Learn 4 Life

Nearing the very end of BETT - in the last half an hour I came upon an Early Years Learning Platform.Nina Garforth, and her assistants Abigail Wells and Heather McDougall, gave me a whistlestop tour of the product. It’s fairly unique in that it is for the Primary School and, as you can see, even a 3 year old can send an email!

KOWARI has also had a lot of interest from special needs teachers.

If you want a simple and very clear VLE for younger children then this is it.

Doug Dickinson has a wealth of experience in the ICT community over many years. Here is one good reason why commercial firms need a consultant like him to come up with the idea for this - Podium from Softease is so simple, practical and easy to understand you know at once it will be perfect for use in the classroom.Podcasting is the buzzword of the moment and in this short interview and demonstration, Doug shows one particular feature of Podium which I think is outstanding:the ability to colour code text script to sound files and edit them on the fly in a podcast.

In a busy classroom Podium is exactly the sort of tool a teacher needs.

Drew Buddie has been using Moodle in his school for years. He is a passionate Moodle evangelist and if you want to see what a fully populated mature Moodle looks like in the flesh go to his school site at the Royal Masonic School.

We talked with a very tired Sean Keogh late on Friday at BETT 2007 - he'd obviously been doing a lot of business. He runs the most experienced Moodle Hosting and Services company in the UK pteppic.net.

Although Moodle is free to download and use, the allied services are what are important in maintaining a realistically secure and strategic position for your school or LA.

Sean has organised the MoodleMoot conference for UK Moodlers for the last 3 years (this year it will be Jason Cole's turn to take on the mantle).

Pteppic.net hosts and maintains over 50 schools' Moodles - you can read some of the list of clients here.

Even though Moodle is not on the BECTA preferred list of Learning Platform suppliers, schools can still use money earmarked for that to buy in Moodle Services. pteppic.net has the longest and most experienced history of maintaining Moodle in this country and was the first Moodle partner.

If you want safe, secure data and a bespoke solution for your Moodle's needs Sean is one of the people with the most expertise in the business.

Ray Lawrence is one of the most generous people I know for giving advice and information on the Moodle forums over the years - he is an official Moodle partner and has many years experience going back to 2002.

He has got countless schools up to speed with Moodle over that time and here explains his business HowToMoodle.

If you want a quick and efficient way of getting your school up to scratch with Moodle, Ray has face to face training onsite or at centres and online courses to help you.

He also explains the concept of the Moodle development, to which he contributes royalties from his business to make it a sustainable model for the future.

Ray is typical of many people in the Moodle community in that he believes passionately in the difference he is making. He has an immense amount of expertise and is always one of the first people I would call on to help.

No amount of corporate business expertise can buy in this engagement and involvement. Don’t take my word for it, go to his HowToMoodle site and see for yourself and read the comments from schools.