The VLE comes with software that is a bunch of VBA macros in Word that enables a template to set up a degree of engaging resources. It's called 'E-learning objects'. You can format a word document to have questions that give feedback, play videos and audio within the page. It's just another tool with various idiosyncracies that you need to get your head around. For teachers in secondary schools, getting their heads around stuff is not a selling point! Am trialling this with the PE faculty,a very enthusiastic guy called Chris who's already setup some top resources, I also showed this to one of the Physics teachers who was making good progress before I spilt fizzy water all over the laptop.
In other news, the Technology department are wanting to set up their own website. The VLE we've bought into has an upload limit of 50 megabytes - inidvidual resources, or 'learning chapters' that Tec have are way over this! We managed to get a bump to 100mb, but Tec are talking half a gig with some resources. Now, I know that there'll be nagging voices saying 'get them to optimise' but the simple fact is that this does not fit with the way teachers develop and prepare resources. In some cases, where a department already has resources that don't quite squeeze into the indiosyncratic routine of your VLE you're going to have to figure out how to do it. I'm for their own website developemnt in that as a faculty with good ICT capability, they'll probably enjoy the control and flexibility.
Fundamental question - is this just about chucking stuff online or engaging students? Aside from pointing kids at a particular website, how do you properly engage?