svanvloten

webman: Thanks for your comments, your passion for open source is clearly noted, although your criticism I feel somewhat misdirected: Please read my Thu Jun 07, 2007 3:05 pm post a little more carefully: quote: 'Have a look at the online collabration providers to construction, law, facilities management etc,. These products are secure, simple and hosted, although they do lack some diversity and flexibility. Point being that each should chosse a product suited to a situational context.' As you can see it is the proprietary products I feel lack the diversity and flexibility, not open source applications as you wrongly accuse me of. Regards the mobile phone number, I spend most of my time onsite. And please look a little closer at my website, the address does appear as required by UK (business) law. Regards to my work: take (another) look at my website http://www.svanvloten.eu Now, regards the merits of Moodle over Fronter ... (?!)

Regards Moodle and its number of registered users, a significant number are recreational sites that have little or no bearing to Education, commercial or professional communities, I would half that 11 million figure. Get what you pay for really, it is a peanuts and monkeys issue (although there are monkeys ... and there are monkeys). Have a look at the online collabration providers to construction, law, facilities management etc,. These products are secure, simple and hosted, although they do lack some diversity and flexibility. Point being that each should chosse a product suited to a situational context. I cant (and dont) see tech shy (and thats a vast majority of) teachers using Moodle because of the interface. I can see them using a more tailored and structured interface that can be found in proprietary products. Use what suits your staff and your budget, bearing in mind what you need now and how those needs will change over the next 5 years.

Good use of a blog, many issues. I work with SE, FE and HE organisations on a number of VLE platforms, namely all those mentioned above, and think all point raised are very valid points. Bottom line for me and most other ppl though is the end user. In education we are by and large dealing with a population of digital immigrants, i.e. technology is not and will not be a natural thing for them. With this in mind education decision makers, managers and practitioners are not the best ones to make decisions about technology per-se, but the do understand the issues of the end user - students, teachers, adminstration staff, community. If an application is easy for such people to use, and more importantly they WILL use it, then it cant be bad. With regards to the Fronter marketintg strategy, take it or leave it. But the product is probably the most suited to te sector at its current stage of tech adoption. With regards to the management of the technology itself, scalability and interoperability are key issues. And it is a concern that there are so many providers out there wanting to push their own proprietary wares - ad hoc implementation across the sector is a concern. I would aim to come up with some key evaluative terms with which to assess the pros and cons of any VLE or MLE - i.e scalability, interoperability, security, and other product support offered. And dont think too far ahead - tech moves too fast to go too far beyond a five year plan, budget for this. With these points in mind, the cost benefit of LGfLs Fronter partnership is viable. Bearing in mind the average budget of 1000 student high school is about £3Million, £10-15K p/a on an MLE that Will be used is quite acceptable. Regards to Moodle, it does offer more felxibility and is easy to use, but the interface is under-developed and depending on your host, it can be prohibilitvely slow. Further more who is there to fix it if there is a problem?; forget about WebCT, too expensive for this sector (and often unreliable); blackboard, same as moodle but less felxibility. Reagrds to training, all change, be it technology or otherwise, requires training and upskilling. Final word - the technology is secondary to managing the change: Manage the change, use the technology. Cheers, Steve