One of the greatest things about the new web, or Web2.0, is the changing opt-in culture of conversations. There are many, MANY topics/conversations that I wish I could focus my time on. I scan many, a smaller number are read and consumed, and an even smaller number do I engage.
I have been well aware of MOODLE for many years, excited enough about it to stay up to date but never having a need. At times I had tried it out but it just wasn't something I was willing to take on technically. Until now...
Now, I have a need. Now, MOODLE has matured. Now, I am engaged in the MOODLE community soaking up everything I can from other's experiences via the MOODLE forum. I would normally get the RSS feed, but when I need to be fully engaged, I subscribe via email and don't mind being overwhelmed with every single post. Why? Because I'm learning! Because I have a need and at some point I will have the same need that others in the community are having right now...its all connected. As a noob, I'm spinning myself up on all things MOODLE by engaging in the conversation...I'm OPT-ing in...No book, no class, just engaging in the conversation that is already going on.
Using Fantastico via my web host (www.siteground.com) it only took a couple clicks to have a complete MOODLE install ready to go for experimental learning. I would highly recommend siteground for many reasons but above and beyond them all is the fact that their customer service is AWESOME!!! Example: Elgg and Mediawiki are NOT part of Fantastico, but they had BOTH environments installed and ready for me in less than 12hours. It was probably more like 2 hours, but I didn't check my email for a while after I made the request. [UPDATE: I checked my siteground support account and noticed that they had ELGG and Mediawiki installed in 15mins...now that's customer service]
Another side benefit is meeting amazing educators who are doing great things with MOODLE in the schools, non-profits, and business. But even better is the NON-MOODLE related learning that pops up every now and then. Example: Someone asked about converting video to play inside of a MOODLE resource and because of this conversation I now know about Media-convert.com and Mediacoder.com. Amazing media conversion tools that are FREE and/or opensource.
And another fun little video tool for blogs and websites is Flixn. You can actually put a video recorder on your blog for others to leave video messages for you. So cool! Of course the person recording needs a web cam.
These are amazing times...are we having fun yet?!!! ;-)
2 comments:
As expected - you're figuring out some way cool things to do with Moodle and how to integrate spiffy tools. You KNOW that as soon as I get a chance - I'll take all your new experience and incorporate that into my company's site :' )
And for would-be UK Moodle users I'd recommend www.pteppic.net as a host. They've provided me and my clients with excellent support (not that I've needed much - Moodle seems to work just fine). Kineo also provide Moodle hosting for their clients.
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