Which VLE to go with??

[kazit]

Good Evening!

 

We are currently investigating different VLE's to replace the current uniservity clc one that we have as the contract is due to finish in August.

 

Suggestions that we have had are:

Life

Moodle

Frog

Fronter

Sims Learning Gateway

OpenHive

 

I was just wondering if anyone has any comments on any of the above...I did have a sandpit login for Life when they started promoting but that appears to have expired!

 

I would be grateful of any comments,

Thank you

Kaz

[glennda]

We use Moodle here and can't say i have a problem with it. Just wish staff used it more.

 

I didn't think SLG was a VLE? More a front end for Sims? Do you mean Sharepoint (which SLG sits on I think).

[dobsonl]

We use fronter here, and although it has moved on in style the functionality has yet to be improved and made me user friendly, as such it has been extremely hard to get staff using it, and even now they don't want to be using it.

[kazit]

Yes I think that SLG is Sharepoint based...apparently someone has said that there are modules that you can add in to make it more like a VLE? We currently use SLG for completing reports etc from home and as the parent portal.

Sharepoint is another option although I am not sure that our school has got the techy knowledge to set it up so would need to get someone to set it up...

[bossman]

@kazit:

 

We using Moodle which has just been upgraded to latest version and we are working with a company called WebAnyWhere who have developed the integration with Sims MIS and we are in the process of SSO and parental access plus homework reporting to parents.

 

We hope to push out to parents in February after we hopefully convert to Academy.

 

I have actually seen a variety of VLE's the most recent was Frog and while it looks very swish I have been told on a few occasions by IT teams that it is flawed and it's functionality leaves a lot to be desired.

 

As for SLG we have in this county a learning gateway pushed out by the LA called DLG which is just sharepoint with one or two plugins to make it look like a VLE. It spends many days at a time being upgraded and sometimes can be down for whole weeks so to us this is not good enough and therefore we have taken the in house method through Moodle and it is up 24/7/365.

 

Fronter is hosted in Sweden and the costs for more space is astronomical plus it is very clunky to configure and use.

 

As for the others you mention I have not had the experience of using or seeing them so can make no comments.

 

Hope this has helped

 

Good luck with your research and eventual choice.

[GrumbleDook]

Yes I think that SLG is Sharepoint based...apparently someone has said that there are modules that you can add in to make it more like a VLE? We currently use SLG for completing reports etc from home and as the parent portal.

Sharepoint is another option although I am not sure that our school has got the techy knowledge to set it up so would need to get someone to set it up...

 

There are a number of Sharepoint options around, either as tools you can bolt onto your own (@rpwillis is the man for Sharepoint Learning Kit) and I would recommend you check out Sharepoint Saturday on 15th November for more people to chat with. Most hosted sharepoint providers are still working on Sharepoint 2007, but a number of people doing stuff in house are using Sharepoint 2010 (only one large hosted SharePoint 2010 offering due to come out soon). There are ways of getting access to SIMS via webparts and @rpwillis / @apearce are good points of contact there.

 

If you have a search on the site for VLEs or Learning Platforms you will see a number of links to work Becta published about what functionality to go for, how to build your curriculum to make the most of it and how to move onto the next stage. The is still available here Learning Platform Network

 

A VLE doesn't even have to be a single product ... it could be a mix. Moodle for course / learning management, wordpress for blogs, CoWiki or MediaWiki for the Wiki ... and then other tools as needed ... EdModo, Animoto, VoiceThread ...

[BKGarry]

We use Fronter,

although it seems a bit backwards for doing things, there is great functionality there, and the recent style update in Y11 seems to be getting more rational.

@dobsonl, i am just down the road from you, drop me a PM if you want some collaborative work on Fronter to help push it for staff

[Bofin]

Are you provided by the LA?

[BKGarry]

ours is through a Managed Service (BSF) but we do deal direct with Fronter (Pearson Education) when needed

[Bofin]

& @kazit

 

what LA are you with.

[itgeek2008]

We use Scholaris which is provided by Ergo and based on Sharepoint. Installed this summer and already staff have found it easy to use and very useful.

[fiza]

Had Fronter - Dropped

Had Uniservity - Dropped

Now going with Moodle 2 - Rollout in next few months. Going with Google App integration. Looks good so far.

[brad82]

We've used frog for a while now, so far really happy with it. From an end user p.o.v. its ridiculously easy to use - we haven't found a student yet that hasn't been able to use the Frog Bricks to build their own profiles. Although I have past experience in web design and prefer to code sites myself, the "non-technical" staff can pick up the product and create and edit content on their department pages with only a few minutes walkthrough. Be prepared from the administration point of view to do some sitting down and playing - it takes quite a while to uncover all the bits and bobs you can do with it, but that goes without saying with any complex product.

 

Our system was delivered by Frogtrade with their own box (which appears to be a rebranded Dell R710 so top quality gear!) and the support is pretty good. Being a *nix admin it would be nice to actually be able to access the CentOS running on the box which Frogtrade appear to like to keep under their paws, but with the support its never really been an issue.

 

The email system that ships with frog is pretty good, nothing compared to Exchange but it will do for most environments.

 

If you are looking to provide out-of-office connection to staff/students the "Secure Gateway" shipped with frog is excellent (A glorified Terminal Services Proxy) without the price of getting MS-TS licences in.

 

Management is a doddle with the Toolkit, although be prepared to use IE - it will not run on any other browser.

 

Also worth noting is it integrates really well with AD and CMIS to pull all our MIS data in which lets us publish all the students data to the parents via the parent portal we built with frog.

 

Again one thing I would say is be prepared to spend quite a lot of time developing with frog, I find its something you really need to sit down and look at, not something you can really get your teeth into while popping in and out to go to a call out.

 

There are a lot of features in frog we have yet to tinker with, really could do with sitting down and looking through it all in detail but for the past 2 years we have had it absolutely no complaints. Great bit of kit, highly recommend it if you can fit it in your budget.

Edited November 3, 2011 by brad82

[halbarad]

We've used frog for a while now, so far really happy with it. From an end user p.o.v. its ridiculously easy to use - we haven't found a student yet that hasn't been able to use the Frog Bricks to build their own profiles. Although I have past experience in web design and prefer to code sites myself, the "non-technical" staff can pick up the product and create and edit content on their department pages with only a few minutes walkthrough. Be prepared from the administration point of view to do some sitting down and playing - it takes quite a while to uncover all the bits and bobs you can do with it, but that goes without saying with any complex product.

 

Our system was delivered by Frogtrade with their own box (which appears to be a rebranded Dell R710 so top quality gear!) and the support is pretty good. Being a *nix admin it would be nice to actually be able to access the CentOS running on the box which Frogtrade appear to like to keep under their paws, but with the support its never really been an issue.

 

The email system that ships with frog is pretty good, nothing compared to Exchange but it will do for most environments.

 

If you are looking to provide out-of-office connection to staff/students the "Secure Gateway" shipped with frog is excellent (A glorified Terminal Services Proxy) without the price of getting MS-TS licences in.

 

Management is a doddle with the Toolkit, although be prepared to use IE - it will not run on any other browser.

 

Also worth noting is it integrates really well with AD and CMIS to pull all our MIS data in which lets us publish all the students data to the parents via the parent portal we built with frog.

 

Again one thing I would say is be prepared to spend quite a lot of time developing with frog, I find its something you really need to sit down and look at, not something you can really get your teeth into while popping in and out to go to a call out.

 

There are a lot of features in frog we have yet to tinker with, really could do with sitting down and looking through it all in detail but for the past 2 years we have had it absolutely no complaints. Great bit of kit, highly recommend it if you can fit it in your budget.

 

Seconding everything here. We've had Frog for at least 5 years and haven't had an major issues with it other than finding time to develop stuff for it. Once you get stuck into it you'll find a huge amount of possibilities that you can do with the core features and even more once you add in Widgets and FDP.

[cromertech]

We're about to go with Moodle from the same company as @bossman

They're working on our server as I speak.

Previously we have used Fronter but as some others have said a lack of user-friendliness and a poor layout (even after the redesign) has meant that staff barely use it.

[edutech4schools]

What type of school are you? Primary............

[strawberry7]

In my opinion it depends a lot on how much time/resources you have.

 

I have used Fronter, it was one of the worst pieces of software I have ever used. Getting the most simple thing working took forever, it was so confusing, looked rubbish even in the 'show schools' and the support was terrible.

 

Moodle looked very good and customisable, which is great, if you have the time. Plus it is free! Also I'm not sure if you have to host it yourself etc.

 

Frog is my favourite. It costs but they take care of everything, their support is amazing and the platform is so easy to use/administer. From initial order to the platform being fully ready with all staff/students/classes created and passwords ready was only 2 weeks. From there we had all of our classes and groups setup, with content, by staff, in a single training session. They are not perfect and the platform has a lot to improve but they are by far the best all rounders in my opinion.

 

Hope that helps.

[brad82]

Would like to add that from experience no platform is going to make your staff/students web designers, to put it bluntly if someone with an eye for design doesnt hand the design to them and they fill in the content 99% of the time I've found what you are going to get back is something that looks like its from the 1990s. Especially with frog where the creator of the content may start with a blank canvas if they so wish.

[eCollege]

Have you looked at Kite? It's a new one that's just launched...

[TheCrust]

I would have said anything but Frog - while I accept there are schools perfectly happy with it, and it meets their needs, we have been less-than-impressed with it ourselves and if we could live that day again and make the decision all over, it wouldn't be high on the list.

 

We're not convinced of the value of the platform at the moment - it's a heck of a lot of money for something that could be somewhat simply summed up as a funky website running on a lot of open-source software!

Edited December 19, 2011 by TheCrust

[strawberry7]

Each to their own opinion and all but I would have to strongly disagree. Saying it's a heck of a lot of money for something that could be somewhat simply summed up as a funky website running on a lot of open-source software is a little like saying that the iPhone is a lot of money for something that is based on open software and parts. They're both quite a lot of money but you're getting an excellent product and service for your money.

 

Yes Frog is quite a lot of money but what you're paying for is the excellent support and development of the platform. As I mentioned earlier, things like Moodle are out there that's free (which is great) but the problem is you have to do everything yourself. When we moved from Fronter to Frog our VLE costs doubled, however the important thing to remember is that we did more with Frog in 2 hours than we had done with Fronter in 2 years. Why, because we no longer had the situation where our VLE provider wouldn't talk to us unless we had been on some pointless admin course. We didn't have our students passwords being reset every other week, we could change user names and passwords in under a minute. Children instantly had lots of nice themes to pick from, we had lots of widgets to use and finally we had a built in email system.

 

Sounds like you've had a bad time, which is a real shame as personally, I enjoy working with Frog.

[TheCrust]

You're entitled to your opinion - but I do agree with you on Fronter.

 

My children use it in their respective schools and don't like it one little bit. The way it is set up for them has to be one of the most unintuitive interfaces I've ever seen on a VLE and doesn't really do anything to encourage engagement with the target audience at all. My kids regularly moan that whoever came up with their particular look-and-feel needs introducing to the clue bat!

[strawberry7]

Haha, I would totally agree with them! I had many arguments on the phone with Fronter about the strange way that it worked and how it took forever to do the most simple thing but they were never interested in feedback. Until schools started leaving them when the harnessing tech budget vanished of course

 

I wish you and the original poster luck with your VLEs in the future.

[plexer]

The comment about moodle being free and having to do everything yourself is only true if that's what you want to do.

 

There are however lots of companies that do customisation.

 

Ben

[jezzah]

I would echo those comments too.

We've used Frog for the last 1 year and the biggest plus is the ease at which non-techy people can add content/ actually use the vle. there are obviously downsides to the product but the fact that basically everyone can use and develop it is a big plus thus empowering the staff and their own subject areas.

 

the other downside is the cost... but then it's a bit like some of the other software/ hardware products out there on the market at the moment.