beeswax

OpenDNS you'd missed the "r" from forum in the url.

Forgive me for asking, but I'm interested as we almost went down the Fronter route ourselves, don't you pay for support?

1. In schools that have opted to buy into or use a VLE, can you explain how the rollout was handled and managed. I became interested in the possibilities of a VLE about 3 years ago from reading posts on Edugeek. I downloaded and installed 1.5 of moodle in my own webspace and messed about. Just over two years ago we (NM and myself) started inviting various companies to come and demo their VLE in front of an audience of SMT and NM’s from various schools around the borough. The best one we saw was Scholaris, built on MOSS 2007. At the time the school couldn’t afford it so after some wrangling went with Moodle as the best option. Did your school buy it because it felt it had to, then try and decide what to do with it? I’ve always told the head that a VLE properly deployed will enhance education and I feel he’s trusted my judgement. We were offered the LEA choice earlier this year, Uniservity with the cost of this coming out of our Harnessing Technology budget but the head said no. Or did your management put together a coherent development and training plan as well as allocating resources and time to implement it? A development plan of sorts has been put together by the ICT faculty and myself. During my staff appraisal earlier this year I had it noted that my role was to raise awareness of the VLE and receive CPD. So far I haven’t asked for the latter. 2. Who has taken ownership of the VLE, is it the technical department, the headteacher, SLT, nobody? I have been timetabled two days a week to run the VLE, though in these early stages I’m being grabbed every day. This is no bad thing as it shows that staff are interested. 3. One of the issues we are aware of is the large time commitment required to transfer existing resources onto it. Does your school allow teachers extra time to generate resources? At the moment we have a large area on one of the servers where staff put all their work. It didn’t start out like that but has just developed that way. They have the resources there already, and getting them on the VLE helps to get them organized. At the moment it’s not pretty. The site went live to all staff in September this year, though the ICTAC (ICT Across the Curriculum) reps have been having group and one to one sessions with one of the ICT teachers and me since May/June. I also worked hard with the Head of Art to develop a GCSE Photography course which was starting this school year. The idea of this is to be an exemplar course for other faculties, to see just what can be done with Moodle. There’s also a lot of Moodle (training) material out there on YouTube and elsewhere so I set up a staff only section of the site with all these video walkthroughs of how to do things in Moodle. Most of these last no more than a couple of minutes. 4. Do you feel your VLE is used effectively? Is it value for money, and do you see any improvements in T&L? How are you measuring its success? It’s certainly being well used, but we’re only a couple of months into opening it up to staff and pupils. Pupils are discussing subjects via the messaging system, peer review, writing blogs, journals, though I have to admit it’s a bit like the wild west at the moment, but it’s the part I enjoy. 5. How do you support home users? ie, for login problems, their computer is too slow etc. Do you provide a level of support to them? It’s early days yet, and so far there’ve been no problems from home users. We ran survey just after Christmas to see who did and didn’t have home access, and we’ve recently introduced a simple poll on the front page, “Do you have access to a computer at home?” with a simple Yes/No choice. This will cross reference the survey. 6. How have you dealt with the issue of some pupils not having internet or even a computer to access the VLE? See above 7. Is the VLE embedded within every subject? We notice some subjects dont translate particularly well, regarding collection and marking of a piece of art work, for example. Naturally, a painting or a sculpture can’t be uploaded, but with the photography course there are galleries for display and peer review. It’s horses for courses. 8. One of the concerns staff have about being able to access work outside of school, is the question of work-life balance. They have already expressed concerns about pupils expecting responses/work related discussions with staff outside of school hours. How have you handled this? Staff mostly ignore them, though they do pay particular attention to Years 10 and 11 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm not a saddo. As part of my degree course I'm writing a module on raising awareness of a VLE in school, and this includes the change management aspect. http://www.beyondresistance.com/resistance_to_change.htm http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/change-management/changing-the-culture http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/change-management/roles/agent http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/the-information http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/buildmlehefe/lifelonglearning/mlebriefingpack/17 http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/CCSWP191/ccswp191.html http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/23487-thats-gratitude-you-comments-after-exchange-2007-upgrade.html Apologies to ssiruuk2 for this last link. One more link to add which I forgot about earlier - Secondary ICT Management - Choosing a VLE | Teachers TV Yup, I'm here again - http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/bp17.pdf There's also an attached pdf, VLE mistakes - how to get it all wrong. It's a little old but still relevant. Must get back to doing some work now. cs_mistakes_dlt.pdf

Have you added the students via Site Admin>Users>Permissions>Assign System Roles? If this is the case you should remove them from there and only assign (or allow them to enrol via a key etc) in each individual course.

There's a small "eye" symbol next to certain items such as courses, activities etc. When clicked (if open) it will become a closed eye symbol, and the item it's associated with will become a pale grey meaning that only teachers and admins can see it. Check out our Moodle site when you're back. At the moment when we have pupils enrolling for courses I create a Group which has the same name as the enrollment key for that course so that as pupils enroll for that particular course they are also added to the Group for that course. This isn't the best way to go about things. I've been working on CLEO's patch for adding pupils to Moodle with David from St. Cuthy's. It takes a while but creates all the year groups etc automatically. I've lost the link at the moment but I'll dig it out.

Media Converter - the fastest free online audio and video converter You can also get it as a Firefox plugin.

I've just made a huge leap of imagination. I typed www. in front of bishopbarrington.net and came up with a school website. The next bit took some doing, but eventually (Lady Luck was smiling on me here) I hit the Contact tab, and Hey Presto! I found the address for Bishop Barrington School. Whatever you use will advertise where you are in some way or other.

there's also this review

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/17903-useful-digital-camera-info.html

I need to find the webpage/information about when secondary schools have to have certain aspects of VLE's in place (sometime in 2009 I think) so that I can refer to it in a dissertation. Despite searching for a good 30 mins I haven't come anywhere near it. If anyone out there knows where this doc is I'd be grateful for the help. Ta.

You'll be missed round here Zak. Have fun.

Right, here's a chance for you youngsters to embarrass an old timer. I've been coming across SDOS in messages being sent by pupils on our Moodle site. I've Googled it but haven't come up with anything useful. What does it stand for?

Do you think the external party will be any better at getting updates from staff? Ask anyone on here who has developed a school website about getting material from staff. The majority are indifferent, some are downright aggressive and one, maybe two, are active. It's probably just as well that it's being farmed out as it can be depressing not getting any feedback.

ICT Development Manager Sowerby Bridge High School, Albert Road, Sowerby Bridge HX6 2NW Tel: 01422 831011 11-18 Mixed Comprehensive 980 on roll, 140 in the Sixth Form PO1-3, £26,835 to £28,172 pa (pay award pending) 37 hpw Post Ref: ED404 NJC posts subject to Single Status Job Evaluation Required for December 2008 / January 2009 a highly skilled and experienced person who will play an important role in managing ICT Systems across all areas of the school whilst developing and securing our status as a Specialist Maths and Computing College.The person appointed will play a leading and strategic role in the development of ICT across the school. We are looking for someone who has: Strategic direction for developing ICT at Sowerby Bridge High School Self-motivation Good organisational skills Energy Initiative Excellent inter-personal skills The ability to communicate at all levels effectively The ability to work independently The ability to lead a team The commitment to work in a team Critical thinking skills to provide solutions that are proactive not reactive Relevant technical expertise. If you would like to be part of our success then please contact Jane Banham, PA to the Headteacher, for an application pack: [email protected]. We look forward to receiving your application. Closing date: Wednesday, 22 October 2008.

Great film. Thanks for the reminder.

I had that thought (meta courses) this morning. I think my little diagram (above) illustrates this as well. Just couldn't see it at the time.

What I hope the diagram shows is that we want to keep separate classes all doing the same subject to allow for ease of selection by different class teachers when marking. However, the difficulty we are finding is keeping the classes separate when adding them to the group doing Year7 ICT.

I've spent part of the morning with a colleague from another school getting our heads round this. I have to say that it works as per the instructions. Great stuff. Thanks all round. Can I have some clarification on something though? All the year groups were created, lesson groups, passwords sent over etc, but we were trying to get different classes in the same year, for example, 7a, 7b, 7c into the same ICT lesson, but still remain in their separate class groups as this would make it easier for teachers when it comes to marking work.

Webman drew my attention to hugin. I used it to create this shot from 5 images.

Content from teachers is very difficult to come by, you just have to persevere, talk softly and carry a big stick. While your head appreciates that projecting a positive image of the school is vital (funding follows the pupil) those at the IWB face may feel that this has nothing to do with them; they are there to teach, not market the school. And some of them simply can't be arsed.

Nice and simple site, nothing wrong with all the white space, it doesn't look cluttered. Navigation is straightforward. Your head's right about the "branding", i.e. getting everything to have the same general feel. People know where they are then. It also looks professional. You could improve it by transferring it to a cms, making your job easier eventually. Keep it up. Excellent.

I found a few of the Moodle icons missing from the pix/t folder and came across this page on Moodle.org.

Thanks for publishing the list conehead. I always assumed we were in this zone, but never sure.

I didn't give you the full picture. I'm using MRBS integrated into Moodle. The function.inc file doesn't exist in the MRBS root folder.

You mention a functions.inc, if is this a file, I can't locate it, so I assume it's something else. Ta