moodle

TBC Moodle

New job new Moodle busy busy

TBC Moodle

TBC Moodle

So it is that I have started my new job at Tauranga Boys’ College. I am now a teacher of Year Nine and Ten Social Studies, covering New Zealand history at the moment and Year 11 Geography and History.

One of my year Ten classes is a laptop class, 29 students with nice shiny Macbooks. This week we have been charting the voyage of Captain Cook to New Zealand which we have done with iStopmotion, a great little piece of software and also meant we could familiarise the boys’ with the machines again after the holidays and reintroduce some of the software changes from the holidays.

I’ve also been working on our school Moodle site at moodle.tbc.school.nz. bringing the previous moodle sites into one and adding a link to google apps with single sign on has been exciting especially as we have had a number of network issues that we thought were our fault but in fact were out of our control. So I look forward to the challenges of the coming months both in my classroom and digitally, Not to mention the impending arrival of our second child next week.

Moodle …the hidden cost of Ownership

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?