 90%??

2 teachers that I know of use it.

 

How easy is it to administer?

Rediculously difficult

 

Does it integrate with the MIS properly?

No, not for the lack of trying either!

 

Is it expensive ?, I know how long is a piece of string but....

Expensive in that we have had to hire someone to do the main bulk of the admin for us, because we are unable to find the time as it takes so long!

 

What do you use if for, - notices, lessons, homework, quizes, coursework, revision, reporting to parents?

Used for putting lessons on there for when teachers are ill (atleast thats how it was worded here!)

[dwhyte85]

Which VLE? studywiz

Inhouse or Hosted? internally

What percentage of Teachers are using the VLE, 10%, 50%, 90%?? 10-20%

How easy is it to administer? Fairly, some gotchas

Does it integrate with the MIS properly? It can, but it uses third party software to do so

Is it expensive ?, I know how long is a piece of string but....I think renewal was 3000, not 100% sure

What do you use if for, - notices, lessons, homework, quizes, coursework, revision, reporting to parents? Homework mainly, ICT teachers use for lessons and submitting work

[strawberry]

I know this has been asked in the past, but I would like a feel for what VLEs are being used now and how well they are working.

 

I guess the questions to ask are

 

Which VLE?moodle

Inhouse or Hosted?inhouse

What percentage of Teachers are using the VLE,?? 50%

How easy is it to administer?easy as pie.

Does it integrate with the MIS properly? never tried it, Doubt it will ever play nicely unless the mis is geared towards intergration.

Is it expensive ?, freeeeee.

What do you use if for, - notices, lessons, homework, quizes, coursework, revision, reporting to parents? all of those, delivering lessons, distrobuting resources, single access point for all news, communcation,remote access and email.

 

Are any good sites on comparing VLEs around, I've looked but it's all a bit loose.

 

Thanks

 

......

[gshaw]

Which VLE? Moodle

Inhouse or Hosted? Hosted (I prefer to spend time working on the VLE rather than backups, upgrades etc )

What percentage of Teachers are using the VLE, 10%, 50%, 90%?? 20% or so but only introduced in September

How easy is it to administer? Easy enough

Does it integrate with the MIS properly? Yup, via custom software for our MIS

Is it expensive ?, I know how long is a piece of string but.... Just the hosting cost for server

What do you use if for, - notices, lessons, homework, quizes, coursework, revision, reporting to parents? Teaching materials, assignments, learning plans (testing), integrated email \ file storage (Live@Edu), website, Intranet

[jcollings]

Which VLE?

Sharepoint 2010

 

Inhouse or Hosted?

Hosted

 

What percentage of Teachers are using the VLE, 10%, 50%, 90%??

All staff use it for setting homework and accessing staf information (bulletins, groups out of school etc)

 

How easy is it to administer?

Farily straightforward when you understand the basics

 

Does it integrate with the MIS properly?

We have webparts that pull data from SIMS. We'll have some soon that write back too. Other than that AD is populated by SIMS and that does some of the sharepoint configuration

 

Is it expensive ?, I know how long is a piece of string but....

It's not the cheapest solution but it's not the dearest either

 

What do you use if for, - notices, lessons, homework, quizes, coursework, revision, reporting to parents?

All of the above plus it acts as our public website and we use it for surveys and things

[vle_lover]

When you say sharepoint 2010, do you mean that you have built your own VLE from scratch or does sharepoint have some tools for this built in.

[vle_lover]

oops pressed the wrong button , but to quote

 

"is it for primary or secondary?"

 

It's for use in a secondary school

Edited November 22, 2010 by vle_lover

[jcollings]

When you say sharepoint 2010, do you mean that you have built your own VLE from scratch or does sharepoint have some tools for this built in.

 

We have the Sharepoint Learning kit installed but a lot of what we do is native sharepoint.

[olcinm]

Which VLE?

Studywiz

Inhouse or Hosted?

Hosted

What percentage of Teachers are using the VLE, 10%, 50%, 90%??

Varies per school. Some schools are over 90%. Top school last month it was 93% of 40 teachers. 25% of our 406 schools have at least 33% teachers using the system. The average across 406 schools is 15%. That was 1787 teachers out of 12065.

 

We do have some non-users and we are trying to target those to find out why.

 

More importantly IMHO is the % student use. Our top using schools regularly get over 80% of students using the system. Top school last month was 92% of 410 students. Average for the 406 schools is 19% of students. That's 15174 out of 78388 students.

 

These % figures have been fairly consistent and plotted over the 2.5 years since we went live with 12 pilot schools slowly rising. Though we do get dips of course in holiday periods and when we've had interuptions. Roll forward in September for example (Still a largely manual process as we develop our identity management and provisioining processes).

 

The success (and it is a success compared to many LA roll outs I know of) is down to the training programme (and superb trainers - teachers) and continued CPD and training programme. The VLE itself didn't get in the way much IYSWIM. I'd also like to suggest that being primary school focused (87% Infant, 93% Junior, 94% Primary, 3% Secondary, 38% Special) also makes a difference.

 

How easy is it to administer?

Most primary schools teachers have little problem but we have a centralised provisioning process. They still can create manual accounts for adults not in the MIS ie. governors but not parents. We're still working on the latter as we have schools that want parent access to their child's work via a personal account not only MIS data.

Does it integrate with the MIS properly?

If by properly you mean programmatically our deployment does for accounts/groups but not attendance, assessment, behaviour data. Currently we supply SIMS Learning Gateway for that in secondary schools.

Is it expensive ?

No it's definitely at least half the costs of a school procuring something similar themselves. Economy of scale. Schools lose some flexibility and independence but gain in savings and in being able to collaborate with other schools more easily.

What do you use if for, - notices, lessons, homework, quizes, coursework, revision, reporting to parents?

Huge variations across schools. Main uses are managing learning resources presented to childern. providing homework/extension work, some schools manage their teaching (lessons) out of it, many schools use the forums and chat rooms with students lots and lots. For some reason primary schools (and sixth form colleges) are less afraid of this than secondary schools in my experience. Online testing is less popular though the integrated games are. The gallery activity with its ability to hold any files not just images is very popular. The ePortfolio and personal blogs are underused but growing. If you want to see what our schools have done have a look at some of our articles on Issuu Issuu - hampshireit's Profile e.g. EdICT News Spring 2010 - page 5 or EdICT News Summer 2010 - page 5 or Hampshire IT Schools Autumn 2010 - page 5 amongst others.

 

HTH