4 ms·

Show HN: eLearning for teachers, not CIOs

8 points by shimms 14y ago

skyhook_mockups 14y ago
Looks really nice. I'm a high school teacher. We use Moodle at my school. If I were to pitch this to my school how would I describe the benefits of this over Moodle? One of the highlights for us is a local install and AD integration. Does your product allow on-site installation?
- shimms 14y ago
  Thanks :) Lexim is only available in the cloud, sorry. Active Directory (and other authentication methods) are coming soon, so you'll be able to integrate it with your school's systems, and not duplicate your account management functions. Regarding Moodle, Lexim has been built with a focus on usability and enjoyment. Our tools are consistent across the application, and generally we've found teachers and students feel more at home in Lexim without any training or documentation. We've also strived to make important information available quickly - no more than two clicks away. Submitting an assignment is a prime example, something which students complain about in Moodle all the time. Let me know if you'd like more details, or a more one-on-one chat about the options available. Cheers!
keithpeter 14y ago
The access control feature is marked as 'coming soon'. What is the design of that? Can I upload a spreadsheet with names and create student role accounts easily? Are there any peer-peer interaction tools (forums, comments on resources &c)? Can I limit those to my students? What will the AUP look like for a teacher and for a student? I'm in Europe/UK and we have laws...
- shimms 14y ago
  Hi, Apologies for the confusion - the 'Coming Soon' specifically refers to the Library which allows learning objects to be shared between courses in your institution. Access Control is current available and allows you to restrict the availability of content, quizzes and assignments by date range, as well as an overall visibility setting. You can enrol multiple students via a spreadsheet yes (as well as teachers and teaching assistants). Lexim has quite a powerful forums tool - the posts students make in it are visible only to students and teachers enrolled in the space with them. You can create multiple spaces (ie: one per course/section). Our current terms of service and privacy policy are available on the website, and outline our obligation and commitment to privacy/acceptable use etc. Let me know if I haven't adequately addressed your questions :) Cheers, Michael
  - keithpeter 14y ago
    Thanks for responding, I'll create a trial account and have a play. Best of luck.
    - shimms 14y ago
      Great, I'll keep an eye out for your account. Feel free to reach out to me directly at michael dot shimmins at getlexim.com if you'd like any more information or any assistance at all.
      - keithpeter 14y ago
        Attempt 1 "That looks like a personal email address. Please use your email address from your educational institution or company to sign up." OK, I understand why you are doing that. I always use my gmail account to try stuff out so I don't get endless marketing crap to my College account. I'll use the College account for this exercise (note: that means cranking up the Citrix ICA client and logging into my College desktop. The Citrix desktop has MSIE 6...) Attempt 2 "You need an .edu email address to signup to this plan. Looking for our corporate plans instead?" Are you really not interested in .ac.uk addresses? Cambridge University (whose logo you list on your landing page) staff may have some issues actually using your system, as will the other couple of hundred Universities and colleges in the UK.
        shimms 14y ago
        Hi, Sorry to hear you're having difficulties signing up - you're quite correct that .ac.uk should be allowed. At present the signup page requires an email address that ends in '.edu' (or '.edu.*' for country specific edu emails) to qualify for the free plan. We're adding region specific exceptions (such as .ac.uk) as we come across them. The Cambridge users signed up for Lexim during the private beta period in which we had no restrictions on email addresses. I've flagged this as an issue with our development team, and it will be addressed within in the next 12 - 24 hours (it's currently just gone midnight on Monday morning here in Australia). In the interim if you'd still like to play with Lexim, feel free to shoot me your email address to my private email and I'll make sure you can get sorted on the free plan. Sorry again, appreciate your interest and feedback! Thanks, Michael
lucajona 14y ago
This looks like it has all the right ingredients to spark a David vs Goliath battle. I'm not sure about elsewhere, but in Australia the Blackboard product seems to completely dominate this market, and as far as I've heard it's nearly universally disliked by students and staff for being hard to use. No doubt blackboard has a much longer feature checklist, so it'd be great to see Lexim come along and score a win for usability and putting the needs of students and staff first. And Lexim even has a pricing page! Incredible. Blackboard is way too 'enterprise level' to reveal how much they're going to charge you.
- shimms 14y ago
  Thanks - glad you appreciate what we're doing. You've summed up our motivation really well, and we completely agree with you about the current state of the industry. Teacher's deserve better, and hopefully Lexim will help them create an awesome learning experience for them and their students.

8 points by shimms 14y ago

Looks really nice. I'm a high school teacher. We use Moodle at my school. If I were to pitch this to my school how would I describe the benefits of this over Moodle? One of the highlights for us is a local install and AD integration. Does your product allow on-site installation?

shimms 14y ago
Thanks :) Lexim is only available in the cloud, sorry. Active Directory (and other authentication methods) are coming soon, so you'll be able to integrate it with your school's systems, and not duplicate your account management functions. Regarding Moodle, Lexim has been built with a focus on usability and enjoyment. Our tools are consistent across the application, and generally we've found teachers and students feel more at home in Lexim without any training or documentation. We've also strived to make important information available quickly - no more than two clicks away. Submitting an assignment is a prime example, something which students complain about in Moodle all the time. Let me know if you'd like more details, or a more one-on-one chat about the options available. Cheers!

keithpeter 14y ago

The access control feature is marked as 'coming soon'. What is the design of that? Can I upload a spreadsheet with names and create student role accounts easily? Are there any peer-peer interaction tools (forums, comments on resources &c)? Can I limit those to my students? What will the AUP look like for a teacher and for a student? I'm in Europe/UK and we have laws...

shimms 14y ago
Hi, Apologies for the confusion - the 'Coming Soon' specifically refers to the Library which allows learning objects to be shared between courses in your institution. Access Control is current available and allows you to restrict the availability of content, quizzes and assignments by date range, as well as an overall visibility setting. You can enrol multiple students via a spreadsheet yes (as well as teachers and teaching assistants). Lexim has quite a powerful forums tool - the posts students make in it are visible only to students and teachers enrolled in the space with them. You can create multiple spaces (ie: one per course/section). Our current terms of service and privacy policy are available on the website, and outline our obligation and commitment to privacy/acceptable use etc. Let me know if I haven't adequately addressed your questions :) Cheers, Michael
- keithpeter 14y ago
  Thanks for responding, I'll create a trial account and have a play. Best of luck.
  - shimms 14y ago
    Great, I'll keep an eye out for your account. Feel free to reach out to me directly at michael dot shimmins at getlexim.com if you'd like any more information or any assistance at all.
    - keithpeter 14y ago
      Attempt 1 "That looks like a personal email address. Please use your email address from your educational institution or company to sign up." OK, I understand why you are doing that. I always use my gmail account to try stuff out so I don't get endless marketing crap to my College account. I'll use the College account for this exercise (note: that means cranking up the Citrix ICA client and logging into my College desktop. The Citrix desktop has MSIE 6...) Attempt 2 "You need an .edu email address to signup to this plan. Looking for our corporate plans instead?" Are you really not interested in .ac.uk addresses? Cambridge University (whose logo you list on your landing page) staff may have some issues actually using your system, as will the other couple of hundred Universities and colleges in the UK.
      - shimms 14y ago
        Hi, Sorry to hear you're having difficulties signing up - you're quite correct that .ac.uk should be allowed. At present the signup page requires an email address that ends in '.edu' (or '.edu.*' for country specific edu emails) to qualify for the free plan. We're adding region specific exceptions (such as .ac.uk) as we come across them. The Cambridge users signed up for Lexim during the private beta period in which we had no restrictions on email addresses. I've flagged this as an issue with our development team, and it will be addressed within in the next 12 - 24 hours (it's currently just gone midnight on Monday morning here in Australia). In the interim if you'd still like to play with Lexim, feel free to shoot me your email address to my private email and I'll make sure you can get sorted on the free plan. Sorry again, appreciate your interest and feedback! Thanks, Michael

lucajona 14y ago

This looks like it has all the right ingredients to spark a David vs Goliath battle. I'm not sure about elsewhere, but in Australia the Blackboard product seems to completely dominate this market, and as far as I've heard it's nearly universally disliked by students and staff for being hard to use. No doubt blackboard has a much longer feature checklist, so it'd be great to see Lexim come along and score a win for usability and putting the needs of students and staff first. And Lexim even has a pricing page! Incredible. Blackboard is way too 'enterprise level' to reveal how much they're going to charge you.

shimms 14y ago
Thanks - glad you appreciate what we're doing. You've summed up our motivation really well, and we completely agree with you about the current state of the industry. Teacher's deserve better, and hopefully Lexim will help them create an awesome learning experience for them and their students.