Fedaykin

Because they can. Yes I did read his first post and I told him he went to the wrong place to ask the question then told him the correct place and a direct phone number. Can't be bothered to argue over this anymore if he doesn't want to lift a phone up and have a phone conversation with some people I know can help him then thats his own look out. Not my problem and I'm not going to talk about it anymore...

Fronter is his best port of call ... end of story.

I wouldn't call it jumping through hoops, Fronter has a very good service desk who I have happily used on the rare occasion I have needed their support. They are the best people to help you out. To be honest if you attended the standard admin training you should be able to work this one out.

Good I'm pleased to see i stirred things up a bit. I over egged my comments to see what replys I got and on the whole not bad. I have my opinions as do other people, I'm glad that people can see all the picture. The thing was I was getting fed up with all the Moodle evangalists popping up every time someone mentions VLE. Edugeek is a good forum but I do feel at times that its a marketing arm for the world of Moodle. I personally think managed solution is the best way forward but local solutions do have there place. I have seen plenty of sweeping statements about how bad managed solutions without any kind of real knowledge about the top players (notice I say top players - I think in a couple of years several of the suppliers will pull out of the market). Certainly Uniservity and Fronter are here to stay with a large customer base. I agree about independant learning and I feel managed solutions offer that model, I personally once everything shakes out the managed solutions will have the largest share of schools in the UK.

Don't take it the wrong way but the fact is you didn't need to come on a forum to ask this question the service desk can easily deal with your problem.

I could answer your question on how to fix this as I have been a Fronter admin for years:D....but really Fronter can help you with this and you are part of a managed service in London meaning there is a dedicated service desk to help you with these kind of issues. LGFL is the wrong port of call for this , you need to speak to Fronter UK's service desk (in London its called the London MLE service desk). I doubt they would have any problem dealing with this issue. Call: 0845 450 1948

No...I'm talking about the benefits of hosted/managed solutions over locally hosted solutions (Moodle etc...) The major managed solutions are up to the job and far more so than something thrown together in house by the school techie. Have you actually been to a school which uses a managed solution? Before you state that they are not up for the job I suggest you go to some of the schools which have made good use of a managed solution. The LA when it goes through the process of choosing a preffered solution for the area it is concerned with service targets, educational needs and the ability to deliver collaboration across the LA. Hosted solutions are the way forward as is clearly being shown by the market trends at the moment. I don't think the school techie has the education skills to know what a teacher or student needs. On the other hand the leading VLE suppliers employ some of the top educationalists in the UK at the moment ( I know I've met them). The top VLE's are not some sort of evil empire (certainly the VLE I personally deal with are a great group of people). Contact companies like Fronter or Uniservity, I think you will be surprised about how knowledgable their educationalists are about the needs of schools with this kind of technology. I also feel it's very much techies keeping their jobs and protecting their little empire. I have seen schools with locally hosted solutions which have either gone nowhere or ground to a halt when the person who looks after it leaves.

The people who use the VLE in the end are teachers and students! Something that tends to be forgotten by school techie types. For most schools a managed VLE is the best solution as it's something off the shelf and the school techie doesn't end up being the gate keeper. What a school techie wants is a black box he can shove in a corner that only he knows how to maintain hence protecting his job for the next ten years! Whilst ICT admins have an important part to play in schools and do need to be part of the loop in the VLE decision making process they do not have the required knowledge of education needs to drive the decision making process. A VLE should not be seen as a piece of software which is installed and then maintained, over the years! We have had all sorts of software installed on school computers that are never used. A VLE forms a part the day to day runnning of the school, fortunately senior leadership teams are realising this now inside schools and taking part in the process. When you have the SLT on side then the change process can be rolled through the school, when its handed off to the school techie then a box gets installed and nothing happens. I feel sorry for anyone who has an unmanaged solution.

Your paying for a managed service just phone the service desk.

I have a friend who used to have an RC30, lovely piece of kit in all respects! As for me I have an SV650S K5 which is a joy.

Yep thats very much it in a nutshell, if you want a feature they will do it but its not recommended. They are very open with their community of users which makes a nice change from most companies. I'm just a bit fed up with the Moodle fans painting everything that isn't Moodle as bad. Moodle is great if you have the time but in the end most schools haven't. Since Fronter got the NCSL contract they have been one of the big players in the UK market.

I find no mention of this on their website. It isn't mentioned but I can assure you it is, they used to make a big thing of it a few years back but I think they feel it might scare off customers these days. It was first developed with the University of Oslo using open source software.

There's the problem, the website doesn't give much information other than the usual marketing blurb, No demo, So we can't even see what we are getting. The moodle site runs on moodle, so we can see what is possible. If you want a specific feature in fronter, you have to hope and pray that the company will find it in there interest to add it in. And when we say moodle is free, don't forget that it's not only free of cost (to acquire the software, of course there is a cost for server, maintainence etc) but it it free to do whatever you want to it. I.e. open source, (see http://www.gnu.org) so if I want to add SMS texting with a link to my MIS system I can code it up and give that away free as well. So is this a good VLE ? I really couldn't say. Is this good software ? Check out the way the links to pages on there website work, I have never seen anything quite so odd. Is there a community of thousands of people around the globe using with information and courses being shared ? Is the LGFL going to share the process of chosing the VLE ? Becta only released there recommended VLE providers a few days ago, but thats another story. Is there a range of books and companies that help with training and support ? How many other Universities and Schools use the product so that skills are transferable for staff and students ? Do you want me to go on ? probably not, I'll try and shut up now. Regards Budgester I don't doubt your enthusiasm for Moodle and knowledge about its positive features, I have never used it so can't comment. On the other hand I have been a user of Fronter for a number years and I am a bit frustrated at how your painting it in such a bad light! Is it a good VLE? - Well by in large it is, I have found it to be reliable and robust. Does it have a demo? - Yes go on there web site and sign up for access, on top of that they are always happy to put you in contact with establishments which use it to give an unbiased view. Maybe you see the links on the website as odd but frankly you get used to it. I have seen far worse from some solutions! Fronter is open source based itself and is by in large one of the largest players in the market accross Europe with millions of users. Fronter prefers the community method to drive development with healthy online forums and regular user conferences. The UK user conference is during the autumn and allows Fronter to show new features, gain feedback and take back new requirements from the users. Fronter will happily add custom features for the userbase if asked, if its not critical this is usually done during the two annual updates. In the end Fronter is the preferred solution not the only choice, from the commercial products available its one of the best available in my opinion.

I have heard some bad things about the Dell switch range - maybe best avoided! We upgraded our school network infrastructure last year replacing the switches and most of the computers. We use Dell GX620 as our choice computer (they come with Gigabit). As for the switches we use Netgear with some Planet left over from a previous upgrade, with Netgear you get alot for your money and they seem to work well. The central switch is a Netgear GSM7212 which is hooked up to the servers via copper and the rest of the network via a fibre optic backbone. The nice thing about this switch is the 12 SFP fibre ports and 12 RJ45 ports, you also get a web interface. http://www.netgear.co.uk/managed_layer2_switch_gsm7212.php Out across the network we use the Netgear JGS524F which have 24 Gigabit ports and two SFP slots. http://www.netgear.co.uk/rackmountable_switch_jgs524f.php We use the AGM731F SFP modules which are gigabit. http://www.netgear.co.uk/fibregigabit_module_agm731f.php The odd Planet switches have gigabit fibre modules to hook them into the backbone and we only use them for areas with legacy computers which don't have gigabit network adapters. For not much spend we have got a robust and very fast network. As for cabling work we tend to use Cavendish who have always done a good job for us (if you contact there Newhaven office try and speak to John Deakin - he is always helpful). http://www.cavendishcoms.co.uk/company.asp Hope all this helps!