Original Post
Hey hey! I am currently on placement within a School and there is all this hoohah about VLE's, now, correct me if I am wrong but are these not just glorified CMS/Forums? The School I work at are contemplating spending £10,000, yes, £10,000 for this VLE and then £3000 a year support costs. So I set about using phpbb and a few mods and I have copied a lot of the features this VLE offers I still cant see why England in particular are going ape shite over these things. PHPBB: Exported Active Directory Accounts : Imported them into PHPBB and created a script for future use to automate this. Credit/Money system so Students can be 'rewarded' credits on the system for good work. Arcade, filled with education based flash games and some non-education games. These cost credits to play with the non-education games costing a lot more. Tamigotchi styled web based pets to look after to teach responsibility and also to keep students visiting the forum often to check for updates. There are a few other things too that I did like letting them host their own website from there account (like here on GD) and then posting/creating topics is a piece of cake even for Teachers who wish to use say a YouTube video in their post. So tell me what does a VLE have that a Forum can not? I think it is a sad sad day when Schools waste money like this and the buildings and books they have could benefit a heck of a lot more... Alas I will force feed them PHPBB in the last 6 months I have there if it kills me £10,000 is a sickly figure to spend on a glorified forum, however, what do you guys think on the VLE vs Forum arguement?
