Virtual Learning Network

Hi

There is no VLN email address - the VLN is an online community website, and it is linked to your personal email address. If you do not want to get emails from the VLN to your gmail account you can change the settings under Settings - Notifications at top right - you will then need to log in to the VLN website to see the latest activity.

Glen

If you have any feedback about the VLN Groups, bug reports, suggested enhancements, etc. please post them as a reply to this message. 

If you are experiencing technical difficulties with logging in, etc. please email help@vln.school.nz

On the group homepage choose the Add widget option and select the Free Html widget - this allows you to add a widget with your own title and content.

Glen

Just trying to resolve a speed issue on discussion posting - please ignore.

Currently this is not an allowed embed on the site - we will get it added and get back to you.

Hi Breda

The most likely cause of this is the messages getting caught in the teacher's SPAM filters. Get them to check their spam filter for the confirmation message as a starting point. If the messages are not their, then get them to email help@vln.school.nz with details about the email address they registered with and we can manually activate the accounts.

Glen

Hi

If a person has an email that ends in @school.nz or @ac.nz then your account will be automatically approved. If it is a personal email address then there is usually a maximum of a 24 hour wait for the account to be manually approved - this is to prevent spam accounts being created. Often the accounts will be be approved much quicker than this. If you are working with a group of teachers and want to make sure accounts are activated quickly then get in touch and we can do our best to speed up the process for them.

Glen

Having been involved in the LMS area for many years I have to agree with Darren. In the majority of cases Google Apps will do most of what you want - particularly in a smaller school and especially if you combine it with something like TeacherDashboard (which I don't sell by the way in case you are wondering).  

For a school to worry about Google Apps and an LMS in most cases is pointless - but decisions around this need to be tied back to what you are actually wanting to achieve, your year levels, etc. as others have already well noted.

To be perfectly blunt Moodle and most LMSs currently on the market are 20th century tools - they are small scale, local, and not scaleable. In this day and age if you are taking learning online then why wouldn't it be in a global and scalable way - Google Apps provides both of these (as do some other cloud based tools of course, don't let me stop you taking a look at Office365). 

Of course, make sure you don't get caught in the trap of 'Google Apps is free' so got to be good - yes it is free in terms of cash outlay if you have somebody to do the initial technical setup for you, and if you don't add in pay for services like TeacherDashboard - but there is obviously a cost involved in the ongoing management, PD, etc. that needs to be factored in up front if you want to utilise it effectively.

Glen

Thanks - we will be upgrading the site over March and will also continue to add improvements over 2012, so keep checking back. In the mean time if you could provide something more concrete  in terms of feedback we are more than happy to look at it, eg. what is it exactly that you find fiddly?

Hi Sue

We will look into this and get back to you.

Glen