The Educated Kiwi
learning
Moodle …the hidden cost of Ownership
May 13th
The Hidden cost of Moodle use is more than other LMS providers in the New Zealand market ……….YEAH RIGHT!!
Recently the Ministry MLE roadshow visited Tauranga and I had some calls from local teachers who attended asking about the hidden cost of running Moodle in a school as it was indicated that running Moodle could be more expensive than one of the commercial vendors (eg Knowledgenet or Ultranet). I decided to sit down and work out :
1. How much has it cost our college to run it
2. How much does commercial support cost
so………
Costs for us to run it at Katikati College, Roll 950.
Hardware -well we started using it 6 years ago on a rebuilt old Pentium box which we then moved last year to generic server that runs Moodle and our static website with raided 300GB drives and 4GB RAM (as a virtual machine ..so we can easily move/backup it) …hardware cost : $3500
Software – runs on Ubuntu Server (free) , Moodle …well free
Time to set it up: Well initial set up took Richard and I maybe an hour the first time (including server install)
Time to maintain: Richard would be lucky if he spends 2 hours per month …and most of that’s adding new modules he likes the look of or adding functionality.
Time to train staff: Hmm …the big one …well that’s been huge but its just been seen as part of the PD we would provide for any new system we bring into our college that adds value….so actual cost $0
Commercial Support
So if you don’t feel happy to do this yourself I found a number of companies that actually specialise in Moodle installation, support , training and hosting (no pesky servers onsite). Try Catalyst (Ministry development partner) or Totali ….just 2 of many companies that offer cost effective solutions for Moodle.
What do we need to compare this to?
Well Knowledgenet has its pricing on its website
For Katikati College:
Install cost : $6600+GST
Monthly Cost : $336.67 +GST
So to be fair there is no hardware cost at all but it would cost our college $11000.00 the first year then $4400 per year after that!! …..sorry I just don’t see the added value!! In fact recently at the KAMAR conference Richard stated that for the install cost alone he would maintain a Moodle installation for life!! (feel free to email him!!).
Sure I’ve heard the comment that Moodle is not as ‘easy to use’ as other LMS’s ..I really dispute that …it all depends on the level of commitment to Professional Development your school is willing to put into implementing a Learning Management System ..and isn’t that the same for any ‘new’ initiative in a school ?
Finally for all you doubters out there have a look at this http://docs.moodle.org/en/Top_10_Moodle_Myths
Thought it really sums it up as I think just because Moodle has no company actively marketing it in NZ we in the education sector does not make it any less relevant or applicable?
Finally Moodle has over 20 000 registered installations worldwide ..all in areas with multiple LMS’s available …can that many people really be wrong?
AIR CON, Global Climate Change
May 7th
I just popped into the local post shop today and skimmed through Ian Wishart’s AIR CON. Since I am studying Climate change with my Year 10 class this seemed interesting. It is a look at the other side of the debate on climate change and since I share clips from An Inconvenient Truth it does seem important to look at both sides of the issue. So it certainly gives a lot of figures and the referencing is great which allows us to make up our own minds. Looks like I will have to get one for the department.
I did however feel sad as while people are entitled to their opinion as to if Climate Change is happening I hope this doesn’t distract us from the fact that the world is in a pretty messy state and any message that forces us to tidy up a bit has merit.
Stu’s Double Jeopardy, Great fun for basic facts.
Apr 29th
As much as it pains me to have to boot into my windows virtual machine (feel the mac snob coming out in me there) Stu’s Double Jeopardy makes me do just that.
While I have made up Jeopardy games before in Powerpoint and lately in Smart’s Notebook this is so easy and looks so good. There is also a lot of information on the site in the way of help files for everything from creating custom skins to adding music files. I found that my Year 11 class took about 45 minutes on the American Government Review game and now look forward to seeing what their recall is like come moodle test time.
Newsmaker.app Great Fun
Apr 1st
Since Learning@School we have been waiting for the release of Newsmaker for Mac and PC. Now we have our full site license we can move on from our enhanced garageband podcast to full video.
In using the app I have found it to be very simple with a small installed size (27mb) and a very quick learning curve. Overall I can see students being able to write and draft their work in this and then publish in a number of periods. The results of which will be both fun and a positive experience of using video and IT for our staff who can often be put off by the time required to produce anything with video.
At $500 NZD for a site license I felt it was a reasonable deal.Boinx TVwhich I had looked at is $199 USD for a single License and was possibly a bit to complicated for most staff (although I have brought the machiest bundle in the hope it will be unlocked for our official school newscast but hey thats just the tech snob in me as my year 12 and 13 class would say.
Moodle Assessments
Mar 28th
Over the past two weeks my year 11 History class has been completing an Internal Assessment Achievement Standard worth four credits of the 24 on offer in year eleven History.
They had two weeks to complete a task where they had to write a newspaper editorial from 1954 based around the events of the Civil Rights Movement at that time. The task involved them writing from the perspectives of someone supporting the decision of Brown vs Board of Education and someone against. I allowed submission of the assessment either on paper or electronically via Moodle’s assignment activity. They were allowed to submit as they revised their answer which allowed me to point out areas that they were weak on and many of the students took full advantage of this.
The boys in my class were especially impressive as they got into the task but even though they had plenty of time to do the task this picture shows some of the times the assessment was handed in.
It was due at 8:30am on Friday and I can see there were some late nights on thursday. In all however using the Moodle assignment feature has been very successful and made things very easy for me to provide feedback and feedforward even when I see most of these students every day.
Overall a useful addition to good classroom practice.
When should children be introduced to ICT?
Oct 26th
Having a son made me question the place of a computer in his life. When should he be allowed to use one? What rules should there be around that use? Would he be better spending his entire life doing “real” stuff?
Matthew is 20 months old in this photo and has now been using a computer for about five months. I was actually fairly reluctant to allow him on a computer as I had visions of all the worst possible outcomes (i thought he would immediately transform into a greasy-haired, pimply-faced, overweight, drug-using, unemployed 20 year old with no ambition beyond sitting in front of a computer in a basement all day and playing some online game that hasn’t been invented yet).
However I got a Mac Mini for him to use and hooked it up to a touch screen monitor and set it all up on a table in the lounge. I installed Tux Paint and Reader Rabbit Toddler on it and used those programmes when he was around a few times. I had thought he might enjoy making lines or shapes in Tux Paint, but instead he preferred to change the selected tools from the onscreen menus and to select options that would have a dialogue box pop up. It seemed he liked the dialogue boxes because they gave him a reason to have me with him, and he would grab my finger and make me touch the screen to dismiss it. I might be wrong but it really did seem that he preferred having someone with him.
Within a couple of weeks he developed a strong preference for Reader Rabbit and enjoyed a module in it that he could make sing a song by touching on one of about 8 different icons. He saw his older nephews play in other areas of the programme on 2-3 occasions and could exit the module he was in and choose another one on his own. Indeed he went through a stage where that was all he did, just entered and exited the modules, often the same one over and over.
By the end of the first month he could get up on the short stool in front of the table and launch either Reader Rabbit of Tux Paint from the dock. This was not something we had taught him to do, although he had seen us do it. He also started playing in modules that had previously held little fascination for him. Up until about 6-8 weeks we did nothing to moderate his use of the computer, he would hop up on the stool play for up to 10 minutes and then hop back down and go play with his other toys. But then he did start wanting to get on the computer before breakfast when he got up, and although he only had about 10 words in his vocabulary computer (he called it the “tar”) was now one of them. At this stage we put a cloth over the screen and did not remove it until after his afternoon sleep and he could play on it during the late afternoon if he wished.
After 2 months he could use the shape sorter proficiently, and could distinguish between different sizes of the same shape and when we watched him it was obvious that he was looking at the shapes he had to place and the “holes” they needed to go to and was working with thoughtful intent to complete the puzzle. While it is not obvious in the attached photo, he often uses both hands when working with the shape sorter which is very cool to watch. This learning seemed to transfer to him using his shape-sorter toy as well, although I have no way of verifying that.
After three months of using the computer (18 months old) he was able to recognise the shapes of the letters of the alphabet and match letters on keys with letters on doors in one of the modules. My wife and I had not realised this at first, a friend who was watching him pointed it out to us, we had decided only a few days earlier that he was still making random guesses. This definitely was learning that he was able to transfer to actual objects as at about this time my wife was playing with our nephew and had some cards with letters on them and was spelling Stefan’s name. She was saying where is an “E” and Matthew picked one up and handed it to her. When we investigated this further he could name 6 letters and appeared to recognise a few more when we asked him to find them even though he could not say the name of the letter. Since then we have further encouraged this while out walking and stop at letterboxes, signs and number plates for him to tell us what numbers and letters are on them.
I have been frankly amazed at the value of him having access to a computer. He has been able to show intent, to demonstrate learning and seems to have enjoyed a sense of achievement at being able to do things. It has provided stimulation and challenge on demand in a way that my wife and I would not have been able to do ourselves. It has not turned him into a computer addict, he probably stands at it for up to an hour in total on some days but other days he does not touch it. The challenge for us now is to keep finding programmes that challenge him as he gains confidence and ability.
Close Up: NCEA vs Cambridge exams
Sep 19th
YouTube – Close Up: NCEA vs Cambridge exams.
At our Home group meeting yesterday the conversation swung to assessment in schools. I must say I have not been a huge fan of NCEA but in saying that I do firmly believe that it is up to us as teachers to make it work. In saying that the comments on this youtube video do give a bit of a picture, as to be motivated to comment generally shows a strong feeling. A quick search here gives a bit more insight into this issue. I wonder how much truth there is in this comment
Why is St Cuth’s thinking about changing from NCEA? Simple, the rich parents who might send their girls there have lost confidence in the NCEA and are sending them to Dio or Corran etc. The loss of confidence has nothing to do with the NCEA but more the political point scoring running along in the media. I suspect the same is true, even of Avondale College.
But from the Westlake Boys High School page there is reasonable explaination and it seems that they find for boys it is a successful qualification.
I will continue to look into this issue and I must admit I do find it strange that the majority of schools doing cambridge to do the ‘best’ for their students are in direct competition with each other for numbers so the media and perception are obviously a part of the truth to the issue must lie somewhere in the middle I guess.
Laptops – What are the issues
Aug 10th
Lots has been said re how education is changing with laptops as affordable as they are becoming. We at Katikati College have now had laptops available on a student by student basis for over a year and are now considering removing some of our specialist IT rooms in favour of continuing to increase the number of laptops available in scheme.
Our laptop programme which is available to all students on an hour by hour basis (booked by staff) and has been a huge success ..it has changed our school without it being only the ‘well off’ that can afford for their kids to have laptops. We blatantly stole this idea from Arthur Phillip High School in Sydney and it has totally changed our school with IT being utilised as a tool to support the curriculum without the pressure for it to be used all the time. But there has been some things we have worked out along the way…….
1. Before you have lots of laptops ..get your wireless right..we didn’t have 10′s of thousands of $$$ to buy a commercial solution to full wireless coverage. We have had full wireless coverage of our site for over 5 years but we have had to upgrade from basic units to Cisco 1131 units to get the coverage we need. This is an absolute MUST if you want to run more than half a dozen laptops off an access point and at $1000NZ while not cheap we have found we can support 70 off one unit well. Recently we completed a online survey on Moodle with all of our staff off one access point ..no problem
2. None of the laptops we have found are designed to run (with a standard battery) for anywhere near 5 hours so heavy booking creates major issues later in the day ..this is an issue that needs to be addressed within your school …we have solved it with laptops that get ‘rotated’ into service later in the day
3. Laptops aren’t heavy on their own but if you have someone issuing them …100 is heavy especially if they are being issued every hour!!
4. Security..Security ..Security …where do you house 200 laptops?
5. We have designed charging cows for 70 laptops. This require 3 phase power ..this is expensive to put in.
6. Dont let your technician take personally any software changes done to laptops by students …we just reimage any machine that does not look ‘standard’ any time spent trying to ‘fix’ problems created by students is time wasted (We use G4U – its free and works well). If the damage is sorted we have found they generally don’t bother to do it again as thats not the ‘game’ ..just like vandalism to buildings.
Other than these issues .its all been plain sailing!!
iTunes K-12
Jul 3rd
As I scanned my newsfeeds this week I noticed that the iTunes U section of the iTunes store now has a K-12 section. So far only a handful of US schools are taking part but no doubt this will be a valuable and growing resource for us all.
Sensible Units.com
Jul 2nd
Ok so I weigh the same as 17 Domestic cats. Putting that aside I could see a use for this site in almost every lesson “Mr van Dijk how far is a mile”, well that would be
- 32 Olympic swimming pools.
- 31 Nelson’s columns.
- 27 Boeing 747s side by side.
- 20 Airbus A380s side by side.
- 15 football (soccer) pitches.
- 15 American football fields.
- 5 Eiffel Towers.
- 3.6 Empire State Buildings.
- 2.9 CN Towers.
- 1.5 Table Mountains.
A Lesson in Social Networking
Jun 22nd
The June 20th episode of Buzz Out Loud quoted this post from Webware explaining how social networking helps bridge the digital divide and equips young people with relevant skills.
Ironic that nearly all schools block these sites. Someone said to me last week that there is no evidence that technology (ICT) improves learning. It wasn’t until later that I thought that there is probably no evidence that school improves learning.
The point of school is to provide a safe learning environment. If we are really so afraid we could set up “walled garden” social networks, but generally most young people in NZ have a profile with bebo and don’t want to change, so why not let them use it to collaborate at school?
iTunesU from Otago
Jun 4th
iTunesU is now available for New Zealands Otago University. If you haven’t already had a look iTunesU is well worth a look. Some of the guest lecturers have been great on education in particular I enjoyed Denise Clark Pope, lecturer in education, talking about what we can do as parents and teachers to help children seek a heathly balance as they strive for academic achievement and personal fulfillment. This was in Stanfords Reunion Homecoming 2004 - Getting Ahead in School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students
Physics Phun
May 9th
This free physics simulator looks a bit rough but is good fun to play with. It was developed as a master of science thesis by Emil Ernerfeldt and is available on PC, Mac and Linux.
iTunes Education
Apr 20th
PBS – Public Broadcasting Service (US) provides educational resources for teachers. They are now publishing lesson plans with video clips on iTunesU for free.
Seeing the future from the past.
Mar 13th
Today I had the privilege of speaking at the Tauranga Senior Net AGM. While a lot of what I had to say was new to the group their enthusiasm and interest in education really encourages me in my, at times evangelical approach to using ICT in schools today. At the conclusion of the keynote I answered their questions as best I could and in particular they were interested in similar issues to teachers – identity/net safety and values. It’s great to be able to talk to groups like this and sometimes I feel in the secondary system we miss the chance to really share our vision with parents. As I was able to with this group.
This I guess is really where blogging comes in. Improving the home-school link. I particularly enjoyed showing the screen shot from the moodle logs where all the forum discussions were happening after five pm. A great example of anytime anywhere learning.
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