creatinghavocagain

Personally I'd get a cheap hosting account with someone like Heart Internet and then install MOODLE on that as a test. It's dead easy to to if you follow the simple instruction in the uncompressed Moodle folder. I uncompress the moodle zip file after downloading it from the moodle site and then use filezilla to upload the uncompressed files to the host. You can then navigate to the hosted MOODLE folders and install from a web browser. This way it means you always have access to "play" with your new MOODLE site.

They were telling me that they were looking into keeping the @kirklees-schools.org.uk addresses whilst still using the edukirklees.net domain - so tell the admin people not to jump too quickly.

That has changed - Student accounts are now free as well.

Google Apps is screaming fast - especially GMail and Calendar

Since I started this I thought I'd let everyone who contributed know what we have decided. We're going to try a pilot with MOOPLE, basically the Head wants to see whether it makes it easier for staff to start doing things on line and since its free he sees no down side since the staff we will test it with don't use the current VLE anyway. I also got access to their dev site which seems much better than the current version - I'll let you know how it goes.

I think they offer slightly different features and benefits which could actually be used together. Live@Edu has versions of Office and Sharepoint which although they are cut down do offer a sense of familiarity, especially to staff, and are still probably a little more functional than Google for basic stuff. Google seems best for communication and callaboration - GMail is SO much better. I'm going to review both over Xmas so now I've found this forum I'll post my thoghts

I wouldn't use GoDaddy as they are a bit remote - I had problems with one domain name supplier who "accidentally" reset one of my domain records and it took me ages to get a response from them, which was not helped by having no phone number and having to rely on email with a response commitment of 24 hours - not very good when the Head is screaming at you. Since then I have used Heart Internet and they have always been great.

Durr! Sometimes I wonder how I miss the flippin obvious - thanks

I used Google Apps for Education previously and the remote support for issues was OK - not immediate but within 24 hours. They were also pretty honest and owned up pretty quickly if there was just no way to resolve an issue. There's also quite a good set of forums about using Google Apps in schools. Ive looked at the apps just recently and they have improved the ability to control users with their Organisational Units which allow finer control over policies (so not letting the younger pupils have email or chat) but I still think some of their user management tools are a bit basic - eg. not being able to search for a specific user

Couldn't agre more with Marsh Harrier - seen LEs being "used" in a coule of schools and they were very all over the place with some teachers, not even departments, using it well but mostly not being used much at all so the kids soon got turned off. But did go to a Sharepoint conference a while back where there was one school using it really well.

Nope - just wanted to find out and was sent here - which is great - I've found lots of things I'm interested in

OK - I looked at going green a while a go and came up with some issues/thoughts: Green PCs tend to be underpowered so when I look at a green PC I have to think about the job it does and is going to do. Looked at an RM Ecoquiet PC and because of their processor they seem only useful for doing some fairly basic stuff - which is fine so long as I don't plan to use them for a long time as in a couple of years te high powered things we do now will be basic then, So there is an ecological issue there - do I buy high powered and take a hit on energy now but benefit from the PC lasting longer and therefore not having to buy/manufacture a new one or do I buy low powered machine now for low energy consumption that I may have to replace sooner? The easy thing was to implement energy saving policies on the machines, this just makes sense and is relatively easy to do. The other thing looked at was server infrastructure - this is a medium term plan - but I reckon that if I go to fewer, larger servers with Virtual Machines on them I can do things like switch off some servers at night when loads are less and this will not only save energy but will help with server lifespan. It also means we could theoretically (ie not worked out how yet) switch off or reduce the air con in the server room. I also thought about getting one of these energy monitors that are being advertised at the moment to see just how much energy machines are using - has anyone done this?

John, I'll take a look but I think I threw my copies out last year. However, from my memory I think many of these titles may be RISCOS version sensitive and if you are using a ewer version of RiscOS then they may not work.

WOW - thanks very much everyone, I was told this was a great community but never thought it would be so responsive. That's great feedback.

Ok, so one of the staff at my school was at a meeting last week and they saw this new platform called MOOPLE.NET. Apparently it will be free to schools and does single sign on to Google Apps, Moodle, Wordpress and some other Web2.0 apps. My colleague said it looked easy to use and had lots of tools and had a flexible UI. For him the attraction is FREE and the fact that it supports Moodle which we use anyway and the Head hates Sharepoint. I've been on their web site and looked at their videos but I wondered if anyone else had seen it and what you thought? Ta Alistair