So after deciding that educationally it was a good idea to move all 1200 users and even if we decided to move to another mail server we were going to have to migrate everything anyway ….we did it!

Was it painful ……?
Tech side ……well not really it takes a couple of hours to setup the correct settings from the gmail, then some mucking with dns entries to get everything pointing the right way, then email away to them to get recognised as a educational institute ….tech side done.
School side …..Migrating users especially email inboxes etc would be painful but we just talked to the staff said that we would run the old mail server in parallel for a month and they were to look at this as a good chance to clean up their email. This went down fine with the understanding that we were happy to work with them to make this transition as easy as possible. This worked well and we have had no issues with this approach at all.

Problems

• IMAP speed issues with attachments ….none? ..others have noted this but we haven’t ..not sure why not ..must just be lucky!!! LOL
• Gmail doesn’t like to be ‘polled’ continously ( seems to think its an attack)  so by limiting how often this happens this has disappeared.
• Gmail uses flash to upload multiple attachments and this proved to be an issue with our internal proxy …took a bit of ‘tweaking’ but all sorted and staff now happy.
• Issue with syncing user information between our LDAP (AD) server and GApps is a ongoing one ..we have found this application works well from Google ..for all things except passwords due to the format AD stores them. So we are manually having to do this. Anybody with magic bullet cure for this …let me know!

Positives

• Email is reliable, spam is better than before and virus protection built in …all great!
• Educationally staff are continuing to find ways of uses collaborative tools weekly ..if not daily …from class projects to faculty planning …again great!
• We haven’t had to replace a dodgy server!!

Concerns

• Bandwidth is important …bring on the Loop with pairing to Google!! We have 12mbs down and 5mbs up ..and its working damm well ..less might be an issue
• Data Caps …. we have noticed an increase in data use as classes are using Google docs to work collaboratively ….but surely well worth it educationally and it will take something like 2 years to equal the cost of a new server …even if we were to double our internet usuage!!

Some ‘Comments’ I have heard…

• Why would you want to use Google Apps and give them your data – they are just another Microsoft in sheeps clothing – looking at world domination!! – I just don’t see that as the case …its a free service and it works great lets use it!!!
• Who ‘owns’ your email/docs? …personally I don’t care !! ..cloud computing is a concept we need to understand …you back up what is necessary but otherwise its very convienent ..and I’m all for that!
• what happens if Google goes belly up ….HELLO …if Google goes down I think we will have more to worry about than our email!!!

Well must believe in it ..I’ve now ‘helped’ migrate six schools and this is the full ’round up’

Version 3 also has photo sharing which means you can keep photographs of students safely in the gated village if you so wish rather than using public photo sharing like Flickr.

If you want any help setting up a video sharing server let us know and we will see what we can do to help.

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?

]]> http://tek.net.nz/2009/05/moodle-the-hidden-cost-of-ownership/feed/ 5 http://tek.net.nz/2009/01/will-it-stick/ http://tek.net.nz/2009/01/will-it-stick/#comments Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:39:30 +0000 Mark http://tek.net.nz/?p=476 One of the things we all like to do here at TEK is throw stuff at the wall and see if it sticks and I have to say that most times in education you have to run up to the wall and push it on extra hard to make it stay.  This can get exhausting as between us we only have a limited number of arms and every now and then something new and shiny distracts us and we forget to hold up the old stuff.  As we have probably mentioned before the key is getting buy in from the staff and/or students so that it stays stuck by itself.

I have set myself two ‘ICT’ related goals to achieve before I head back to work next week.  The first is to create a blogging site for Mt. Maunganui College, the second is to create a wiki for Technology Teachers to submit relief work so that none of us have to come up with relief lessons on the morning when we feel the worst.

Both these things are reasonably straightforward to setup but they require a reasonable investment of my own time, not only installing the systems but also generating awareness and then supporting users (all without financial reward).

The second goal is the easier of the two.  Go to Teach Tech and you will find a basic mediawiki install where teachers can share content.  Contacting those likely to contribute will be done through the BOP GTTA (Graphics and Technology Teachers Association).  After that it is just a case of waiting for the emails to come flooding in, I hope.

The first goal is a little harder as it has been requested from senior management after seeing what happens in other schools with blogging.  Having set up a blog server at Katikati College I am aware that only a couple of keen teachers have really used it so far although it is growing in popularity.  The thing I am most scared of is that I put this thing in place and then have to tell the whole staff that they have to use it, or I am only given half an hour in staff meeting to sell it.  In short I will have to do it well to avoid a backlash.

I have decided to go with WordPress mu again but this time using the Buddypress plugins.  This makes WPMU look and feel like Facebook or Bebo which enables users to add friends, create groups, post their status etc.  The idea is to get users to use the platform to generate content without it feeling like work and once they are used to the interface then the transition to blogging will be smoother.  One of my problems is that in my head the target audience are the most cynical teachers (you know the ones I mean), if I can sell it to them then I should get everyone else.  I am probably being too hard on myself, I will be happy if a handful of people use it, blogging isn’t for everyone but we shall see if it sticks.

Customising it has been easy as uploading a couple of images and now it’s just the process of pointing our Domain at the right place and we go live. I will blog the results of the full student and staff transition in the next few weeks.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Being a long weekend I have finished a few books and one of the ones I should have blogged about a while ago is “Doing School”. I brought this book from Amazon after having listened to the author on itunesU. The basic premise of the book is that the author followed five successful students around for a year and reports back on how they got through the academic stresses of that year. 

I won’t review it here as there is plenty of reviews on the amazon page linked to below but I found it really made me think about what I wanted for education. That I am not happy to continue to teach like we have done for the past fifty years and that if we always do as we have always done we will always get what we always got, which really is no form of progress.

Amazon.com: Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students: Denise Clark Pope: Books

To begin with text input is very easy and the auto correct is excellent and the places where I spend most of my time have good wifi coverage.

(next day) I shouldn’t start writing posts when I know I will be interupted. No chance of that now while I sit in a hall with 7 other staff supervising exams.

Back to the iPod touch; most useful app so far apart from the wordpress app I am using now is mocha vnc light which allows me to screen share my laptop wherever I am in the school. Handy because not all my apps, like aim work through the proxy yet.

Watch this space for more updates on using the ipod touch in the classroom.

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!!

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