In our penultimate question to the UK Google Education Apps team, Doug Belshaw had a question about Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs).
“As many of Google’s products form the basics of a VLE, will Google be officially entering a targeted VLE solution over and above Google Apps for Education?” – Doug Belshaw
Google replied:
Currently we have no plans to develop a Virtual Learning Environment solution but we have found that many schools and universities are very successfully using Google Apps communication and collaboration tools alongside their existing VLE.
I’m a bit disappointed with this. A Google VLE would blow everyone else out the water and they’re not very far away from providing such a solution. If you use Google Apps Team Edition any individual within a school can start setting up an environment where documents can be shared, various wiki-based websites can be created, and calendars can be edited together.
I think this is a road schools should definitely explore further.