Fizzics

image “Justice League” by levork

I mentioned earlier that Doug Belshaw had been on the receiving end of some hassle due to an EdTechRoundUp podcast about VLEs.  The story was picked up by several other bloggers, including Alan Cann, Will Richardson, Jo Badge & Nigel Gibson and also generated a lot of traffic on twitter.  This week, we gave Talmos a right to reply by offering an invitation to put their side of the story during our weekly flashmeeting.  

While the meeting lacked sufficient focus to put it out as a podcast, we felt it was important to allow the views of Mike Jones from Talmos to be heard and so the link to the recording of the flashmeeting has been made available to anyone who would like to watch and listen to what he had to say.  In making the server recording of the meeting available, EdTechRoundUp has provided an unedited account of the meeting.  

Personally, I would encourage you to follow the text chat of the meeting as the video replay proceeds- do this by clicking on the chat tab in top right of the replay window. This will give you a fuller picture of the views of participants.  If you do follow through to the replay, please come back and leave a comment with your thoughts on the issues covered, thanks.

I mentioned previously that the group of UK teachers behind EdTechRoundUp had released a discussion-based podcast on the use of VLEs. One of the contributors to that show, Doug Belshaw, also blogged about it in a post where he asked the question “What is a VLE?“. He tweeted today to tell us he was called into his school office today to be told that the supplier of one VLE mentioned in the blog post and podcast were demanding that he remove the post and accompanying podcast from the web or face “legal action”.

Core Projects & Technologies (UK) Ltd are the people who sell the TALMOS system. Their approach to Doug is heavy handed. They might not like the fact that he said something negative about their product but that’s life. It speaks volumes about a company that makes a living selling interactive software to react in such a “web 0.5″ way to a single blog entry comparing VLE systems. Incidentally, the link I gave for Doug’s blog shows the version he edited today, possibly an act on his part to appease his employer who should never have been involved in the first place. Here is what Google’s cache told me he said in the original post

“There are other VLEs available – for example Doncaster, where I teach, has gone for FrogTeacher from 2008/9 onwards. Despite the bizarre name, I was quite impressed with it when I had a play with it at the BETT show earlier this year. Up to now we’ve been using TALMOS. Well, not using it, actually, as it’s so difficult to use, cumbersome and singularly un-useful…“

There are lots of questions raised here. Doug himself raises the professional versus personal aspects in a post he made today. I’m concerned by the way in which these people get heavy on his employer when something he does outwith his classroom annoys them. I’ve been googling today and the one thing that I learned from the TES is that Doug is not alone in having few good words to say about the TALMOS VLE. Can I redirect those with a curious mind to the following threads: “poor version of powerpoint“, “does anyone have anything good to say about TALMOS“, “please say something positive” I am sure that you will find more if you dig deeper but the point has been made.

Bottom line? Well, TALMOS may wish they had never called Doug’s school. How long before a standard Google search for TALMOS produces a marketing manager’s worst nightmare. Next time you take issue with a blogger, try getting in touch direct, possibly with a comment on the relevent blog entry, to find out what issues they are having. Maybe that blogger can help you to make your product better.