garkunkel

I met with an Ed Consultant from LP+ a short time after BETT and was impressed with their system. If I read your list correctly, they do what you want, are hosted, where their security is frighteningly and reassuringly tight. Just to fill in the gaps: • Hosted o Yes, they host out of a large datacentre in Cambridge and have huge investment in security, backups, resilience and management of server farms. Their telephone based support is (from all schools I have met who use LP+) superb and you get value for money as they are as patient as saints and really know the product inside out at the helpdesk. • Can be white labelled o Yes, out of the box you can either self modify or have the site design modified by LP+ consultants to be “labelled” more how you want it, so it doesn’t have to look like someone else’s VLE. I saw a guy recently doing some customisations for school sites and they looked very special and very useable. • Gives detailed user tracking o It’s based on Sharepoint so the data available in terms of who did what and when is abundant! It was funny when the guy showed us how you can tell if a child has edited someone else’s wiki edits and then tried to cover their tracks! • Has tutor messaging & management o That’s a big topic but, over and above Microsoft Outlook Web Access (and the 2010 version is very cool indeed), staff can contribute to discussion boards with near real-time alerting and can also take an option of using the Office Communicator Client for real-time 1:1 or 1:many chat sessions (including webcam video sessions and desktop sharing). They also have a “post-it” note concept to send short messages to other users which are visible next time they log in an they have a “WorryBox” feature so parents can log in and leave confidential messages for their child’s teacher. The messages are tracked, alerts can be set to flag up their presence and their status can be managed to a conclusion. Although it’s called a “WorryBox”, I thought it might also be good for any quick feedback to “Sir or Miss” on any topic good or bad. • Has (customisable) progress reports that can automatically be exported and emailed in a standard format, for importation into another system. o Yes again, though what reports you would want will dictate the way they are output I guess. What sort of progress were you thinking of? We talked about project progress, where a project manager can define what the %age is with respect to completion on a task. Because all data is essentially in a ‘list’, its all exportable in XL format and then you can do what you like with it. IMO, the powerful apps behind the LP+ front end are what make it worth a long hard look. HTH G

I don;t want to assume that the bulk of the contributors to this discussion are technical, but I wonder what school administrators think of this issue. Me, I'm not too clever on technical (I pick up on conversations, do some reading and then try and add my bit!) and so that's why I prefer to avoid systems that look like hard work in administration of the basics (like setting up users, which I would suggest ought to be a simple and automated task). Anyway, I can't say I have been instilled with confidence with this Frog situation - chiefly as it seems some are getting little in terms of response to their problems! Hope I'm wrong!

I considered Frog a while back but was worried about it needing to be hosted in the school. Having a bunch of servers with data split over them seemed weird to me and I couldn't get my head round why it wasn't set up either as a monster server or, better still, a hosted arrangement. that way I don't need hardware, don;t have to worry about updates and I can probably find a system that can cope with small and massive schools alike. The thing I also considered was physical and logical security with additional hardware and data split over several machines in a school. Unless I got the messages wrong at BETT, I felt I needed something more contained. And, as for having to faff about with CSV files - forget it - I;d be looking for it all to come from AD! Admins in school have enough on their plates without having to export and upload date as well! I liked the systems at BETT which supported full integration with SIMS and CMIS so the school admin staff are completely hands off.