Project+SHARE+-+Epsilen+information

=Project SHARE - Epsilen=

Features
Epsilen consists of three major areas; User Portal, Groups, and Courses; and it will offfer access to NYTimes digital archives. (NOTE: It seems to be the consensus that Epsilen will NOT be a replacement for Moodle courses.) __Jarrell ISD is a pilot site - More information to follow!__

__Course Development__
Epsilen will not replace CMS systems such as Moodle, Blackboard or WebCT. Although courses can be integrated or linked, they are sufficiently different and should not interfere with a District's attempt to use Moodle. (Jeanie Cole - Harris County Dept of Education)

Epsilen (aka Project Share) does have a course management feature that has similarities to Moodle (based on the fact that they do similar things). In appearance they are very different. Individual districts will need to make decisions about the right opportunities for Epsilen and or Moodle for professional development and instruction over time. The course management tools will not be available to teachers until fall of this year at the earliest. Students will not have access until later than that. (Lannon Heflin - ESC13)

Epsilen does have the capabilities of replacing Moodle, BlackBoard, etc., but just because it is capable does not mean it will meet your needs. There are things that other LMS's can do that Epsilen can't. You will have to make that choice. (Ed Newman)

__Management__
I believe that TEA and some ESC's will be using Epsilen to deliver content to districts. This might explain the push for each district to upload their staff into Epsilen. They will need an Epsilen account to access the training.(Ed Newman)

For the first phase of 'Project Share', it is rumored that all teachers will have an account in Epsilen this summer, so all districts should have access to this by the Fall of 2010. I think that initially, it will be mostly for educator collaboration and the platform for TEA to deliver professional development. What I haven't been able to determine is whether participation will be optional or mandatory, or how rapidly the subsequent phases will roll out.(Greg Hubenak - San Marcos Consolidated ISD)

At our initial meeting with ESC20 we were told that we do not have to have ALL teachers in by this summer. We are considering doing a pilot with the group of teachers that are being targeted with the PD this summer (Science, Math, ELA, CTE, ELPS). Additionally, we were "invited" into the initiative. Therefore, one can assume that this is not mandated (at least not yet). Being such a large district, ESC20 didn't want to push us into doing batch uploads of our staff yet. (Elizabeth Langer - Northside ISD)

__Upload__
The user portal area is limited to 5GB. Currently, there is no limit on groups or courses. The only limit for all three is the 50MB limit per file upload. A teacher could in theory for now upload more than a terabyte of data into a course or group. (Ed Newman)

__Training__
ESC's are being trained to assist districts in the import process. It is a simple important of your users into Epsilen from an excel spreadsheet. We plan to begin contacting our pilot districts by the end of the month. If all goes well we hope to work with the rest of our districts to complete the import by June 1st. (Ed Newman)

__Things to Ponder__
One MAJOR thing to keep in mind here. The work in Epsilen is not portable. I asked Epsilen this myself the week TEA announced their partnership with them. This makes Epsilen a very poor choice for eportfolios. Students and staff need to be able to take their portfolio with them. I know Epsilen has said that they will allow hosting for life, but no one can count on that. At least with Google Docs you can export into HTML, PDF, office documents or whatever. With Wordpress you can export and host your own Wordpress site anywhere. With Moodle, same thing. Drupal, same thing. And so on. I can let my kids walk the stage at graduation and give them their life in our school district on a flash drive for them to do with what they want. Epsilen cannot provide that. Epsilen was also unable to answer several other questions I had.

Espilen is a portal. Doesn't matter who is telling you it is not. They list it as such on their own website in some of their news articles: [] Just do a search for the word portal. It will show up. One of the tabs inside is even called My Espilen Portal. It's a portal. I have not seen it myself. I'm just reading from their website.

(Scott Floyd - White Oak ISD)

LINKS
TEA Demo

TEA Press Release

[|TCEA SOS - Moodle and Project Share]

Questions
Epsilen is not an email replacement system. It has email like features within the system, but I would not consider it an email replacement system.
 * Do I need to maintain email services for all students and teachers, when Episelen provides internal email and Google education can provide free email?


 * Do I need to maintain conferences or online collaboration tools through third parties like First Class or Share Point, when Episelen provides all the tools for free?


 * Do I need to maintain servers for course management or staff development when Episelen is free? Or at least free for up to 6 years....

> > 5GB/Person
 * How much space will be provided for each user to save?