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Websites, VLEs and SLG
July 30th, 2008 by misterel
Prior to finishing for the summer holidays, I found myself in discussions with SLT about the differences between the school website, moodle (our VLE) and SIMs Learning gateway(SLG) and the need to justify the use of some, all or just one of the above…. From my own personal point of view I thought I would find this an easy task. However, every school seems to use some of the above for a variety of different tasks with many of them cross pollinating.
This is how I have envisioned our use of websites, VLE. and SLG. (I would welcome comments on this).
The website
I see the website as the first port of call for virtual visitors of our school. It should be a great advert for the school and take on the roll of a virtual school prospectus and newsletter. It needs to be dynamic and up to date and entice viewers to want to find out more about our school. To see our interpretation of this click here. It is also the gateway to our other web based applications, moodle, mail, SLG.
The VLE
We have opted for moodle as our VLE. One of the main reasons for this is that a good friend of mine was already using it, so I was able to ‘borrow’ a lot of ideas and resources. Moodle is our teaching and learning virtual environment where subject and pastoral areas have been created. This is in the development stage and is predominantly used by the ICT dept and Sixth form. It has been decided that to make moodle a whole school success we need to remove the shared docs area and make moodle the new and improved shared area. The VLE differs from the website as its focus is as a tool for developing the teaching and learning within the school and allow pupils and staff a higher level of control over their own learning/teaching.
SIMs Learning Gateway (SLG)
SIMs say that this can be our VLE… However personally I don’t think it is quite there yet. However it will definitely meet the requirements of 2010 when all parents need to have access to online reports, attendance, behaviour (positive and not so positive). I see it as a Management Information System (MIS) where staff are able to access SIMs.net from home, write reports, check the staffing school calender and also to allow parents access.
So there you have it, 3 different packages, with 3 different roles. Is this the most efficent use of all three? Do we need all three? I think that it is good to have all three, but I also might just be lucky to have to option to be able to use all three….
Posted in Resources, Teaching & Learning | tagged MIS, moodle, SIMs, SLG, VLE | | 3 Comments
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on July 30th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
seems you are at the same pint as our school…we bought into Kaleidos a few years back….have found it extremely hard to motivate staff in using it….we also started work on the website via Moodle with an intention to use this VLE at KS4 & KS5. We are now at a critical point, Kaleidos has a new version, much more web based….if we opt for this its £24,000 over 3 years and we say bye-bye to moodle….or we stick with moodle which we have recently had some success with….and save the money…..
on July 31st, 2008 at 11:01 am
Hi Nick. I reckon we will stick with our three way solution. In a bizarre way it makes it simpler. If you want to get info about the school – go to the website. You want to hand in work – go to moodle. You want to know how well your kid is doing at school go to SLG. But saying all that, unless SIMs and Moodle start talking to each other I can see moodle being kicked into touch in the future.
on August 10th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Hi there.We have a static website but gave it up in favour of putting everything on open access on the front page of our Moodle – we think doing that encourages pupils and parents to use Moodle more – they’re there so why not just do some work while you’re at it? Take your point about SIMS integration though – we have the CLEO MIS upload tool for uploading users to Moodle, though in terms of other admin stuff we’re starting with PARs in Sept. Still hopes for more in Moodle though