Pearson Active Maths , VLE downloads!

[anne1]

Has anyone been asked to deal with the Pearson AQA GCSE maths active teach on a VLE?

 

I was given a DVd and asked to put it on Moodle. Fine I said. Then see I have to download VLe components from their website, fine I thought.

 

Then I see there are nearly 60 individual zip files to download around 50-100 mb each. And that's just for middle sets, I've got another DVd for higher sets.

 

I haven't got any further, I can't face downloading, copying to the moodle server and importing into courses 120 times. Please tell me I've misunderstood something? Where's the simple button I've missed that does it straight forwardly?

[CyberNerd]

if you have ssh access to the server you can copy them all in one go using winscp

[Hightower]

I used DownloadThemAll add-on for Firefox, and then bulk uploaded them to the Moodle server. Took a little while adding each to a location within the course, but a lot quicker than downloading/sending to Moodle one by one.

[Sylv3r]

Do these ACTIVBooks not come with a CD for the network and a seperate CD with the VLE content or am I getting it mixed up with some other bit of useless software?

[Hightower]

Do these ACTIVBooks not come with a CD for the network and a seperate CD with the VLE content or am I getting it mixed up with some other bit of useless software?

 

They come with install media, but simply tells you to log on and download the VLE packs - think they do this so they can update them if needs to.

[Sylv3r]

They come with install media, but simply tells you to log on and download the VLE packs - think they do this so they can update them if needs to.

 

Cheers

[znova]

Hi,

 

Pearson has this download policy for their ActiveTeach/ ActiveBook software.

 

I once complained loudly because our bandwidth speed simply couldn't cope with 40-odd downloads, rendering bought-specifically-for-VLE package useless. Guess what? Managed to get a nice support person to send me all of them on a dvd! Didn't work next time though..

 

Hang on a minute; we buy a VLE-specific product and they send a dvd with instructions on how to download it? IMHO, that's poor.

 

BTW, you also have to check compatibility; some of their so-called "scorm" didn't work on our learning platform. Their answer? "We can't possibly make all of our software compatible, we only have a very small production team" That's ok then..we are only paying you after all!

 

OK, Rant over.

[jdoyle]

similar problem with their French, German, History, Science and Business Studies material. It's job done as far as the developers are concerned but they have made it extremely difficult for those of us who have to download the packages from the Pearson site and then upload the material to a VLE.

[Alis_Klar]

I really hate the ActiveTeach Failware. I used to love the old network versions where you were instucted to install on server then you still had to individually install it on each client anyway. What is the point of a "network" version if you still have to install it on every machine?

 

@Hightower thanks for the DownloadThemAll tip. We have Frog VLE so we still have to manually upload 60 odd files individually to Frog. There is a mass upload function but it will not work for SCORM content as this uses a different method to upload (honestly it's true)

[SamC]

I have had the same issue.

 

Just sat and downloaded all 29 content packs individually and now have to upload to VLE manually as there is no multiple upload feature in Studywiz!

 

Love it

[chrisjako]

has anyone sucessfully tried to upload this to sharepoint?

 

All I got form them when asking for help is a reply with "it's untested on sharepoint"!

[mavericksghost]

Well I've setup both Foundation and Higher Active Teach for maths as well as active teach content for Science and Modern Foreign Languages without a problem.

The VLE packs have to be downloaded from the Pearson site as zip files, I then insert each zip as a SCORM pack into the course.

Each zip is then opened up and installed by Moodle itself.

 

The only problem I've run into with Active Teach is the sheer size of the content packages cause Moodle to have fits with the scheduled backup. Every course I've installed to date ends up unfinished, one MFL course has a 1.7Gb backup file. So the server is timing out or running out of memory. This also presents problems for the upgrade to 2.4 I have in planning (we're 1.9 atm)

But other than backups no problems have been reported by any teachers, most hadn't realised that Moodle could use their discs.