kitsch

I read somewhere that a cinema can make over a million pounds PROFIT a year on pop corn. Apparently, it has a much greater profit margin that turning poppies into heroin.

Wonderful... absolutely wonderful. A poem of a phrase.

No, indeed... just the vast majority of people who appear to voice their opinions on the matter... and not just here, either. So, the Top Gear team at your school aren't impressed and the learner drivers are? A ringing endorsement, indeed. I was initially impressed with it and evangelised avidly at my school... it does indeed have a superficial 'cleverness' about it. just like your teachers, I said that I WOULD use it. Then I actually DID start using it. Oh dear. If it works for the teachers, that's great. I, like your teachers, am using it... I take it from your upbeat mood that they are actually using it successfully and not still at the WOULD stage...? I'm hoping it will get better. It is the only system we have. I am hoping it will reveal some little nugget of wonderfulness that is, at present, keeping itself hidden...after all, like you there, that's what we've been lumbered with and we all have to make the best of whatever has been issued to us to use.

Because if enough people complain, then the powers that be might get the message that it is pants. I think you've just answered the question yourself.... you probably aren't going to convince them! It is not IT savvy people who determine the success or failure of a system, it's the rank and file users.

Your sole occupation? You are lucky... I'm a tech reacher, not an IT teacher, and I still have to deal with it on top of a busy timetable... along with knowing that, for me, it is pretty well useless. I reckon even building a model of Westminster Abbey out of toothpicks wouldn't seem too daunting if it were all one had to do! I don't have previous 'baggage' either, as I only had it foisted on me a few months ago. Sorry to seem a little cautious, zdenka, but as it is your sole occupation, it would possibly not be in your vested interest to be very negative about Kaleidos?!

Sounds great... might check that one out!

Oh, goodness.... don't... the risks just don't bear thinking about.

Ooh.... Health and Safety... I hope whoever is hanging them has done a risk assessment. High vis vests... orange cones with flashing lights... safety training... visors... hard hats... sealed-off exclusion zone...

Ludo? That's more like it... Football? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Old? Some of you young whippersnappers don't know what 'old' is... in my day, old was REALLY old... people knew what old was then. Nurse? ... NURSE! ....

And, unfortunately, it probably won't be while people think (sometimes mistakenly, sometimes not) that there are more familiar, less scary and more convenient ways of getting information than a learning platform. I've had the same situation with the faculty website I created... people don't know how useful it mght be because they will not venture there. No password is needed and all they have to do for the front page to come up is click on the link I send them. Yet, when I sit them down and make them actually look at a computer screen while I bring up the website, they go 'Oh, that's good... how long has that been there?". So, regarding Kaleidos.... fat ruddy chance of them looking at THAT.

I can see Kaleidos working for teachers who teach topics across different subjects (i.e. primary teachers). The overlap and the interconnectivity needed would be well served by a VLE. As a Technology/Art teacher in a secondary school, however, I have yet to be convinced that Kaleidos is better than what I am doing at the moment. I have found much easier and far less long-winded ways of sharing resources etc over the 'net than Kaleidos.

Then it will just go away... it is the silent majority who don't use it who will ultimately decide its future. In my thirty years of teaching I have seen many much better initiatives than Kaleidos go under simply because people wouldn't utilise them.

G-Jackson, I share your frustrations regarding getting bolshy staff to look at kaleidos... but I can see where they are coming from, too. When we have something to communicate to staff, we tend to just use email.

Would answer localzuk.... a good point, I'm sure... but sunny outside and here I am looking at posts on lanyards. logging off and going into garden.... bye and poss speak later!

Two very good points. The clips are good for those style-conscious staff (yes, there are some nowadays, unlike when I was at school!) who want to put them discretely on their belts / clip them on their trouser pockets. We have hell's delight getting staff to wear them... and I can't say I'm too keen, myself. Health and Safety? Too right. I'm a Tech teacher in the workshops most of the day. Enough said. I asked if I could have mine on my bag as I keep it with me all day. The school seems OK with that.

We get them individually as a phone call to our faculty team room... even easier. And this one as an email. Well said... otherwise learning to use a VLE for us non IT-specialist teachers is a bit like having to learn a dictionary from start to finish as opposed to just gleaning the useful bits when you need them. Ruddy heck.... you mean they're ALL like that?

I've had macs off and on since 1991 and they seem remarkably resilient to onslaughts both on and off the net. Have been on the internet for 10 years with NO problems at all as yet (apart from current mac beginning to get past it at 6 years old and not being able to update java to newest version). Oh, and Kaleidos has issues, but I'm not changing my computer yet just so I can access THAT properly at home!

Very little for my main GCSE subject (Design and Technology: Graphics), but nothing new there. Pages can look a bit of a mess with too much 'clever' stuff happening (the VLE equivalent of when we used to use fifteen different typefaces in a computer document, just because we could). The experience can therefore be bit confusing.

Or, perhaps even more, what is best for the subject. I teach Design and Technology and Art and it seems next to useless in those subjects. I taught Science as well at my last school (but only yrs 7 and 8) and I could see it working more in that situation... but still rather long-winded and a bit round-the-houses to use whatever subject one is talking about!

Too true... regarding the Yumminess Factor, Kaleidos is the internet equivalent of a nylon suit... without the convenience. Oh... give me a piece of paper I can just grab, please! A true understanding of technology is shown by knowing when it isn't the best option. Agreed. Tallying with the transport metaphor, I've decided that 'car sharing' is viable and found that it's far more effective time-wise to take worksheets written by members of the faculty, produce home-made in-house stuff in VERY basic sites on the internet, give it a simple domain name and tell people where it is. It takes a fraction of the time Kaleidos does. I produce it for my own use but it's usable by everyone. We all use the same worksheets for projects so it's instantly a shareable and universal resource. If people wanted to put stuff there they are welcome to the username and password, but it is me who does the donkey work... as with Kaleidos.

Pessimists? Oh, I couldn't agree more. When I did our faculty website three years ago, I met with my fair share of skepticism, but now it is even written into the faculty development plan. Ha ha... I AM doing Kaleidos at school! Just having Kaleidos at school is more than enough. When it was introduced, I was asked to be a 'champion', something I do reluctantly. As a Technology teacher, Kaleidos is a bit of an overkill; I function quite happily with my own little site (which I inform people about and they have full access to...it contains the faculty-produced sheets which everyone uses) for keeping ks3 worksheets and schemes of work together, keystage3.info, along with my faculty one lordbills.com, my one for my yr 11 group from last year yr11.info and my yr 10 one I have started for this year, yr10.info. They are nothing clever, but I don't want 'clever'... I want something that does exactly what I want. Kaleidos just gives me the same thing in a lot more stages and a whole lot more which just isn't actually relevant in my particular subject areas. What I do is the equivalent of taking a hatchback to the supermarket for my weekly shop: perfect for the job, easy to manouvre. Kaleidos is like having to drive an articulated lorry for the same trip. Re: my computer, I think I can live with not getting bands' demos on Myspace, but that may change if I suddenly find I can't live without listening to moody teenagers holed up in garage somewhere with a sixpack of lager, a fuzz box and an Argos drumkit. I'm enjoying this conversation, but this is my last post on the subject as it has become not really relevant to the topic and not what people have clicked on here to see. Please feel free to message me, though, or whatever people do on these forum things!

Absolutely right, funkyfin, I will need a new machine sometime.... a very astute observation. It will be my 7th, I think. It's a problem that has always been there since my first 680k computer (that was the memory, not the price... though at £1200 it felt like it at the time) back in 1989. I'm just not going to let something like Kaleidos (ESPECIALLY Kaleidos) govern when that will be (Oh, and the other thing I can't seem to be able to do is listen to bands' tracks on Myspace).

To me, it's ALWAYS unavailable. I run a Mac at home. It is six years old and can do pretty much all else I want... but not Kaleidos... and I'm jiggered if I'm going to buy a new computer at the moment just for THAT. I'm one of the school Kaleidos team at school and yet cannot access it out of school. So, you're convincing people to use Kaleidos? Does that mean it's one of the better ones? Blimey.

Unlike most of you probably, I am just here as an interested internet user/teacher and start with a VLE knowledge base of practically zero. I am one of the ordinary teachers you talk about. I LOVE the internet but am baulking at the level of work our VLE is going to cause and am having an attitude problem towards it. So what hope have (we with the) the Luddites and skeptics of this world? I bet it wasn't tested on them. I bet they weren't consulted. Yet they are pretty well the ones deciding a system's future success.