The Problem with VLE's? They're rubbish
Just browsing and spotted this article on the Guardian's site about VLE's:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/13/online-classrooms-ofsted
which seemed to suggest that nobody knows why VLEs aren't being used very much by schools. I've seen enough to know that the real problem with most of them is that they're incredibly badly designed, but that's not even vaguely talked about in the article. The most appaling virtual architecture seems to have been flogged to Schools under the pretext of being a VLE, when it should just be put straight in the bin in my opinion. Some people are making a killing taking advantage of the ignorance of those in charge to stick in software which is toally unfit for purpose.
Hell I've been using things like Moodle and WebCT for years, and they're not exactly brilliant, but they're paragons compared to some VLEs I've seen.
Stop blaming the teachers I say - you can't give them crappy tools to use and then blame them for not using them. If they had chairs with three legs and books with half the pages missing no one would stand for it, but because ICT is so specialist no one says a word. We dearly need more professionalism in ICT procurement, and an acceptance that there is a huge variety in the quality of the virtual spaces offered by the various VLEs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/13/online-classrooms-ofsted
which seemed to suggest that nobody knows why VLEs aren't being used very much by schools. I've seen enough to know that the real problem with most of them is that they're incredibly badly designed, but that's not even vaguely talked about in the article. The most appaling virtual architecture seems to have been flogged to Schools under the pretext of being a VLE, when it should just be put straight in the bin in my opinion. Some people are making a killing taking advantage of the ignorance of those in charge to stick in software which is toally unfit for purpose.
Hell I've been using things like Moodle and WebCT for years, and they're not exactly brilliant, but they're paragons compared to some VLEs I've seen.
Stop blaming the teachers I say - you can't give them crappy tools to use and then blame them for not using them. If they had chairs with three legs and books with half the pages missing no one would stand for it, but because ICT is so specialist no one says a word. We dearly need more professionalism in ICT procurement, and an acceptance that there is a huge variety in the quality of the virtual spaces offered by the various VLEs.
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