Whilst a good number of schools will be able to support and run Moodle
in house (as we do), for those that can't there are commercial spport
contracts available from the moodle.com partners, and I know of a number
of the more enlightened LAs and RBCs that are able to provide Moodle
hosting and support. This model should present a pretty good RoI, as
it's going to be much more economical for a LA or RBC to employ a core
team of support staff than pay for the same level of support + licence
fees + marketing costs from a commercial supplier, and the funds stay
within the educational community rather than finding their way into
share-holders' or venture capitalists' pockets.
From what I hear, the MS solution is /considerably/ more complicated to
get up and running than Moodle, and pretty much relies on support from a
MS partner.
The vibrancy of the moodle.org community and the fact that Moodle has
evolved rather than being designed are great strengths, as Moodle has
come to embody the values and requirements of its user community rather
than the requirements of policy makers and central government, who on
this occasion have largely failed to consult schools, teachers and
pupils in the formulation of the functional and technical specifications.
For those who are interested the latest versions of the functional and
technical specifications are available at
http://www.moodleforge.org.uk/course/view.php?id=4 (registration
required). Our expectation is that Moodle will meet almsot all of the
functional requirements by its v2.0 release, and consortia of LAs and
RBCs would surely be able to fund development to meet any remaining
unmet criteria.
Miles.
--
Miles Berry
Deputy Head, St Ives School, Haslemere
http://stiveshaslemere.com
http://elgg.net/mberry/weblog
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