beeswax

As it's World Cup time, and in a sporting spirit, a VLE is a football team. Like any other it has eleven players (plus substitutes); and like football teams some are better than others for reasons of monetary investment, or for bringing young players through from the youth squad. Managers (cough) in both disciplines can set the tone, and in this day and age where players earn fortunes and generally call the tune, have to employ a variety of tactics to fashion a winning team. VLE is a convenient reduction of a wider concept, much as we can point to a Bentley or a Citroen 2CV and say "car". I think the "V" and the "E" are self-explanatory, it's the "L" in the middle which is the difficult bit to get right. Towards the end of last year I conducted a survey in my school to determine the (VLE) training needs of teachers. The majority wanted training to be scheduled/timetabled, and to have someone stand at the front of the class and deliver "learning" in the classic chalk and talk fashion. The supplementary question asked if teachers preferred this method of learning because this is the way they had learnt at school. The overwhelming response was "YES". What I have found is that it's not how young a teacher is, but how recently they came to teaching which determined how readily they accepted working with a VLE. Before the recent General Election the focus of learning was changing, and the idea of "Learning to Learn", where pupils develop the skills to do their own research and collaborate with their peers in order to find solutions to the new challenges facing them was in the ascendency. There has been some talk of learning by rote under the new Coalition Government, so I wait to see what form and importance, if any, VLEs will take in the coming months and years. I feel that the concept of a VLE, properly maintained and updated, can be a place where the idea of Learning to Learn can best serve this purpose. My school, to some extent, thinks a VLE is what I say it is. This is not intended as a flippant or self-important answer, but simply to illustrate how carefully one needs to tread when introducing and explaining new concepts.

I think that the idea of a school simply having a VLE is probably a little outdated these days, and a central platform, or signal box, which directs traffic to the appropriate place will certainly be needed. I don't want to call it a learning platform as that is too specific in one direction, but if we accept that more and more communication is going to be done electronically, then there needs to be a way of organizing the flow, and of storing the information. I'm not going to sing the praises of Sharepoint, or any other platform, for that matter, but surely the concept of having a single point such as a database, where the lines of information to and from staff, pupils, parents and governors can intersect is a positive step forward. People need information in order to make informed choices, and surely it is in the spirit of a more open society that schools go down this route. A practical example of this was when a lot of schooling was disrupted through heavy snowfalls earlier this year, and some of the best ways of communicating with both parents and pupils that school would be open or closed were through texts, emails and messages on school website/VLEs. I did listen to the local radio station for this information, but sometimes I missed it, and once or twice the information given was incorrect. Part of the strength of a VLE is that it allows for both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration pupil to pupil, pupil to teacher and so on. Our English Faculty are making great use of it during this period of study leave for Year 11 by creating specific forums where most problems can be addressed, and exam nerves calmed. Whilst it would be possible to create many stand-alone forums, wouldn't it be better if everyone was using the same tool to do this under one roof? The idea of a remote desktop is good, but this might exclude parents, the PTA and governors.

The problem is that the disaster recovery plan submitted by BP included such items as the protection of native species, such as the walrus. It is now obvious that huge chunks of a previous (Alaskan) disaster recovery plan were cut and pasted into the Gulf recovery plan. This points to the committee with responsibility for scrutinising the plan seemingly passing it on the nod, though it has been suggested that connections to "big business" could be invloved. It may also indicate that BP felt that such a poor presentation would pass through committee with their blessing.

Taken from the BBC website, "Nor is the ownership of BP strictly British. The company is 44%-owned in the UK, split largely between 33 institutions and seven large individual investors. But, since it is one of the UK's biggest companies and a major constituent of the FTSE 100 index, many thousands of UK private investors will have exposure to BP though tracker funds and pensions. US investors own 39% of the company, including 25 institutional and 14 big individual investors."

Show them how to reduce the file size of photographs by using the Office Picture Editor.

Though Gatt and I only came for the day it was worth it. You run a tight ship, the timings were immaculate.

I seem to recall some advice given on these forums to those who wanted to get a foot on the educational IT support ladder was to try doing some voluntary work to gain experience and have something to add to your cv.

...and if someone from Edugeek does help create the school website, perhaps the Kent Messenger could be informed of this and run the story?

When I first started at my current school we had a paper based room booking system. This was kept in our office, though we had nothing to do with it as it was strictly for teachers, however, we were supposed to keep an eye on the book itself in case a teacher tried to wander off with it. If a teacher phoned out office to ask if a room was available we were told to say that it had nothing to do with us. Pupils were often sent to our office to try to collect the book on behalf of a teacher, and they were sent back empty handed. The book itself was subject to much crossing out (see image) making it difficult to see who had booked what. The final straw came when a heavily pregnant teacher had walked across school to check if as room was free only to find that there weren't any available. She said there must be a better way of doing this, so I showed her Webman's classroombookings, which I'd set up a year earlier, but no one wanted to use. She went in to see the Head of ICT and within an hour I was given the go ahead to open it to the rest of the school. We ran the two systems in parallel for a couple of weeks, and I produced an animation showing staff how to go about using it. Now you can see just who has a room booked, and who actually booked it. A spin-off from this is that staff in the reception office have used it to track down teachers if they are not actually in their designated class, but using one of the ICT suites.

Avatar Days just come across this video on Vimeo. It's in HD so you'll need a fast connection.

Just came across this in today's Guardian - The full article can be found here - Will school headteachers accept the offer to become academies? | Education | The Guardian

Accentuate the positive.

This is one of my main worries. With the new Learning Platform coming online in September, and all local secondary schools having to take it up by February next year (2011) there's not much time to transfer work across and figure out the best way to get staff on board.

I think you have gone the opposite way, though the change management involved is probably very similar. The schools in our LEA have a variety of VLEs, Moodle, Frog, Fronter, and I think there's another one in there which I can't recall. The MSP is going to come in and sweep all those away to be replaced by a single Learning Platform. What I'm trying to find out here is how teachers have reacted to the introduction of a fresh VLE, after having spent quite some time getting their heads round the initial offering. Thanks.

This is a general question, unrelated to any specific VLE or LP, which some of you may have come across already. Many of you on here will have helped set up a VLE for your school which has been, or will be superseded by a VLE from an MSP. Has there been much resistance to the introduction of a fresh VLE? Was it more difficult to get the staff taking up the new VLE? What have you done, or are planning to do, in the way of change management? Finally, I'm sure I've seen an OFSTED paper which discusses the problems associated with introducing a replacement VLE, but I can't find the thing saved anywhere on my machine. Has anybody come across this paper themselves, or did I just dream it?

I wouldn't say that there's no hope, as these are interesting times (as the Chinese might say). I have heard of some areas where even though contracts have been signed, the money for new builds/refurbishments has been put on hold, whilst the funding for IT remains. As you can imagine, those heads who were promised shiny new schools aren't that happy and have said they won't go into a managed IT service, preferring the devil they know. Whether this is simply talk to stop technicians from moving on, I don't know, but I do know that there is real anger out there at the amount of time which may have been wasted in endless discussions.

I have to admit to some embarrassment here in that I misread your original question. for some reason I read Joomla instead of Wordpress.

Post deleted as I misinterpreted the question.

I normally get up at around 05:30 most mornings, even weekends, which is probably more to do with old age than anything else, but about every six to eight weeks I'll have a weekend morning where I'll sleep until 10:00. Getting up from a long lie in is as bad as not having enough sleep.

I spent two years as the only member of a school's PTA, knowing that if I gave up no one would take over and help organize fund raising events. Parents were happy to turn up and spend their money at these events, but whatever tactic I tried to get new people interested in helping out failed. When parents find out that there will probably be some legal liabilities attached to running a free school, which will be directed at them personally, they may think twice. Once the initial momentum has fallen away, probably when the first cohort of pupils has left, where will the next generation of parents willing to run these schools come from? You need continuity, and as far as I can see this would come from either the LEA or business. The LEA couldn't afford to run these extra schools without huge rises in both local and national taxation, and the business sector would go into it knowing that if they failed the government would be obliged to pick up the tab, either by continuing to have those pupils educated in the former free school, or by moving them on to schools within the state sector. I like the idea of small schools, especially at primary level, where class sizes should be as small as possible so that pupils can receive much more attention in their formative years. In the planning for our new (secondary) school build, now seemingly put on hold, we were going to have smaller cohorts in separate units, so instead of one huge school for 1200, there would be four smaller units of 300, each catering for Years 7 to 11, to give it a more human perspective. I fear that the village school, apart from a select few "shop window" establishments, is probably a pipe dream.

From this week's Guardian - If I could travel faster than the speed of light, wouldn't I bump into things that I couldn't see? If you have mass, then as you travel faster you get bigger. At the speed of light you would be the same size as the universe. So you would bump into everything. Tony Scott, London Jack Johnson asked how Star Trek's USS Enterprise manages to avoid collisions while travelling at warp-factor-eight, "much faster than the speed of light" (N&Q, 19 May). Over great distances, light does not travel in a straight line, but is "warped" by the gravitational pull of large objects. Because we use light or other similarly affected electromagnetic waves to locate objects in space and measure their distance, we may be wildly overestimating their true, as-the-crow-flies-distance. USS Enterprise's warp drive disregards the light-derived view of the universe and enables the ship's navigation system to head directly towards its objective. Thus warp factor is not faster than light, but straighter than light. That's my understanding, anyway. Robert Blanchard, London SE6

Just as we've gotten staff used to the Office Button in 2007! I installed it at home yesterday. Saved a PowerPoint as a wmv file, though it took for ever. Seems to take a time to load as well, but I haven't had too much time to play as yet.

To bring you up to speed, Ramesys were taken over by Capita several weeks ago, so when you're Tuped over you'll be working for them, or rather the partnership they are a part of (probably Carillion/Inspired Spaces). Unless you are an independent school or an academy, your school will have little choice but to go for the managed service offered as part of the new build. You will be Tupe'd over (do a search on Edugeek for that term) to the new company at a specified time in the future as the BSF programme rolls out in your area. Your SLT will have already decided who will be tuped over from your school, but they can't say what position you should be offered, this will be done during one-to-one interviews with the managed service provider. They should also circulate any positions available within their company to all the techs in your LEA before advertising them generally. Be warned that if you apply for one of these posts and get it, you will be taken on under the terms and conditions (T's & C's) of the new company, so things like holiday entitlement, working hours and pensions could all be affected. Neither will you have any of the limited job protection offered by the terms of being Tuped. Under Tupe you will be taken on at the same payscale you're on now, and if you receive annual increments, i.e. you're not at the top of your payscale, these will also transfer across with you. SSSNB (do a search on Edugeek) negotiations for school staff are still ongoing, but the findings will also be implemented for any ex-school staff still working under Tupe conditions. However, having said that, the advent of a new government with possibly different objectives for the future of education in this country, could affect some of what I've said above. If, for example, your LEA has already signed a contract with one of these partnerships, there is a chance that a new build and managed services could come to pass; on the other hand, if nothing has so far been signed you will know as much about the situation as do I. If my experience is anything to go by, you, the technician, will have little face to face input in the technical aspects of the new build, possibly advising your Head as he/she returns from meetings with the service providers. It is also probable that heads from schools in your LEA will have different responsibilities when dealing with these companies. It could be that your head is responsible for Design, and another is in charge of overseeing the IT aspect of negotiations. It's a pretty safe bet that not one of them will be an expert in their field. HTH.

Heard on Radio 4 this morning of one group of parents who want to set up their own "free" school in Wandsworth. They had identified a hospital building which had been closed down and estimated that the book price was somewhere between £8-£10 million, and bringing it up to standard for educational purposes would be £20 million, so a total of up to £30 million in all. Wandsworth borough were in favour of this, so where would the money come from? They were already talking to private companies, but it wasn't made clear if the private companies would provide funding. BBC News - Schools are being invited to become academies And for Michael Gove's views on education, try the two links below http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7052010.ece http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/apr/13/gove-education-plans

I don't know if I'm too late to register. I tried yesterday at the email address given but haven't so far received a reply. I can appreciate the admins will have a pile of work to get through for this and upcoming conferences, but I need to get a leave of absence form signed before the end of the week.