[Gllug] Re: The BETT education exhibition at Olympia

[Martin N Stevens]

On 1/30/06, Chris Bell <chrisbell at overview.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Hello,
>    As a follow-up to the annual BETT show I was invited to look at the BECTA
> website
>
> http://www.becta.org.uk
>
>    There were some details about a very small series of comparisons between
> schools which opted for full, partial, or no change towards OSS. The
> findings were that support costs for all cases were around 60% of the total
> cost of ownership, slightly higher for secondary than primary schools,
> although these could probably have been less if more attention had been paid
> to initial training. However the total cost of ownership using OSS was only
> about 50% of that for non-OSS, customer satisfaction was higher, and older
> hardware performed sufficiently well that precious resources could be used
> elsewhere.

This is from the RM Mailing list, where there has been some discussion
regarding Virtual Learning Environments, i.e. Moodle.

Our local LEA ICT advisor passed on this info RE Moodle...

The BECTA specification will set interoperability standards that must be
met by all approved providers. Since this will include data transfer
functions, especially for assessment data, schools will be expected to
use only approved products.  We are advised that non-commercial products
such as Moodle are not expected to meet requirements, certainly not at
the present time, and could not, in any case be put forward as part of
an EU tender process.

You are advised to..

1. Await publication of the BECTA guidance, due in February 2006.

2. Begin to plan for the implementation of core functionality but noting
that a national procurement is taking place.

3. Be aware that any implementation of "home-grown" email and content
management systems are unlikely to meet standards as currently known.
The cost of such developments may well be money wasted as additional
costs will be incurred later in migrating to a compliant service.

HTH
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