A VLE is a website that allows teachers and students to exchange work or lessons online, it can be accessed anywhere at anytime. Teachers can add extra research material, a hand-in for work (which can have set opening hours), Q&A with the teacher, statistics of the whole class, notes, videos, parental access, tests and learning goals. Each student has their own portfolio area for their work and can have a grid showing their progress on the work they are undertaking. An advanced feature is that you can view (in real time) the teacher writing the notes on an interactive white board (see SmartBoard), this can be incredibly useful if a student is ill as they can access the work from home. Users can their subjects to favourites to ensure they can reach the subject of their choice easily. There are many different VLEs on the internet: two of the most popular being "Moodle" and "Fronter". The use of VLEs can help students beyond the classroom making homework and coursework more interesting for the students, they can access all the help they need from their school at any time.
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| Moodle Homepage Screenshot |
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| The Fronter Homepage for Southend High School for Girls |
Advantages:
- It saves paper! By sharing the files online, it saves the need for printing, this means that the conept is fairly eco-friendly and can help promote a "Green" image for the school/college where it is used.
- Students/Teachers can access documents at anytime, this means that if a student was absent for a lesson, they can easily catch up on work, keeping up to date with important work.
- Parents can keep track of their child's/childrens' progress. The system allows parents to see if their child is underperforming and perhaps encouraging their child to work harder.
- Files are available for multiple download, with a file online, any student can access and download their teachers work again and again, there is no restriction. This saves the teacher from manually sending the file to every student.
- A student must have access to the internet if they wish to access it at home. This can be difficult for families in unfortunate financial circumstances. Therefore it is not completely accessible to everyone.
- It is not completely safe, most VLEs do not have virus software fitted into the system, this means that viruses could be easily transferred from a student file onto a teacher's computer.
- It could be mis-used, teachers from other "under-performing" schools may gain access to better schools' files and "steal" work. This is an example of plajorism which is unfair to the person that has put time into creating good work.
- A student must also have a PC/mac at home to access the work. This is also extremely costly and difficult for low-income families.
Bibliography:
http://uk.fronter.info/
http://fronter.com/southend
http://moodle.org/
News stories about the effect of ICT on school life:
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