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Re: [LUG] FLOSS in schools

 

On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:33:00 +0000
Paul Sutton wrote:

> james kilty wrote:
> > On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 10:50 +0000, Tom Potts wrote:
> >   
> >> We had thousands of 
> >> 'Management Consultants' giving courses and advice on management
> >> methods. They were all American, over here because their 'skills'
> >> had been tried and found seriously wanting in the States.
> >>     
> > And how may times and at what expense has the NHS been reorganised
> > using management consultants?
> >
> > I think if we can offer support and advice, even training, we might
> > be able to drip feed our points about the benefit to schools and
> > pupils. County Councils and schools - perhaps as parents (or grand
> > parents) certainly as school governors.
> >
> >   
> I agree,  lets just do it,  (see below) I am more than keen to get 
> involved with this.
> 
> > I will have another go at my daughter's school - alas my days as
> > governor are long over. Ayt least I can offer an imput to year 11
> > and see how well it goes down.
> >   
> The latest buzz word in schools is "learning platforms"  essentially 
> online learning so the students can continue at home, and submit work 
> and collaborate with classmates while at hone on projects.
> 
> The leading platform for this is moodle,  there are offerings by 
> companies such as RM (yeah I know) but its closed source etc,  moodle 
> however is the most used world wide,  is available to everyone.
> There was an article on the site a while back or linked from the site
> that looked at both commercial and the oss offerings,  not sure where
> it is, a hard copy is at work in the staff room. 
> 
> Anyway I printed this off and its currently in the school staff room
> 
> suffice to say if we are to offer such services to schools they must
> 
> be affordable to the school as no extra money is in the budget for
> this be a complete package, we need to approach schools sell moodle
> by its strength, and world wide usage.
> ask what happens if you goto suppplier X,  you get staff trained up, 
> that person leaves,  to replace with a person with package X skills
> you are going to end up paying more
> go with moodle and there is a much larger pool of staff to
> potentially fill that gap in  staffing, 
> a complete package may be,  for one school hosting,  cost per month 
> low,  initial set up,  training, tech support, etc etc, all need to
> be offered.  I
> 
> I think as a lug we need to actually get together,  and perhaps set 
> something up,   there are people here with all the required skills to 
> setup a business,  and there are people like looking for work /
> training and want to get involved,  
> 
> I alone could probably get moodle up and running on debian. apt-get 
> install moodle. but it needs someone who knows and understand
> education to get the most from it.   we can offer a package to local
> schools but all work together on this one,  perhaps set up a devon
> and cornwall moodle mailing list,  which can also be used by schools
> to find staff, etc.
> 
> Its possible, i just have no idea regarding how to set up a business
> for this type of things,  but the opportunity is there we just need
> to grab it before someone like RM get in there and charge what ever
> they charge per month for hosting,
> 
> get moodle in to schools show how good OSS is,  and its a stepping
> stone to other OSS software in schools.   and we are there to help
> support it, 
> 
> Paul

Was going to split up your message and reply to it piecemeal, but
decided against it as it all fits together nicely.

Anyway, to my point... it's would also be worth mentioning to the
Schools that the local Colleges also use Moodle.  Certainly Cornwall
College do (and we are the largest... so nerrr :D) and I know Truro
*did* and I'm pretty sure they still so, and I believe Penwith does
too.  Other than those, I'm not sure who uses what, but it's well liked
and used in FE/HE.

Cheers.
Grant.

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