As I make the slow return to full time active work, I am beginning to think more and more about the Learning Platform situation for school. We were all ready to sign up to the expensive county-wide solution (hosted by Fronter) until we went to the first of two training days to introduce us to it.
To say that myself and my Headteacher were unimpressed would be an understatement (read here). We were appalled at the clunky, non-intuitive, 20th century looking product we were being asked to pay a small fortune for annually. Unsuprisingly, We opted out of the county solution and instead decided to go our own way.
My first job was to take a look at the Becta schools website and see exactly what was expected within a Learning Platform. It is suprising when you read through how much of the mandatory (and optional) requirements can be achieved through the use of blogs and wikis.
We already have a school website; running on blogging software (typepad hosted), that is mapped to our provided school domain. It provides all staff with a means to post pupil work, messages, photos, as well as audio and video of school events and occasions. The blogging platform allows external commenting on almost all posts (something that the LA LP can't do) - comments that are of course moderated before they appear live on the website.
We have begun a wiki too (hosted for free at Wikispaces). At the moment this is being used as a space for children to create their own content. I view the wiki being a central area for staff to create a topic page for their class, and from that pupils can then add to / edit and link to additional pages around that project / lesson. The wiki also provides a forum/messageboard feature - with a history of all comments added (and even removed) for moderation purposes. The LA LP has NO moderation on any of its forum and messageboard areas.
The latest step in the bespoke LP has been to initiate Google Apps - ready for pupils to access from home and school in order to create / view / edit and share documents, and to provide all our pupils with an online area in which to store their work. At the moment the school has purchased a domain name for use with Apps, and I am in the process of waiting for Google to verify the domain before I can test the service. The actual process of setting up Apps was amazingly painless and, aside from the need to alter CNAME records at the domain host, there was nothing that would phase anyone wishing to set up Apps for their school. Once the service has been tested and is up and running we can then look at the introduction of email addresses for all pupils (already provided by google, but not activated), as well as the option to initiate google calendars and google chat.
The final part of our jigsaw (at the moment) would be online reporting to parents. I have read an interesting article by Tom Barrett about using Google Docs to create an open document between staff / parents that would work as an online report system. Attendance and other data would need to be exported from Sims somehow - but I imagine over the next year someone is going to develop a plugin that would allow that to be achieved.
Which leads me to think, why have Local Authorities spent absolute fortunes on generic Learning Platforms that may not be suitable for all schools that they are trying to force them upon? Surely, allowing schools to create their own open source, often free, bespoke solution - tailored to their needs - would be more suitable. A few technically savvy teachers could explain to other schools how they have set their LP up and save LA's tens of thousands of pounds.
I know that I am ready to go down this route because I have had numerous invaluable discussions on Twitter that have provided me with the information that I needed to feel confident enough. Hopefully others will feel the same too.
BTW our solution costs us aroud £120 per year (our typepad host + domain fee). Compare that to the near £1000 that the LA are asking for. No contest!
