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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
