Thanks Paul for the update. I couldn’t help doing some maths and came up with:
Percentage of secondary schools (excluding composite) who use various LMSs:
Knowledgenet 22%
Moodle 80%
MyClasses 70%
Ultranet 22%
Quite an interesting dichotomy I thought….
Angela
-----Original Message-----
|From: mle-refer...@googlegroups.com [mailto:mle-reference-
|gr...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Paul Seiler
|Sent: Wednesday, 5 August 2009 4:32 p.m.
|To: MLE Reference Group
|Subject: [MLE] Re: What LMS does each school use?
My percentages are how many secondary schools/how many total schools (excluding composite schools) are using each of the particular LMSs.
Ie Knowledgenet 33/147
Moodle 70/87
MyClasses 21/30
Ultranet 18/83
|gr...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Davel
|Sent: Thursday, 6 August 2009 8:57 a.m.
Excellent comments, Viv. While I do recognise the need to get a lot of the techno stuff right, I also feel it is imperative that we think long and hard about what enables/disables and encourages/discourages the EFFECTIVE use of LMS’s within school environments. So many conversations get side tracked into:
“Our LMS can do this”
“Our LMS only costs this much”
“You can make this and do that”
Etc etc etc
As we all now know, or should know by now – life is just not that simple. Even though a product “can do” a certain thing does not necessarily mean that it “will do” that thing with ease within a real school environment with real learners.
In addition, because effective uptake of LMS is not quite what it could be (and by that I mean upwards of 70% effective uptake by teachers in a typical school – not 0-20% uptake within a school) – we don’t have enough good stories and data to inform how we should build/shape/develop/implement an LMS and so the vacuum may then be filled by those with more technical knowledge than pedagogical understanding and the cycle continues. So many policy and developmental and policy decisions are taken (with regard to ICT) year after year after year – that may make perfect sense at a technical or management level – but, because the voice of the learner has been omitted, the end product is seriously lacking in basic usability and uptake features.
Once again, I would very strongly urge a face to face meeting around these issues – they are numerous and complex and we ignore them at our peril and risk wasting lots of time and money.
Cheers
Martin
Martin Hughes
CentreNet ICT PD Cluster Facilitator
Cell phone 021 2228364
Home phone 07 8593214
email martin...@orcon.net.nz
"It's so hard when I have to, and so easy when I want
to"
Annie Gottlier
-----------------------------------------------------
Adrian Gray
Teacher - IT Administrator
Phone 027 228 1101
Ooh, a national repository that can be browsed from within an LMS?
So when adding resources to your course you can explore those that
are in your LMS inline with the national repository. Selecting
one will, if necessary, import it into your LMS so you can use it?
> An open question -- Is there any way I can get legal access to a
> demonstration installation of all the approved LMS systems. I'm familiar
> with the Moodle system, but have very little knowledge of the other
> systems. I would like to see how learning resources are deployed in each
> of these systems so that we can ensure that New Zealand's national OER
> collaboration develops materials in ways that can be used equally well
> in all of our delivery systems.
I'm not a vendor of any of the systems, but as a potential client
I've generally found they're happy to provide some kind of test
access so I can evaluate the product.
If you're not a competitor they should welcome feedback :-)
J,
Hi Wayne
I’d happily give you access to our cluster LMS and talk u thru it if u like. We are 5 schools and we have 8 curriculum groups who meet once per term each and make resources that are then shared between our schools. We use KnowledgeNet as you can copy/paste/edit between schools with only 2 or 3 mouse clicks – and we chose this for a host of other reasons also – some of them covered in my earlier email today. Our next plan is to embark on a national sharing model – KN already has this functionality – we (teachers) just need to catch upJ
M
Martin Hughes
CentreNet ICT PD Cluster Facilitator
Cell phone 021 2228364
Home phone 07 8593214
email martin...@orcon.net.nz
"It's so hard when I have to, and so easy when I want
to"
Annie Gottlier
Ooh, a national repository that can be browsed from within an LMS?
So when adding resources to your course you can explore those that
are in your LMS inline with the national repository. Selecting
one will, if necessary, import it into your LMS so you can use it?
I'm not a vendor of any of the systems, but as a potential client
I've generally found they're happy to provide some kind of test
access so I can evaluate the product.
If you're not a competitor they should welcome feedback :-)
Wayne Mackintosh wrote:
[snip]
> The most significant investment in terms of cost and time associated
> with the implementation of LMSs can be attributed to the learning
> resources we use within our preferred delivery/teaching technology.
> Clearly -- finding ways to share NZ-based learning resources across our
> platforms is a great way to work smarter. Clearly the OER approach will
> help us in working more effectively.
>
> The caveat of course is to design and develop learning resources in ways
> which facilitate content interoperability without increasing the
> transaction cost (time) when referencing OERs from our own LMSs.
> An open question -- Is there any way I can get legal access to a
> demonstration installation of all the approved LMS systems. I'm familiar
> with the Moodle system, but have very little knowledge of the other
> systems. I would like to see how learning resources are deployed in each
> of these systems so that we can ensure that New Zealand's national OER
> collaboration develops materials in ways that can be used equally well
> in all of our delivery systems.
I'm not a vendor of any of the systems, but as a potential client
I've generally found they're happy to provide some kind of test
access so I can evaluate the product.
If you're not a competitor they should welcome feedback :-)
J,
Hi Wayne
We don’t bother with any copyright stuff as yet – we just have an agreement that if teachers put stuff on our LMS clusterzone, then it can be used by anyone. The idea of training people up with regard to copyright and all the admin that that may or may not involve, does not really appeal. Worse than that, I can see it being a real barrier to uptake and sharing. We’d rather develop our culture of 100% sharing with anyone, anywhere with no fuss. Our cluster groups realise that by sharing more, we actually end up working less – also, that we all have a common goal – to lift the achievement levels of all students.
Having said all that, I can see that creative commons licensing is totally awesome and may become necessary for us sometime – my (very limited) understanding, however, is that because all of our resources are within a password protected intranet, the requirement for copyright stuff is a whole lot less???
Cheers
M
PS r u on skype so we can work thru arrangements to look our resources etc?
We started by choosing staff “early adopters” to trial the LMS so we could identify any issues that might arise as these staff will progress through the process so much faster than “normal” staff. This small group then trialled processes with their classes and met regularly to discuss issues that arose.
In this way, we decided to move away from Moodle as, although staff found it flexible and useful with students, the burdensome aspect of uploading files was a real disincentive.
We have now chosen to go with First Class www.firstclass.com Although, it does not have all the testing/assessment functionality of other LMS, it unifies mail, calendaring, conferences, document storage, collaboration; it will also allow us to integrate our phone system for voice messaging. Aggregation of calendars allows each student’s calendar to display items from every one of their classes. This same calendar will be made available to parents interested in assessments and homework set.
A work in progress.
Gil Hunter
HOD IT & Network Manager
St Patrick’s College Silverstream
From: Viv Hall [mailto:nzvi...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, 8 August 2009 7:28 a.m.
To: mle-refer...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [MLE] Re: What LMS does each school use?
Excellent point Adrian