Question Of The Week: How Do You Prepare For A VLE

[russdev]

Question Of The Week: How Do You Prepare For A VLE

 

Same as before question being asked across different forums with names removed to protect the guilty.

 

So how do you prepare for a VLE think about this not just from technical, but education and whole school issues as well..

 

What do we as schools need to do make VLE's successful.

 

Regards

 

Russell

[alan-d]

Is this your sneaky way of getting everyone to do your homework again?

 

1. Ease of Use for all users from Admin to students.

2. Minimal cost implications.

3. Access to create and use resources.

4. Intergration with current and upcoming technologies

 

(Just to start the ball rolling )

[CyberNerd]

Train the teachers.

or they will use it as a powerpoint dumping ground and not really get the point of how to use VLE effectively.

[Joedetic]

A good place to start might be to find out how many members of staff have electronic copies of the materials they are using to teach to gauge (sp?) the amount of typing required to put it all into the VLE or whether it can be a copy and paste / upload job.

 

At my old school there wasn't a VLE as such, but instead SSL WebDAV access to the public shared area. So that way there was less of a difference between how users accessed files from the network and from home. Less training required that way.

[russdev]

Is this your sneaky way of getting everyone to do your homework again?

 

1. Ease of Use for all users from Admin to students.

2. Minimal cost implications.

3. Access to create and use resources.

4. Intergration with current and upcoming technologies

 

(Just to start the ball rolling )

 

Deny it all......

 

 

To be fair questions I come up with are often things I am currently thinking about or working on.

 

You see half my job is to start ball rolling with these things and then someone takes over the project as it starts.

 

Russ

[beeswax]

In my case I became interested in VLE's through this forum, and quickly became excited by the possibilities. I set a moodle site up in my own space, just to see how it worked, and managed to blagg some material from the NWGfL to put on the site. (If you visit the link you should have guest access to some of the DiDA and ICT courses). From following the posts here and keeping an eye on BECTA and the DFES I realized that they would soon become a requirement for schools, so I set about planning a strategy for getting staff involved.

At the time I figured we'd go with Moodle, but things are moving rapidly now, and it seems as if we'll be using something based on Sharepoint. To me that doesn't matter, as first of all, it's the quality of the material delivered which is paramount.

After populating parts of the site, and getting some teachers to use it during lessons as they saw fit, they saw it as a resource to draw on. One member of the ICT staff asked if her pupils could be given a logon just for one lesson to work at their own pace. I forgot to delete that account at the end of the day, and at the end of the month I got a bill from my ISP as I'd gone over my data transfer limit. I checked the logs in Moodle, and sure enough, the pupils were accessing the site from home.

Our school has a group called ICTAC (ICT Across the Curriculum) which consists of one teacher from each faculty being responsible for the integration of ICT into and across, their subject. The Head of ICTAC was a teacher in ICT. I began by giving them access to the site and sending them emails, with links, points of interest. If I added anything new, they got an email, whether it was their faculty speciality or not. This process has been going on since January 2006.

A new web/VLE server was purchased before last Christmas, and I've slowly been bulding a new Moodle site (you can't access it outside school yet) and transferring work, as well as being on the lookout for new stuff.

 

What I did, I did on the hoof, but I've tried to take time out to analyse what worked, such as using the ICTAC staff, what could be done better, and how I could manage the massive change involved in getting a full blown VLE off the ground.

 

Some of the points apply to VLE's managed in house, and those remotely hosted. Others only to in house. I've no experience of having a VLE remotely hosted so I can't speak for how you'd manage change in that situation.

Staff need to have a point of contact they can turn to when problems arise. Some need to have their hand held all the way through.

A VLE isn't the electronic equivalent of a lesson handout. You know, read this short passage and then answer the 10 questions. That's just a waste of everyone's time and effort.

You're not going to get a VLE off the ground in a couple of months. It's a long term project. With normal school resources, you're talking a minimum of a year to 18 months before people get used to it.

Managing a VLE properly will also become a full time job, possibly running in tandem with managing the school website. There are members on this forum, who manage to do both, as well as being techies. Any school with any pretence of wanting a full blown VLE is going to have to employ somebody full time.

Think about the percentage of pupils who don't have computers at home. They're certainly at a disadvantage. How will you cater for them? After school clubs and possibly providing extra computers in libraries.

Get to know you're chain of command, the weak links. Tell them, "If you've got a problem, come to me."

Get staff to plan lessons as if they were going to deliver them electronically. Most of them have school laptops on which they draw up these plans anyway.

It's not always the young staff who take to VLE's readily, but make allowances.

Plan staff time out of lessons to attend instruction on managing their work space online.

Develop central (online) areas where staff can collaborate on ideas.

Provide them with perks, the ability to book rooms online, though not necessarily part of a VLE, is another method of directing thinking into an online menatlity.

Always show them the benefits.

 

I've rambled a bit as I'm writing this off the cuff. I hope I don't give the impression I'm obssesive.

[CyberNerd]

I hope I don't give the impression I'm obssesive.

never. you raise some good points.

[MkII]

Yes - agree with CyberNerd!

 

Thanks very much for that beeswax

[maniac]

Planning, planning, planning and planning. Also involving the right people.

 

We've got a VLE in our school at the moment. I's a moodle installation hosted remotely. IMO it's poorly done, not maintained properly and its S L O W!

 

The reason? Because it was implimented by the head of ICT in our school with very little involvement of us, or many other people in the school, so it became his little baby. Now we're planning to use a VLE to base a lot of the curriculum around, suddenly this task is a bit daunting for him, so we've been handed it, not that I mind really. Problem is I'm now faced with the task of moving the moodle installation from the off-site server to on-site servers and setting it up and getting it working properly. If it had been planned properly in the first place and the right people had been involved, it would have been done like this in the first place!

 

Training is also vitally important. Most teachers won't have used one before, and will probably be warey of what they don't understand, so definitely some properly scheduled staff training to get the most out of the system is a must.

[beeswax]

I should have said that all that stuff above comes after you've decided which system you're going with. For some the choice is easy; you can't afford to pay for a VLE, so you (generally) go with Moodle. Others have the choice made for them by the LEA or whoever is running your school these days.

VLE's can hit the buffers very quickly if you don't keep on top of them. It's very difficult for a techie to say to a teacher, "Look, you promised you'd produce x, y, and z for the VLE. Where is it?"

We've all read here of the troubles encountered by techies when getting information off teachers for websites.

I don't know, for instance, how VLE's will feature in school inspections.

A VLE is an engine which can drive online learning forward. er, I think that's enough for now.

[NetworkGeezer]

You see half my job is to start ball rolling with these things and then someone takes over the project as it starts.

Russ

 

Are you being groomed for senior management

[CyberNerd]

VLE's can hit the buffers very quickly if you don't keep on top of them. It's very difficult for a techie to say to a teacher, "Look, you promised you'd produce x, y, and z for the VLE. Where is it?"

 

This reminds me, one of the biggest problems we encountered was the two seemingly opposing teaching methods being pushed onto teachers. The white(elephant)board phenomena and VLE's often appear to be conflicting for teachers. Some of our departments are aggessively pushing staff to produce IWB resources that in general do not integrate easily into VLEs, thus the teachers are then required to produce the same work twice, once for VLE and once for IWB. This is mostly a problem with IWB software (promethean) who's resources save as zipped xml, but sadly not compliant with any standard known to man or VLE. I spoke to promethean who just came across as out of touch.

 

IMO the best strategy to populating a VLE is to have it as the basis of interactive presentations - questionaires, flash etc and leave the IWB software for emergencies, this may get the teachers more onboard with VLE's.

[GrumbleDook]

You see half my job is to start ball rolling with these things and then someone takes over the project as it starts.

Russ

 

Are you being groomed for senior management

 

I resemble that remark ... erm .. I mean resent ... damn

 

I'll get my coat.

[MkII]

Lovely theme on your Moodle beeswax - did you make that yourself?

[beeswax]

Lovely theme on your Moodle beeswax - did you make that yourself?

 

I messed with another theme (can't remember which it is off the top of my head), tried to get some tones and stuff to fall in with the school website (click the link below). My view was that people might be on two separate sites, but they had to know they were related. I didn't want them hitting the VLE link on the website (I know there isn't one on the present site, but the revamp will have one) and bringing up something which looked completely alien.

Ideally, I'm looking for a seamless experience ® for our customers...sorry, I'm losing it here

[Sylv3r]

As a school you need to decide if your VLE is to be used for active learning, distance learning, collaborative learning, assessment, for differentiated learning or more than likely a combination of all the above.

 

As a school we created a development plan with regards to TALMOS which is our chosen VLE. These are the steps we have taken so far:

 

We have chosen 3 departments to LEAD the school on the implementation of our VLE, the 3 departments chosen are the three we feel to be at an advantage stage of collation of electronic resource sharing within the department already (a sharing culture is a must for a successful VLE).

 

All classrooms ideally will need a whiteboard / mounted projector and a dedicated teaching computer to aid the delivery of content within lessons.

 

In order for a VLE to be successful there needs to be complete support from all staff. This begins at the top with the leadership of the school; the senior management have a vital role to the play in helping to change the learning and teaching culture of staff.

 

Teaching staff will need to know the most about how the VLE works etc, but other groups of staff within the school need some training and awareness training also:

 

Support staff (Cover Supervisors, Classroom Assistants) will need to be familiar with how learners use the VLE in order to help support them

 

Technical Support staff need to be aware what the VLE does and how teaching staff are expected to use it in order to make sure the school network supports rather than hinders usage

 

Budget holders may not need to know too much about operating the VLE, but they do need to be aware of its potential for supporting teaching and learning, the financial demands that hardware, software and training will make in the long term and the best ways to maximise potential

 

All teaching staff will have at least one day of VLE Training. Some teaching staff will need to be convinced of the value of a VLE, at least after the initial training session some may become really enthused and start to use the VLE regularly without any other prompting.

 

Through the LEAD departments training will then be cascaded to another 3 departments in the next stage of implementation and so on until the whole school has been trained in house by members of staff from the LEAD departments.

 

Incentives may need to be offered to get some departments off the ground with the VLE, e-Learning Credits for example could be used to purchase ready made content for the VLE in the first instance for some departments with very little electronic resources already created - VLE's with content already added is also a good incentive to sell to staff.

 

Being able to access the VLE from home is also I feel a key priority for both staff and students, however I personally feel student access should not be rolled out until all teaching staff are on board and comfortable in using the VLE.

 

As a conclusion I feel it will take between 2 - 4 years as a realistic time frame to get a fully working VLE setup within a school although the initial 6 months will be the most crucial.

 

Sorry for the long winded post........

[GrumbleDook]

Erm ... preparing for a VLE?

 

Join a LA based working group looking at what should be purchased on behalf of the LA schools, see quite a number of them in action, get feedback from other LAs / Schools abot what they have done so far, prepare an SoR, whilst that is being dealt with have the LA consultancy team continue to prepare an implementation strategy aimed at a number of early adopters that can build ideas that can be rolled out to other schools.

 

The last bit is a little hazy as it is being worked on by others within the group and once they have the nugget of the plan it will be thrashed out between the group.

 

So ... shortening the process ...

 

1. work out that what we have doesn't cut the mustard

2. join an LA based group looking at the whole LP thing

3. Sit back and let others do the work ...

 

erm ...

 

Did I say that last bit out loud?

 

Damn ... I'll get my coat.

[limbo]

Our approach is one step at a time.

 

We started with the student area that gives them their assessment, attendance and curriculum data (with a tandem one for staff).

 

This has got our students used to logging on to the website out of hours - particularly when we introduced blogs, buddies and simple email for them as a reason for logging on.

 

We are now working on the resource side of it which is basically a document management system but with add ons like resource schduleing, tagging to particular units, topics, lessons etc.

 

This is not going to be done centrally, but in true web 2.0 style it is going to be collaboration between staff within departments where every member of staff can upload resources within a structure defined by the department.

 

We are training and developing with just one or two departments at a time, giving support for training and any development the system needs to meet requirements and ideas coming from those departments.

[lindylou]

Dare I suggest the Becta Learning Platform matrix? Along with the ICT SEF matrix it helps with the all important planning.

 

clicky

 

Look under the ICT Infrastructure heading, about halfway down the page.

 

The South West Grid produced some guidance for our schools that includes the hows and whys. Download for Primary and Secondary from here . The SWGfL bits won't apply to other areas, but from page 20 (Stages on the Journey) of the guidance, the advice could be applied to any school.

 

HTH!

[bossman]

Until you have the teachers in the mindset of actually doing something for themselves without having it done for them then i fear the VTLE,s which are chosen are bound to fail.

 

until a company comes up with all the resources that are needed and wanted by the teachers then it is doomed from the start no matter which VTLE you chose to go with.

 

I have had a look at all types of VTLE's (Virtual Teaching and Learning Environments new spin on the acronym) and they are far reaching, some better than others in the way the end user interacts but alas i fear that there is still something missing for some teachers.

 

on a good and positive note i was at a Talmos Brittanica VTLE conference last week and watched first hand a lesson being taught from the VTLE. The teacher who incidentally was leading the way with Talmos showed us the structure of building the lesson and setting the schedule for this particular class. Really good in the way the software integrated with Sims but it was not dynamic so a change in the students classes would have to be updated by hand or the click of a button. Then there was the content which i must consisted of a video clip (not sure about copyright here) which had been obtained from a DVD and some text relating to some questions about the video clip. To gather this content must have taken all of 10 mins showing that it could be done in a tight schedule to which all teaching staff are accustomed to.

 

The point I am making is that not all teachers are concerned over using technology and quite frankly some don't want it and actively dig their heels in just to make a point. I feel until it is written into teachers contracts of employment that they have to undergo a set amount of training time using various forms of technology whilst doing their teaching practise then nothing is going to change.

[broc]

While doing some research into the very same question myself I came across this document http://ferl.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?page=390

 

Not strictly aimed at secondary schools, however a lot of it is common sense. Sometimes it helps having it written down in a document to bring to the attention of people who think they know best.

[CyberNerd]

until a company comes up with all the resources that are needed and wanted by the teachers then it is doomed from the start no matter which VTLE you chose to go with.

 

There are already a few good SCORM complaint free resources available. Now what would be a good idea is that if teachers actually produced some resources (did what they are paid to do) and shared them with others (the point of teaching being spreading knowledge) tehn we wouldn't need to rely on buying resources. Even in our school there are a couple of teachers who aren't lazy f***wits.

[bossman]

CyberNerd: couldn't agree with you more but they may turn that around in the fact that they gave up 25 admin duties and they could always say that this is an admin task eh! you know what some teachers are like.

 

BTW I actually had a quote from one teacher who had been in the teaching profession 30 years and told me to my face "why should i share what has taken me thirty years to acquire with some newly qualified teacher" well nuff said on that. I must add that not all teachers are sanctimonious old farts with blinkered approaches to others.

[Disease]

Same issue here really, we have a moodle server under construction and I decided to get aa department to test it for me to see how they get on. After spending 3 hours showing them through the VLE all aspects of course creations and other modules they say "Can't we stick up a link to MEtro Electro and be done with it?". Grrrr......no you are meant to design content for it for the pupils, "when are we going to have time to do that". VLE's will just become an expensive white elephant because most teachers will not create content.

 

You may still be able to access our VLE here http://193.122.27.47 I can't check it from here as we can not go out and then back into our firewall.

[Sylv3r]

on a good and positive note i was at a Talmos Brittanica VTLE conference last week and watched first hand a lesson being taught from the VTLE. The teacher who incidentally was leading the way with Talmos showed us the structure of building the lesson and setting the schedule for this particular class. Really good in the way the software integrated with Sims but it was not dynamic so a change in the students classes would have to be updated by hand or the click of a button. Then there was the content which i must consisted of a video clip (not sure about copyright here) which had been obtained from a DVD and some text relating to some questions about the video clip. To gather this content must have taken all of 10 mins showing that it could be done in a tight schedule to which all teaching staff are accustomed to.

 

As you have said David really likes the use of TALMOS but it is the bringing on of the whole school which is likely to be the major stumbling block for all VLE's as you have said. We have chosen TALMOS here as well, but it would be interesting to see the use of TALMOS across the whole school from all departments.

 

From all the VLE's and VTLE's that I have seen in other schools TALMOS was certainly the best from both a Teacher and Student point of view, up to now they have been flexible with requests for changes etc. The Senoir Management need to as you have said ensure that all teachers are given the chance to attend mandatory training sessions so they have no excuse not to use the system. Hopefull once our 3 lead departments start using it, and see the benefit it will cascade throughout the school.

 

TALMOS have assured us that as of september it will be dynamic and will have 'right back' features to the SIMS database to update attendance / assesment data etc.