mylearningltd

We'll mention this to our schools. Thankyou for the insight!

Divide it by the number of students and give them all WHSmith Vouchers so they can buy a new batch of pencils and pens to lose or destroy for the coming term.. The parents would be chuffed at least....

Personally, I'd still go for laptops or netbooks. Yes, I like my tablet but for browsing, messing about - not doing actual work. The biggest fundamental problem with tablets (in my own opinion) is: - 1). They make you work slower. I don't care who you are - whatever you are doing on your tablet is going to be done slower and more restricted than if you had a mouse and keyboard. I will give you a race at writing a paragraph of text then selecting the second letter in the fourth word and deleting it, then continuing the paragraph at the end. If they slow you down doing your work, they can't be good for you, no matter how cool it is to swipe stuff with a finger. When I'm using a tablet I feel like a caveman. Yes, you feel modern but there's a time and a place for them and only as a nicety at the moment - for viewing things, browsing things but not doing work things. A Primary School audience would probably be the best place for browsing big pictures, videos, playing an educational game or two (if flash works). 2). Keyboard - Laptops have a keyboard. You can type much quicker with one and typing is surely something that's important for school work. 3). Software - Everything is useable on a laptop. With tablets, certain sites are just not ready for them yet. Many places that require WYSIWYG editors have alternatives or nothing at all. You get issues with Flash, PDF downloads (the lack of embedding etc). I'm not saying tablets are useless - it's just that personnaly I think educational sites are just not ready for them yet - maybe another year or two. For convenience sake everything just works on a laptop because the operating system has been around such a long time that well know applications have chugged along with it and solidified. With tablets, all of those well known apps are having to reinvent themselves to try and work in a new way and there's still a learning curve going on. Again, that's just my opinion. From a work point of view, a laptop is still the way to go to get things done quickly and without the hassle of "lack of support" in various situations.

Hello there, I'm going to suggest that you have a look at our Primary VLE as something to consider for primary children to use. It has lots of big friendly tools (all cloud-based) but has the whole SCORM thing going on if needed. And if I'm allowed to say? (don't bite me) - SCORM really is a clunky old thing isn't it? It's as if the idea was there but someone took the idea, made it magnetic and then dragged it through a box of rusty nails and went "Ta-da!". It's got to that point where the SCORM engines just seem old. They work, but they just never seem to work how you want them to work. Probably just me. Hmm - and this post is really old so suggesting a VLE now, knowing you were looking in 2010 is kind of silly! So with that, I'm going to leave and say how much I like edugeek's new blue design - very soft and comfy - well done edugeek

Glad you got it working! I was close on my guess..I guess? That's another gotcha you've found that I've forgot to mention but have experienced too! All the best:) Adam

Good question, My code is for Facility. The error message might be related to the term 'xml' being used in the wrong place or out of context. I've had an issue where, in PHP, if I didn't print the first line of my XML header in single quotes, PHP would remove the '' meaning that the header was sent incorrect as if starting 'xml version=' etc... Also, if you have a tag in there such as that might be reported as a reserved word?? That's just a guess though, might be nothing to do with it. But it would be worth changing anything that looks out of place, maybe a namespace just called xml: instead of xmlns: etc... Regarding the error, it will be difficult to help as I've never seen it but I hope this helps in some way! Good luck!

Hi there, I noticed that you asked a specific question and didn't really get an answer. Yes, we've got it working and use it to import school data into the VLE we have developed. You're extremely close Here's the actual XML Request you should send. (Could probably shorten it down a bit but it works) PS - I've been fortunate enough to have IntegrisG2 as a backbone for comparing with Serco's Facility as their XML Request/Responses are quite similar I've not found a manual yet for Serco Facility. Integris G2 had one (it was a bit vague) but their support team were very helpful. I will leave how you handle the response all to you! Adam

Hi there, We've recently integrated our learning platform with Integris G2 with a school over seas via PHP scripting and SOAP to extract user and group data to csv. There have been obstacles to overcome (mainly the configuration on the Integris G2 client side by the school in order to give us the correct access). All is working really well and I must say, the Integris G2 support for us has been good. The school we deal with receive direct support from Integris G2 and not any governing body. Again, like Phil, I'll keep my eye out for any questions you stick in this discussion just incase I've came across the same problem and can help especially on the authentication side of things. Adam

As a commercial VLE provider we have noticed that "integration" can mean different things. There's the easy way and the way it should work. Easy way - "Yes, we integrate with your MIS because we connect and read some data from it onto a screen" Hard way - "Yes, we integrate and by that we mean that if your MIS admin changes/adds or edits a user or group on the MIS then our VLE will synchronise on request to update the VLE to try and reflect the exact tree structure of your MIS. Yes, we will take into account that a user you just deleted from the MIS will need removed from the VLE and also try to work out what to do if that person happened to own 3 courses, 6 learning spaces, sent 15 moderation requests and has uploaded 1200 files that 80% of the school are still using. We will also do our best to work out what to do with a group on our VLE when you rename it on your MIS even though your MIS doesn't store any type of unique reference for groups similar to the UPN number for users. This means that if you rename a group on your MIS our VLE has no way of knowing what it use to be so as it only has the name of the group to rely on as a reference. It will assume it's deleted and a new group just got added." Fortunately, we've tackled the hard way (using a wizard) and now, if anyone asks "Do you integrate with MIS" we can explain the difference between "Yes" the easy way and "Yes" the proper way. At the moment, we've been saying "No" because to us, reading some data from a table onto a screen isn't integration in the sense we want it to mean. All the best! Adam

As an update to this thread, for anyone interested in seeing these VLE's in action, we are going to be at BETT 2012 (My Learning UK Ltd) showing off our Primary VLE and other products. You'll also catch some other names mentioned here such as DB Primary and Uniservity. If you wanted a hands on look, it might be a good idea to take a day out and go see them in action!!

As far as a comparison to Moodle, I'd certainly recommend reading what the user "ning" above is saying. They give a good personal (and fair) portrayal of Moodle. It fits in with some of the experiences my collegues are having regarding the same product and environment. From my own experience of dealing with schools (existing and potential) the most important thing is becoming value for money (2011). Glitter and dazzle is giving way it seems for fundamental questions like "How is that going to help make things better?" With that in mind, FREE vs PAID is going to seem less important if the most important thing is going to be (and should be). "Will this help for the next 1-2-3 years?". To follow up on "dabroa"'s recommendations, I'd like to add My Learning UK Ltd to that list. Simple because they/we offer a Primary VLE that really is for Primary but at the same time can act as a Secondary. This solves the issue above mentioned by "edutech4schools" whereby a Primary school usually ends up with no budget or a VLE that the Secondary school selected. The needs for Primary vs Secondary are extremely different and to assume a Primary child could comfortably use a Secondary system in class (or at home) would be very optimistic indeed. Anyway, good luck with whatever decision you do make in the end! It would be good to know what your final decision will be

Saw this at the show. Great product, great idea! I'm sure it will be a success

I'm a developer for a VLE provider that includes SEN tools inside it. Tools such as symbol support (using Widget Point), large text, high contrast, multi-lingual support etc. It's free to schools with less than 100 users so it might fit your requirements. Obviously, it's not my place to say "it's the best" nor "the worse" but as far as answering your question/need I can advise My Learning UK Ltd as a VLE that includes Special Education Need tools. It also allows the integration of Expresso applications. It would be only fair to mention other providers (of who'm I'm aware SEN Tools are present). These would be Learnspace, Uinservity, WebCT, Blackboard and I do believe Moodle has support too? I don't know the full array of tools these particular products included but it might be useful for your research. Hope that helps in some way.