One size fits all??

A number of things have been going round my head recently. Mainly the fact that one size doesn't fit all. This is principly in relation to the dreaded VLE that everyone must have in education. From my experience it has become a bit of a buzz word, an expectation that most teachers only pay lip service to. Indeed most heads probably don't know what it is either, but their education authority says it's what they need, the government says it's what they need. But is it delivering... really?

Does this sound familiar? Keen teacher discovers Moodle and sets it up for their class. They become the expert and it works for them, the pupils get excited by it and another couple of 'keen' teachers take it on. Then comes the problem, the other pupils have heard about this and it's new and exciting and they want the other classes to get involved. Problem now is that other classes' teacher isn't one of the 'keen' ones. In fact they find difficulty with email and electronic registration which they 'had' to do. So pushing anything more will always cause problems.

Finding a solution that people want to buy into is not about telling them that this will make things easier but about showing something that when I see it think that will make my life easier. When I developed a reporting database for a previous school it was successful because it made life easier, it wasn't even obligatory for staff to use; but it worked and even staff a year from retirement for whom learning something new was completely unnecessarily wanted to use it.

The point I'm trying to make is that the solution has to be plainly obvious that it will make things easier/better/more efficient and then it will be adopted. In fact the bottom will demand it of the top. What's the solution? Some thing flexible, something adaptable, soemthing that can be tailored to ones needs rather than having to bend ones needs to suit the technology.

My view: I think Sharepoint can do this. Principly because it is not a VLE but an architecture and platform on to which we can define our own way of doing things.