To Moodle or not to Moodle

Let me start off with, I have no idea if to Moodle or not to Moodle. But what I do know is that there are educators all over the world that are Moodling as often as I am Googling. I am not an educator but I love technological advantages, that is how my company became regional with over 350 employees from a small operation in my garage (technological advantages also helps me spell fifth grade words properly but it does not help my grammer). I like you, am in a service industry and the biggest advantage I discovered was using tools developed by others, especially if they were free or almost free. Which leads me to Moodle. Moodle is free but the story is a little more complicated then that. This school software does some very amazing things. At least that is what a teacher (and a lot of others) told me. Here are two links that explain the concept, link 1 and link 2.

Now with most software (free or not) you have to load it on your computer to make it work. That is a real problem for most of us, especially if we do not have the time. But even worse if it is software that must be loaded on a file server by an IT department. Wow! Most of our schools do not have enrollment staff much less an IT department. Help is now here! There is a new wave of technology called WEB 2.0 and what is that? No fear. It is some geeks and their buddies that what to do all the work for you for free or for just a couple of dollars. Why? Maybe to get their names in USA Today but who cares, it works!

This Moodle thing will work just as easy as email on AOL if you let it. You load nothing on your computer. You simply use the internet to connect to the site, like going to the Conference website (sometimes that’s a trip). In fact I think Moodle is so muc better than any Adventist Conference website, at least you can get some current information there. Oops, off track. Do I still get to go to heaven if I slip and make statements like that? I try and eat vegan.

There are two websites I would like to share with you. Unfortunately, these are not the free sites but one is real cheap and the other is very reasonable (and has much more hands-on help).

The first one is MoodleRooms. That was the one you should have already looked at in the above referenced two links. (If you did not know there where two links above, this article is of no use to you. Please consider a career change.) MoodleRooms as a moderate (but reasonable) cost and they hold your hand much more. Next, find some rich guy in your church and wow him into supporting your efforts with MoodleRooms. This would probably be my first choice. If that does not work, find some old retired female teacher and ask the same. If all else fails, please continue reading.

There is a service called SiteGround. My principal thinks he is compute smart, so I was cheap and purchased two years of service from SiteGround for only $148. What-A deal! This service is so cheap I could not get the site to load this morning; hope they are not out of business I may have just lost $148. This company makes a lot of claims so I knew their were from India. Nothing wrong with India but I know they are asleep when I may need to call them. Too my surprise, I was told the service is out of Texas. Are they still part of the United States? Texans are terribly independent you know.

No more questions?
Tom Krazan
Central California
tomkrazan@gmail.com