[gavin holden]

Our school (like most) is becoming obsessed with safeguarding of pupils (an agenda driven by ofsted.) We currently have Kaleidos as our VLE and one of the reasons we were told that it was the best choice was that it gives all students and staff email addresses which are secure thus avoiding the potential of 'outside' email addresses being available or used by students/staff. I am still looking to see if we can get moodle up and running in our school - preferably hosted by an outside company that can provide some technical support.

Virtually everyone in the school recognises that Kaleidos is a pile of rubbish (we still haven't even got a single pupil registered on it!) So my question is can Moodle tick the safeguarding box if it is hosted by another company outside of the Local Authority contract? If so how is this done? - I need to be able to build a strong argument for my case.

In the short term I ma looking to set up a moodle site for just my A-level History group to demonstrate its potential. This would start in September. In the longer term I would look to introduce Moodle 2.0 to run from later in the year.

The other problem is that the school uses Kaleidos for its data management and as a rather poor information distribution platform. I doubt it would scrap Kaleidos altogether. But how good is Moodle with systems like SIMS?

Thanks

Gavin

[goneunderground]

Hi Gavin. Well I'm not a school administrator or Safeguarding expert but on the basis that hundreds of schools successfully use Moodle (including our school) then I think Safeguarding and Moodle go absolutely fine together. I'd advise when you set up your school Moodle to somehow have an official school email (like with the Kaleidos effort) and then when all your users are uploaded they will be connected with their school email - then you can prevent them changing their email to anything else. In terms of Moodle/SIMs integration, there are at least a couple of groups claiming to have this sorted - you might like to do a search for Webanywhere's SIMS integration and SchoolsICT also. (Apparently there are some people in Newport also but I don't recall their name) I can't help more on that side sorry as we are with CLEO up in Lancs/Cumbria and they are sorting out their own solution for their schools from Sept. But DO go for Moodle -all the other schools who chose it instead of or after commercial VLEs can't be wrong. And when you set it up for your A level history group -post back here for support -Andrew's a historian and a moodler - can't be bad

[Andrew Field]

Having staff and student e-mail addresses secure in relation to Kaleidos is a complete non-entinty. Simply not related - sounds like more of a sales pitch than anything else to me. Your VLE - any VLE - should be able to use any e-mail addresses that you wish to. You can setup Moodle to use any e-mail accounts. We used to get all students to use the official school e-mail address i.e. school.county.sch.uk but when we setup Google Apps I registered a shortened version of the school - we used neale-wade.net

However, that's not particularly relevant to your question. Short answer, as MoodleFairy has said above - continue using the e-mail accounts that you are. It is just a setting within Moodle - you use what you like
From what you've said here, it sounds like the VLE was sold to your school on the strength of e-mail security. This is like selling someone a car on the strength of an AA support contract.

For your small group you could of course get an external company's support - do a quick search for Moodle UK partners - but it will cost. Then again, I guess that will offset any challenges in terms of setup and concerns about security. There is absolutely no issue in terms of using Moodle and safeguarding. I can provide some more specific advice and guidance if it is necessary.
I guess this is the one benefit that Kaleidos is offering in terms of safeguarding students - your current setup ensures complete student safety.

[gavin holden]

Thanks to both of you for your comments. I will post again here as I make progress with my plans.

Gavin

[Andrew Field]

I'll also start a new topic that includes our document about: "Use of freeand open-source software

[gavin holden]

The good news is that i have been given the go-ahead to set up Moodle for a test group to run from September. What I also intend to do is to set up a Moodle course for staff to improve their ICT skills. I hope to promote and deliver this through a series of pedagogy sessions we run throughout the year. the first benefit is obvious - staff will feel more confident about using ICT; the second benefit I hope will be that staff will see how good Moodle is and what it can be used for. This will make it easier to roll it out the following year to more departments and for more groups. I'll post again as my course develops.

[jwilliams]

Hi

good luck with your moodle pilot, I did the same in my school and know it has been taken up by all departments. As for a pilot site, you could try using www.keytoschools.com who claim to provide a free installation of moodle, with a 2.5gb limit on storage, I have e-mailed them and they claim that when you have reached 70% of this quota they will up your quota free of charge!

I do not know much about them, but for a free trail they good be worth looking in to.

Good luck

J

[gavin holden]

Thanks for that link. I have already contacted a Moodle hosting company who have agreed to let me run a trial course/class for free. If that doesn't work out I will look into keytoschools. I hope to be setting this up over Easter so i am sure I'll be posting here again soon.

Gavin