Andrew_Iles_RM

Hi RikCoz, There will obviously be some work/time involved with the move to RM Unify and Apps such as Office 365. It’s relatively simple to move most content to Microsoft Office 365 due the RM Learning Platform being also based on Microsoft SharePoint. There is documentation on how to migrate content (documents, files, etc) between the two services here. There will also be some time required for staff to get up to speed with the new (but significantly more modern and easy to use) interfaces. In terms of money, RM Unify and Office 365 will be considerably less expensive for most schools than a learning platform, and for example, Office 365 also includes hosted email so there are plenty of opportunities for further cost savings. There is also a separate thread on migration here, with a post from Rich Saunders (funkyfin2000) who is involved with around 180 schools moving from the RM Learning Platform to RM Unify and Office 365 this academic year. Rich might be able to give you some more independent feedback on what's involved and what the schools that he is working with think. Hope that helps... Kind regards, Andrew Andrew Iles Senior Product Manager Digital Content and Platforms RM Education

Hi Gongalong, If you haven’t yet seen it, we have also published a document with advice on moving RM Learning Platform content here. Kind regards, Andrew Iles Senior Product Manager Digital Content and Platforms RM Education

Hi rikcoz, I’m a Product Manager in RM’s Digital Content and Platforms group which includes both RM Unify and the RM Learning Platform (formally Kaleidos). RM Unify is our focus, we strongly believe that making it simple for schools to access the best applications, tools, services and content that the web has offer, and that schools having the choice over which of these are right for them, will benefit everyone. Learning Platforms were first envisioned when the Web was a very different place. Fantastic free services such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps for Education didn’t exist, Educational content came in SCORM packs instead of online services such as Ted-Ed, YouTube for Schools, or Oxford Owl, and there wasn’t innovative online tools from the likes of J2e, Classroom Monitor or Pupil Reward Points. We don’t think that schools will want to use traditional Learning Platforms (not just ours) in an environment where something as flexible and cost effective as RM Unify (and all the great Apps that sit within it) exists. We believe this is the future and the feedback from schools since the launch of RM Unify at BETT has been incredible - we now have over 4,000 schools signed up to RM Unify in the UK. There is a period of overlap between RM Unify and our Learning Platform, more information is available in the RM Learning Platform here and your Head Teacher should also have received a letter about this in April 2013 (if you’re not part of an RM Managed Service) – however the simple message is that we will be supporting RM Learning Platform schools in whatever route they choose to take. Kind regards, Andrew Iles Senior Product Manager Digital Content and Platforms RM Education

If anyone is interested in RM Site Creator and what it is capable of, we have just published this YouTube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txI6fd5S9g4

Hi All, I’m a Product Manager in RM’s Digital Content and Platforms group which includes both RM Unify and the RM Learning Platform (formally Kaleidos). RM Unify is our focus, we strongly believe that making it simple for schools to access the best applications, tools, services and content that the web has offer, and schools having the choice over which of these are right for them, will benefit everyone. Learning Platforms were first envisioned when the Web was a very different place. Fantastic free services such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps for Education didn’t exist, Educational content came in SCORM packs instead of online services such as Ted-Ed, YouTube for Schools, Kahn Academy or Oxford Owl, and there wasn’t innovative online tools from the likes of J2e (congratulations to them on their BETT Award). We don’t think that schools will want to use traditional Learning Platforms (not just ours) in an environment where something as flexible and cost effective as RM Unify (and all the great Apps that sit within it) exists. We believe this is the future and all the feedback we are receiving about RM Unify, especially at its BETT launch, is that this we are heading in the right direction. There will be a substantial period of overlap between RM Unify and our Learning Platform, but we want schools to see first-hand how much better RM Unify is. So for schools that subscribe to the RM Learning Platform we will be giving them the Premium version of RM Unify for free (it is normally £295/495 per year). As mentioned in the post above the RM Learning Platform is based on SharePoint 2007, which is pretty dated although still supported and so we will be offering a migration service for schools who want to take Microsoft Office 365, which includes the latest version of SharePoint Online. We’re also developing a great product called Site Creator for Office 365 which will makes it really easy to setup SharePoint in Office 365. For those schools that want to go a different route, such as RM Unify with Google Apps for Education, we will be offering a bulk export service to help them get their files out of Interest Spaces they have created in the Learning Platform. We will be releasing more information on these services before RM Unify is released on the 24th March – but the simple message is that we will be supporting RM Learning Platform schools in whatever route they choose to take. Kind regards, Andrew Iles Senior Product Manager Digital Content and Platforms RM Education

Hi znova, I’m a Product Manager for Kaleidos at RM. The ability to write back from a content pack to a VLE markbook is handled through the SCORM standard. There are two requirements for this to work, the first is that the pack sends back the marks and second is that the VLE/Learning Platform is capable of receiving/displaying them. In the case of Fuse, it passes back the students total score (e.g. 4/10), but no further data about how the questions were answered. It is likely that the pack you created isn’t passing back this information (I’m not familiar with the capabilities of Reload) so Kaleidos will have nothing to display. We updated the Kaleidos markbook last year, to display the students total score (e.g. 4/10), but at the time we couldn’t find any examples of SCORM content packs passing back answers for individual questions. I agree that it would be useful to give more detail than the total score, and we want to support more detail in the future. However, we need to do this in collaboration with content providers (we have had initial discussions with some of them about implementing this), as without the content we would be developing a worthless feature. In the meantime, have you considered using the test creation tool within the Kaleidos? While in some ways it is more basic than Fuse, it does allow you to see all the information returned by the students, and contains automatic marking functionality. Kind regards, Andrew Iles Product Manager Learning Platforms Business Group RM