Show HN: eLearning for teachers, not CIOs
getlexim.com
getlexim.com
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!
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.
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.
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...
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
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.
"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.
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
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.