Tag: VLE

Embedding in SharePoint Online

SharePoint Online can easily replace conventional school VLEs thereby saving schools money.    It may be that SharePoint doesn’t have some of the education specific functionality that dedicated school VLEs have, however there are easy work arounds for this or it is simply a question of whether the often high per student licensing cost is worth it for functionality which is often limited in its use.

One of the particular things I like with SharePoint Online is the ability to easily embed content from other educational tools such as Wakelet or Flipgrid.

The key to doing this is the Embed Webpart, which is available when editing a page.

Simple add this to a page and then past in the appropriate Embed code from the site into the relevant embedcode box which appears on the right of the screen.

Please note, if you are unable to embed from a given site/service it may be necessary to allow the embedding for this site/service or to ask you IT admin to do this for you.   This involves going into Site Settings and then HTML Field Security.

Here you will find a list of the domain names/web addresses which are enabled for your sharepoint site and therefore can be embedded.  To add additional sites simply add the web address.  E.g. to allow Wakelet we simply add http://www.wakelet.com to the list.

Alternatively you could change the setting to all contributors from any domain however this is a less secure approach and therefore isn’t recommended.

For me SharePoint online may not be filled with specific educational related functionality however it is quick and easy to use, is very scalable, allows embedding of common educational tools such as wakelet and lacks the high additional cost of traditional VLEs.  I think this therefore makes it an ideal tool to consider for use in schools.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SharePoint Online

I have been pushing ahead with Office 365 in school for a few years focussing initially on email and OneDrive before moving on to Teams and OneNote.   I didn’t give SharePoint online much of a look, until I started looking at alternatives to the often-pricey Learning Platforms or Virtual Learning Environments used by many schools.

I am not a fan of VLEs and haven’t been for many years due to the fact rather than being interactive and part of learning they often end up being little more than a repository of learning materials and resources.   It isn’t the nature of the VLEs as a repository that bothers me but the significant cost, often related directly to student numbers, which they command.   I recognise that many schools have them and need to continue to offer a nice and easy way for students to access resources ideally in a nice visual way so with that in mind I went searching for an easy solution.

Initially my thoughts alighted on MS Teams, as we use Office 365 heavily, but I felt teams is more a collaborative space for discussion, collaborative working, etc, rather than a repository of resources, plus Teams lacks the visual presentation side of things.     It may be important to demark which online spaces are for collaboration and which are simply sources of materials hence I thought this another reason to avoid using Teams for this purpose.

So, I arrived at SharePoint.   I was a little trepidatious initially as my previous interactions, albeit a fair number of years ago, with a locally hosted SharePoint installation had me remembering it as very fiddly and complicated.

Where SharePoint online is concerned these concerns quickly disappeared and I found myself identifying the below positive features:

  • Its simple to use. Training staff to create pages and build sites therefore takes little of the limited time that is available.   Yes, there are limits on design, layout, etc however this means the sites created simply work and display correctly across different devices and platforms.  In my eyes this is an acceptable limitation.
  • Its easy to integrate into Teams; I can make a SharePoint online document library appears as a tab in a Microsoft Teams so teachers can simply open the team and drag and drop files in, with these then appearing on the SharePoint site, via the appropriate document library webpart, for students to access.
  • Its flexible and scalable; I can use one site or many interlinked sites as is defined by needs, easily adding additional sites as required.
  • It supports several integrations with learning tools such as FlipGrid and Quizlet among others.
  • Its included within Office 365 licensing so offers a saving on commercial VLEs.

I am not saying SharePoint is perfect but with limited effort a site or series of sites can be created to act as your repository for learning materials, all without the significant cost of a VLE.

Learning Platforms: Over 10yrs of VLEs, MLEs, Learning Platforms and still no joy!

I met with a Learning Management System vendor today in Dubai and for once I managed to get into and out of Dubai without getting lost, although I do suspect I got at least one motoring fine, although that’s another story.   Basically I was in the meeting to see a company’s system as demonstrated by a woman from Norway who had significant experience using said system in the classroom.    Now I went into this meeting not being a great fan of learning management systems (or virtual learning environments or learning platforms or whatever else you want to call them) as in my experience I have seldom seen them used such that learning has been positively impacted upon.

 

During the course of the meeting my viewpoint was changed as I was regaled with stories and examples of how this particular learning management system had been used by this particular teacher.   I was shown specific examples of materials plus was shown the system from a teacher, student and parental standpoint.   I began to see how the system could have a positive impact on student learning however I found myself wondering why the learning management systems I had seen in the past had not had a positive impact.   Was it that this new learning management system was significantly superior to systems I had seen in the past?  I wasn’t sure this was true however I should make it clear that the system being demonstrated to me had some good features with the ability to share course content with other users across schools and even countries through their network being most significant.

 

My viewpoint as to being generally against learning management systems had by this point changed as I had seen a concrete example which, although anecdotal as opposed to research based, was enough to suggest to me that learning management systems could have a positive impact.  At this point I considered the common factors in the previous systems I had seen which I had judged as unsuccessful and identified one particular issue: learning management systems which were mandated for use and applied to all in a school.    In each of the previous learning management systems I had seen, they had been applied to the whole school with staff mandated to provide content.    This struck me as being a significant problem as teachers are all individuals, like students.   Some will be happy using a particular learning management platform, whereas others will prefer another system, and some may not like learning management systems at all.    As school leaders and teachers we talk of differentiation, yet here we have an example of where leaders say one thing and then do something else, at least in terms of their teachers.   Why should making all teachers do the same be any more successful or acceptable than making all students do the same?

 

So this brings me back to my initial feeling with regards learning management system, in that they are generally bought for a whole school at significant cost, which therefore encourages school leaders to “mandate” use in order to ensure an appropriate return on investment.   The problem being that this single system, no matter which system, is unlikely to meet the needs of all or even most teachers.   As such for a small few, such as the Norwegian teacher who presented today, learning management systems will have a significant and positive impact on the learning of their students however for others these systems become nothing more than another bureaucratic task which teachers are mandated to undertake.

 

In terms of an alternative to learning management platforms there are plenty of solutions with the most likely to be the approach of “app smashing” where teachers use multiple different apps to achieve their aims as opposed to looking for a single unified platform.  This might involve the use of Edmodo, ClassDojo or Classjump along with GoogleDrive, DropBox and Box .Net, or it might involve Survey Monkey or Google Forms, maybe some use of Evernote and Youtube.    Basically a teacher selects the apps which suit them and the students they teach.   For some teachers this may be a single app while for others it could be 10 or 12 different apps used in combination.   This is the feature which the learning management system does not include; the ability for teachers to choose and to differentiate according to their needs, experience and skill level, as well as to adapt to their students.

 

It is about time we gave up on learning management systems, at least as they appear now.    The system I saw today had one feature I did particularly like being the ability to share teaching content within the system.   Maybe this idea may provide a starting point for a new kind of learning management system.

 

 

 

Image courtesy of jscreationzs at FreeDigitalPhotos.net