jpwright

I think I disagree with nearly every part of the article. After a ten minute viewing, the writer has become an expert on Fronter and can now dismiss the product as worthless? All this article does is make my job harder if a teacher sees it online. Complete idiot.

The user's guide is fine for a techy person, but with a teacher you ideally need something simple in pdf format with lots of screen shots and arrows pointing to where things are. Imagine you were showing a 12 year old kinovea, then you might just have the level for a PE teacher. I actually think I prefer the program to dartfish - no gimmicks, and none of that 'database' of videos which just confuses teachers. Simplicity is very underrated sometimes.

Think its a really good product - have convinced the PE teacher to use it over Dartfish due to cost. One thing that would be really good would be a dummies guide - something in the region of 10-20 pages (teachers won't read anything over that) - that did all the really simple functions. Also what is the best format to import into Kinovea? I take it AVI?

have fronter said this is possible? I have never seen it or heard that you can do it, but would seem a good idea.

we are heading down a similar route, though I'd rather not let it become an 'online shared area'. I think all the forums and messenging are good ideas, and the scorm stuff seems to be fairly decent. just not sure how things like tests and learning paths are going to work effectively in secondary. if anyone wants to have a look at our attempts then I will PM a password, likewise I'd be interested in other peoples attempts!

at this moment in time, we are struggling to really use fronter to its potential because all the features seem to be targeting the primary market. things like drawing pictures for emails are 'nice' features but not really helpful in secondary. just wondering how people are fitting in vast resources and making all this 'interctive learning' possible?

We went the docking station root, until Dell released their fancy new latitude range of laptops 6 months ago. Great bit of kit, brand new port for docking. A new docking station is now £150 and isn't compatible with any of our old staff laptops (80+). New latitude + docking station = £700ish. New desktop + cheap laptop = £700ish. Two computers for the price of one, and all because dell charge you £150 to put some wires neatly together for you.

Just to gauge everyone's thoughts on the matter, there is of course the standard required software we all must have - MS Office, some variation of photoshop etc. But I was wondering what else should we really be providing as a standard within schools? We run macromedia studio 8, but have yet to get it used to any full extent which is a shame; and also things like techsoft 2d which is a start into CAD programs. But I'm asking what are the 'must haves' for secondary education? Thanks in advance.

Fronter is working really well here at my secondary, but I am not a techie and not overly bothered about customising to any extent. It is being used solely to deliver content to the students and with that clear aim, its made it easy for staff to get on board as they know what they are doing and are enthusiastic for it. I understand why people do not like it, but if you a want a easy to manage solution it works. Oh and its free for us, so that is the biggest plus. If I was to buy, we'd look at frog. Looks good to me.

Very happy with the fronter version we are using. Massive upgrade on kaledios, very easy to use and makes it easy to hi the targets we have set for it. It does help that we have a 1gb line into the school that rarely goes down so being hosted off site is not a problem. I think a move to frog will be in the future somewhere, but for now, the ease of use for staff is a massive help and once they are happy using it then something more advanced would be suitable. Admin wise fronter is very easy to manage. Can't complain with any of it, plus it free for us till 2011!