ICTCoordinator

This is a very useful posting. Many thanks for that.

Yes just to clarify. We have in effect renewed our subscription to the existing UniServity VLE. We were told that the new fully functional Life Learning Cloud would not be available until September, when UniServity would merge our existing resources into it. If anyone knows anything different I would like to hear from them.

Hi Jane I have just led a twilight session after college tonight where we have been showing work done on UniServity vle, and at the same time talking about the difficulties of using the program. We have attended a meeting for the new Life Learning Cloud and while it does look very good we have not had chance to get our hands on it and try it for ourselves. We have paid for a 12 month subscription to try it out. The problem is that the subscription starts in May and the full version is not released until September. UniServity promise a full integration of resources from the old system into the new one. This is going to be a terrible time to start any training as the new academic year is starting. I am not sure how fully we will be able to utilise the rest of the year's subscription.

Yes I understand the distinction here. We are a school college and not a HE college.

Thanks for your help here. If we wanted to host Moodle ourselves here, would we be better buying a new dedicated server and if so what sort of size?

We are interested in the possibility of replacing UniServity for Moodle. We are going to look at the new 'Life' version of UniServity, but costs would seem to favour a move to Moodle. We have already downloaded Moodle, but we are looking at it for the first time. We are a very big college of around 2000 with both students and staff. We don't know the full costs and requirements that we will need. We want to set up a proper ePortfolio system to work through Moodle as well as the ability to do things like blogs, forums and wikis. We might want to set up a student email system through Moodle. We want to be able to add videos to a new vle as well as perhaps have user areas which can be customised. Any help at all here in terms of server space needed, costs and how to add the sort of functions that we require would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your reply Steven. What you are saying sounds very interesting and confirms some of my thoughts. What costs are involved in using Moodle?

We have used UniServity for the last 3 years after our authority went for this vle. They went for a loss leader and we have used it for free during this period. Now we have received our first expensive bill for renewal we are put in a real dilemma. On the one hand the vle is not great. It looks old fashioned and is not easy for most staff to use. On the other hand it is stable and some staff have put a lot of work into the vle for their departments. I know it is going to involve a lot of work and re-training to change to a new vle. I do not know much about Moodle but know that those who use it think it is great. We have had student teachers who use it for the colleges they come from and it looks good. Any advice from experience here would be welcomed.