

Show HN: eLearning for teachers, not CIOs - shimms
http://getlexim.com

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skyhook_mockups
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?

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shimms
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!

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lucajona
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
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.

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keithpeter
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...

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shimms
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

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keithpeter
Thanks for responding, I'll create a trial account and have a play. Best of
luck.

~~~
shimms
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
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
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

~~~
keithpeter
ac.uk addresses are recognised now so I set a 'free forever' course up, added
a YouTube video for students to see, created a couple of dummy students, and
am now awaiting the confirmation emails for the dummy students so they know
how to log on. The system accepts non ac.uk emails for students so I have used
a gmail account, I hope this has not simply dropped into a black hole.

I started with a blank course because I learn by randomly clicking around and
working out how to add things. Others may like the 'sample content' course
with one of everything.

Some comments

\- Fresh bright and nice looking pages, younger students will like it. As soon
as I can get a dummy student account activated, I'll have a look at it on my
phone, which is how teenagers access Web content on their own time (PCs are
strictly College things, office appliances)

\- Clicking on the YouTube button brings up a _search_ box. There appears to
be no place to put a direct link. I had to think of search terms to find my
own YouTube videos! If there is a way of simply adding a 'share' link, can
that be pointed out?

\- email validation for younger students may slow things down a bit, teenagers
don't _do_ email much now, and they all seem to have hotmail accounts which
get blocked &c. Our own Moodle server allows us to simply create the accounts
and then give the student a link, username and password.

Has potential.

PS Free forever because no member of staff can commit the institution to any
kind of liability without a lot of form filling.

