mighty.grey.eagle

Why not go to the Moodle "Hardware and Perfomance" forum. Plenty of discussions about what works and doesn't. Or the documentation for that section found here. Lots of tweaks to improve performance but, as Geoff mentioned, Linux is probably the best answer in the long term.

Just enrol all staff onto a metacourse. They will automatically be enrolled on courses "below" this one. I don't see any reason why this shouldn't be as secure as any other system. It also has the added advantage of introducing some of the features of Moodle to the less impressed members of staff.

Don't know about SLK but it screwed our Moodle database - had to go to a backup. Seemed to want extra files and thought that it was being entered into a Blackboard VLE. Repeat after me 100 times "I must not play with a live system".

This is a very difficult question and one that has been discussed many times in the Moodle forums. "Russdev" correctly, in my opinion, uses the word "VLE" rather than pointing to a specific VLE. Anyway. To answer some of the points already made: a) a dumping ground for files doesn't, to my mind, constitute a VLE. b) a VLE should be accessible via the net ie everywhere. Now to be more positive and answer the original question.... a) get the senior staff FULLY on board. Not just ticking a few boxes to say that they have a VLE. Make sure that they realise that it is the first part of a revolution in education. One of the problems we have had, and it will happen everywhere, is the the senior staff are generally set in their ways. Powerpoint is often their limit. b) get evangelists in every department. This tends to be the young and enthusiastic ones. Let them filter the new techniques down to other members of the department. c) training is critical. We were very early in the VLE arena but now, in Cumbria and Lancashire, training is free to all Moodle users. Within school we have regular updates and sessions on specific aspects of the VLE. d) expand the horizons. Persuade staff that if pupils are using new communication techniques (forums, blogs, wikis, etc) they also ought to be. "Cybernerd" mentioned that there might be a split between the VLE and the Whiteboard users. Not true. Capture the whiteboard (I think as avi) and then convert it to something that will run on the VLE. Replay it anywhere. e) get students involved. I may regret this but one of our students is designing a new "graffiti" type logo for a new theme. Year 9's are playing with "Scratch" which allows them a little bit of programming of games whilst they are actually learning about control. They have control over a Wiki with examples. With Moodle roles you can create a trustee student who can monitor the forums. f) for the less enthusiastic departments buy in some teaching materials. Eventually they will want to customise/improve it. g) this is the most difficult - get teachers to SHARE!!! Which is easier getting a 1000 Maths teachers to create one question each or 1 teacher to create 1000 questions? Often it seems to be the last Persuade them that they can save themselves time and effort if they co-operate.

It has been mentioned before, on previous threads, that Office 2003 would be needed for various Sims modules in future to speed up the printing. Suggestions have been made about "free" Office viewers in order to offset the costs. I was informed last week that the situation is even worse. In our school we export in a formatted form from Assessment manager into Excel - which staff then work on. It is then re-imported back into Ass Man. Version 7 of Ass Man requires Office 2003 since it is exported as an XML file. My original thought of just putting Office 2003 on a few machines that needed to print now goes out of the window. Does anyone know if Open Office will work with version 7 of Ass Man?

Come on Geoff - wake up...................... The answer is that it works well at Carr Hill on Moodle 1.7 (and on a test 1.8 machine). Breaks, not surprisingly, when AD is altered. What was the specific problem?

No competition. Look at the variations in design at http://www.csszengarden.com

No. Some boring old fart.....

Slow to logon and, sometimes when there is a lot of processing, no connection at all. Timeout errors. You mention the possibility of an underspec server but it was "state of the art" 20 months ago. In fact we have two admin servers to try to share the load and speed things up. Tried to find out from your site what the present spec was but failed - perhaps you can give a link. Might be shooting myself in the foot here but sometimes you shouldn't just give users what they want but what they need. Do the simple things that are needed by everyone and do them well. You often see this in Open source software where there are millions of tabs doing everything that you want but you can't understand it well enough to do the simple things. Bloat is also the complexity of the system in terms of one person understanding how everything links together. Mentioned this in an answer earlier. Delayed over the weekend in responding because I wanted to give exact figures. Since the 2nd of December I have had to upgrade or apply patches or backup to send the data away on 6 occasions - so something is going wrong with the testing. In a busy school I don't want to down the system in normal working hours so it is in my time that I have to perform this process. The important thing about this thread is that Phil is willing to stick his head over the parapet to try to improve things. It is appreciated.

So don't release the software until these free readers work! In the ideal world we would all have up-to-date hardware and software but schools have budgetary contraints. If the server side worked more efficiently then the hardware on the client side would be less stressed. Schools are the end-users and it is us that that should be deciding upon specifications - not the other way round. Let us agree to disagree on this one.......... Agreed. But we have to use the software now. Got to go now to bend my MP's ear about how good open source software can be

Don't like to take over a thread but since Phil seems to regularly read this I wouldn't mind his comments on the following:- 1. Sims is too slow. You mention the full version of MS SQL. Would that make any difference to the speed? There is also a great deal of legacy hardware in school and much of this stuggles to cope with SIMS and schools cannot afford to upgrade the hardware. Similarly the requirement for Office 2003 in one of the "upgrades" this year would cost our school around £16000. Obviously I don't need to upgrade all of the curriculum machines but a consistent view/version is desirable. 2. The interface is a joke. Talk about counter-intuitive. I have used hundreds of different software packages over the years but every time the staff have a problem I seem to have to re-learn it (OK it might be my age as well!). Nobody seems to think about the way we (mis)use it in school. As an example AssMan seems have collected hundreds of reports with no way of deleting or organising them. 3. It is too bloated. Get it to do the simple things well and quickly. Even within our support unit no-one understands the "whole" system so how are schools meant to deal with comments like "You should have done X in Nova in order to make Y in AssMan work and, by the way, the way you set up the school year could also affect it" 4. Only release when it has been thoroughly tested and not to a timetable. Surely it is embarrassing that each "upgrade" is delayed. If you look throught the threads here you can almost hear the laughter when there is a delay. OK. Finished. We have no easy alternative but to use SIMS (which is part of the problem) so we might as well push to improve it.

Would this do?

Plan B might be to wait a while. CLEO are trying to set something up at the moment. The time frame might be a little too long for you though - the Autumn term I think. Alternative might be to import everybody into Moodle and then give enrolment keys for the various courses.

In know that programming is gradually disappearing from schools but this programming language might drag a few people back. Nice and visual and probably could be used for teaching control. Daughter number 1 is even going to try teaching it in her primary school. Have a look here. Best news is that it is free.

Various people are working on this issue. Your local SIMS support team should give you the licence code (on request) for activating IMS. In principle this may then integrate via sharepoint into Moodle. Watch this space.

Your school(s) should all be getting a logon to http://vle.cleo.net.uk/ in the next few days. Then you can play or examine what others have done. Within that site there will be a Moodle User Group (MUG) with forums for posting questions and, hopefully, some answers.

18 months ago at the Moodlemoot one of the Bodington developers admitted that a number of departments within Oxford University had installed Moodle. The logic being that they wanted greater control rather than follow the party line and use Bodington. On your point about a VLE not automatically fitting the pedagogy of a school - I agree but I also think that the dynamics of Moodle development provide a more fluid system. One more open to change since the thrust is coming from schools/colleges/universities.

To try to answer some of your other questions. "where do you get you info from" - by playing or Moodle.org. The book that Miles suggests is good but you have to be patient. Non-techie staff seem to find it OK. "get the support/setting up act together". Compared to some of the commercial companies (and I won't mention names) Moodle support (in it's many forms) is fantastic. I am trying to help on a Sunday afternoon because I believe in it! I suspect that somewhere along the way some information has been lost. The two demonstration CLEO Moodle sites are http://primary.test.cleo.net.uk/ and http://secondary.test.cleo.net.uk/ The various schools you support have probably been given logins. "should have clock on front page". Seems a strange way of doing this. You should be able to add this as a bit of Flash in an HTML block. Alternatively phone "Young Dave" as mentioned in a previous post if you want the clock in the header. See http://vle.carrhill.lancs.sch.uk/ "I was just mentioning that to mighty.grey.eagle since maybe he's off to meet the big boys and girls" If there are any big girls there I will report back

When you click on LOGIN (without entering a username and password) you get to the screen where you can log in as a guest. The guest account only applies if you have set this up in the administration section. Not sure which version of Moodle is live on your site so I can't point you in the right direction to get to this. There is support from CLEO by courses but Rob Musker (based at the ICT centre) may be the one to contact for a quick answer. Not tomorrow though - he is probably going to be at the same meeting!

Miles is right about the DOCS area on Moodle.org but if you are stuck with specific problems give Carr Hill a ring (Preston 682008). I'm not in on Monday (CLEO Moodle meeting) but Geoff, Richard or Young Dave in ICT should be able to answer your questions.

This is going to show my age but the young whippersnappers in the department seem to think it interesting. Found some old papers yesterday that included a price list from Research Machines (whatever happened to them ). These include:- Single Double Density Floppy Drive £492 (or £399 to education) 10MB Winchester £2467 (or £2220 to education). These are from 1984. For those of you who weren't even born then the double density drive could hold 360KB (from memory) and a Winchester was an early hard drive. Hope that RM prices have become more competitive over the years. Now where is that Windows 1.0 disc?

There is probably an easier way but, if I can't see an obvious function, I tend to use a bit of VBA. The following subroutine checks if A2 is greater than 1. If it is then it changes the colour of A1 to red Sub change_colour If cells(1,2).value>1 then Range("A1").Select Selection.Interior.ColorIndex=3 End If End Sub Attach it to a macro button or key press. If you have a lot of data a for/next loop can easily be added.

I had never even heard of NOD32 before your posting. What are the costs to education?

The amount of time wasted last year on this fiasco annoyed me greatly. I could have marked the tests several times over AND given a reason for the various levels. In order to feedback to QCA some firm figures I have started to monitor technician/teaching staff time trying to get the system to work. 12 man hours so far and counting. If we all do this someone might realise how stupid the idea was/is.

Received e-mail notification about the upgraded software today. Oh joy.