Just returned home from a day looking at two potential virtual learning platforms that the county are going to be selecting from. To say they were completely different would be an understatement - but it's not the architecture that runs each VLE that was so different, it was the presentation of each one. One of them was slick, professional, full of demonstrations on what the VLE can offer, and then when questions were asked the answers were consise, on the topic and detailed.
The other one...well, it wasn't!
Oh boy, was it so not a good show! I wish now that I had recorded what was being said, so that I could now play it on the computer at half speed. I might be able to understand what the rep was racing through. And did I get to see how the product works? No - instead we were treated to a view of a site set up using it, then another, and another, and then another, oh and just for good measure another example!?!?!
Even better were the questions (when they finally stopped avoiding being asked any). When you hear answers like "We've got a data centre in London, I think", or "I don't know if the software has that built into it". They're supposed to be selling it to us - and they come across as not knowing anything about it.
Suprisingly, following the presentations, there seemed to be one clear winner. Which was a shame, because the other product looked friendlier, we just didn't know how it worked.
