moodle - is it dead in secondary schools

[Edward Kelly]

Hi all,

Moodle hasn't been mentioned in a long time. 

I have been asked to revive the use of Moodle in my school as I am one of the only teachers using it. 

I am wondering if there are any secondary school which are still using it (successfully)?

Thanks

E

[John Hegarty]

I'm a Moodle fan and ran it for several years in my school. I failed miserably though in getting other teachers on board. Interest was only sparked if there was an inspection coming up and the belief, and perhaps the reality, that being able to show some stuff in Moodle helped tick a box for the inspection.

When I took down the Moodle site I'm not sure anyone noticed. I use Google Classroom now with my classes and truth to tell not much take up of it yet by other teachers in my school either. That isn't said as a criticism but rather an observation that they don't see it as being useful to them and their students. We aren't a school that has gone down the one device per pupil route yet so students here generally don't have access to technology in class on a daily basis.

jh

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[Imogen Bertin]

LearnDash, an LMS/membership integrator for Wordpress, is where it's at if you've no budget or your end-users pay a nominal fee - but be warned - you need to be quite techie to get it to work because you have to get a number of plugins cooperating in a visually attractive manner that provides engaging learning experiences. So it would end up being IT support person or paid developer getting it sorted for a number of teachers who then just add content - which is probably not manageable for many schools.

I think Adobe Captivate Prime (that's the LMS not the content tool) has improved and is gaining a lot of market these days but the cost is corporate rather than educational.

The Moodle problem IMHO was the unattractive interface and how slow it was. You could do everything but the clunkiness killed it because non-techies hated it. 

Very interested to hear if there is anything now that people find does that extra step John mentions - being easy enough for the non-techie teacher to get content up in a short period of time for their classes - and for a tiny budget!

Imogen

On Fri, Aug 31, 2018 at 8:09 AM, John Hegarty <jheg...@clongowes.net> wrote:

I'm a Moodle fan and ran it for several years in my school. I failed miserably though in getting other teachers on board. Interest was only sparked if there was an inspection coming up and the belief, and perhaps the reality, that being able to show some stuff in Moodle helped tick a box for the inspection.

When I took down the Moodle site I'm not sure anyone noticed. I use Google Classroom now with my classes and truth to tell not much take up of it yet by other teachers in my school either. That isn't said as a criticism but rather an observation that they don't see it as being useful to them and their students. We aren't a school that has gone down the one device per pupil route yet so students here generally don't have access to technology in class on a daily basis.

jh

On Fri, 31 Aug 2018 at 07:58, Edward Kelly <educati...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

Moodle hasn't been mentioned in a long time. 

I have been asked to revive the use of Moodle in my school as I am one of the only teachers using it. 

I am wondering if there are any secondary school which are still using it (successfully)?

Thanks

E

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[istone]

Hi all,

I use Edmodo a lot with my classes. Great calendar, file system, setting assignments or messaging. Free and very easy to use.

The desktop version is great however I'm having reservations now with the mobile app (which seems to be how most students access it from home) - advertising on it? which wasn't when we started with it?

Would be interested to hear others' views on Edmodo?

Irene

[Emer]

You hear this again and again - one or two teachers very enthusiastic about Moodle (or Google Classroom, or Edmodo, or Schoology...), but difficulties maintaining sustained interest and use from others.  Rarely do you hear of a success story where use of any of these platforms results in ongoing school-wide collaboration. I wonder is the problem with sharing and teacher collaboration more broadly, rather than with the technology? 

Emer

[Clare Wallace]

I used Moodle very succesfully in 2 schools overseas. It continues to be my legacy in those schools and it worked well. Features like workshop (which allowed for peer and self assesment) were ground breaking. It must be remembered that it is built on constructive pedagocial principles. 

However, in my current school here in Ireland it failed to get traction. I cant pin point why....I probably didnt bring the same energy....however Google Classroom has been a great hit. It doesnt have the same features but it works. The learning curve is easier in Google classroom. 

This post is similar to the "what would you do differently" question from earlier. Google grew organically in our school. I set it up and the rest came from very commited energetic teachers on the ground and students requesting their teachers to use it. That bottom up responsive approach is best. Given other circumstances our platform might be different but what I am now interested in is an honest approach....I read/hear/get told about what schools do all the time but whats actually on the ground is often different.

Moodle is a great tool - Google classroom is a great tool - all tools to support learning...

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[Richard Millwood]

"[it] grew organically in our school. I set it up and the rest came from very committed energetic teachers on the ground and students requesting their teachers to use it. That bottom up responsive approach is best."

Seems to me this is key to sustaining use, whatever the tool. Offering responsibility, self-direction and creativity to participants generally wins in my view - along with tolerance of mistakes! Ask how the tool's selection, design and use is governed - what influence do students and teachers have to shape it to suit their purpose and preference?

[Clare Wallace]

Richard I think you have to be able to do what you want to do. There were things I wanted to do with vsware such as self reporting, texts to evening study absentees, integration with a different timetable than their own - when I couldnt get it from Vsware we did a bit of research and found compass....if you are dictated by the product thsts the tail wagging the dog....

Similarily google now meets our needs. Integration with 3rd party stuff like flubaroo pushes its capability..if the staff ever want to move we are open to movement but tech integration is a long slow road - every mile stone is a win and you have to keep.the energy, commitment and good will of the staff with you. If you dont you could find youself in a very isolated spot!

On 1 Sep 2018 10:17 am, "Richard Millwood" <richard....@gmail.com> wrote:

"[it] grew organically in our school. I set it up and the rest came from very committed energetic teachers on the ground and students requesting their teachers to use it. That bottom up responsive approach is best."

Seems to me this is key to sustaining use, whatever the tool. Offering responsibility, self-direction and creativity to participants generally wins in my view - along with tolerance of mistakes! Ask how the tool's selection, design and use is governed - what influence do students and teachers have to shape it to suit their purpose and preference?

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[Danny Murray]

Moodle is the most powerful learning management system I've ever used and Linux is the best operating system and I don't use either in my school and probably never will. 

To setup a Moodle Server you need someone with a lot of time or to pay a company silly money to host it for you. Have done both and they're very hard to make sustainable. The peer assessment was so awesome. The adrenaline of running an update knowing it could screw everything up. Good times. 

Moodle is far superior and I'll never get to use it :(

Oh Moodle.. I miss you. It was a passionate love affair but I always knew it was never going to work out long term. 

I still get those admin emails and think back to that time I made a 400 question course on Optics with multiple loops, paths and forks and differenciated outcomes. 

Moodle you were hard core.

*presses F to pay respects *

[Clare Wallace]

Danny......Im with you.....I got my helpful moodler badge....the summative assessment results my students got were fantastic....

I enjoyed your post! 😁

[Edward Kelly]

Moodle - I have used it successfully both at home and abroad for many years - most recently for GCSE ICT and A Level IT. I have developed the courses in line with the schemes of work which has been really effective. Students have a choice of multi-media with a range of activities such as checklist, forums, chats, quizzes etc. Students find everything in the one spot. It is really great for the weeks before the exams. From time to time, they complained about the interface but I did some worked on that too. Few others teachers have used it where I have been - but as some of  you mention, I think that has been down to (poor) planning, lack of training, and newer emerging technologies. And, the app isn´t great. As it currently stands, there is a push away from it by IT support. The IT technicians don´t have time to support it. Now it looks like we are moving to OneNote & MS Teams in the next few weeks. [There is also talk of Firefly].  For a long time, I prefered GAFE to Office 365 as I found it much more intuitive and also other teachers also appeared less confused. However, looking at Microsoft Teams over the last few days is bringing me round. However, this will probably mean redesigning my  Moodle courses for MS Teams and when we introduce BYOD in Sept 2020 I will probably have to redesign learning content for Showbie (a lighter LMS). 

[As Chris and Hassan recommended in another post, I am really pushing for some coherent planning, with a series of surveys of teachers´ ed tech experiences, ed tech skills, blocks, ed tech suggestions, training needs, hardware and software needs, etc - lets see if time allows]. 

Maybe it is time to stop beating a dead horse (Moodle) and salute late adoptors. 

Thanks for your replies. 

E

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From: cesi...@googlegroups.com <cesi...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Clare Wallace <clarea...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday 31 August 2018 22:35
To: cesi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [CESI List] Re: moodle - is it dead in secondary schools

 

[Edward Kelly]

I can really empathise with Danny and Clare 😊

Thanks

E

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From: cesi...@googlegroups.com <cesi...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Edward Kelly <educati...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Saturday 1 September 2018 16:40

[Laurence Cuffe]

In general:

Moodle seems to be alive and well, albeit at a low level of sophistication.  My daughters school, had Moodle, but it seemed to be used purely as a distributed photocopier. Teachers would put up pdf’s of material, and ask the students to print it out at home.

The HSA, run all their training courses on a Moodle, they test your browser, and refuse to proceed if you don’t enable flash and popups.

My Mac isn’t happy with that.

The university of Limerick seem to run on a Moodle platform, and with the KWETB we seem to also have a Moodle platform available for teachers. I found it awkward to use as the equation editor was not enabled, which left me doing screen captures from word, and dropping them into lessons as images. It was too painful to proceed.

As an LMS it is very much showing its age. Its prime advantage is that if you host it, you have have a very high level of control as to where the data is stored, and who has access to it. In edition, in a well managed instance you can deploy third party add ins such as Turnitin, or Mathtype.

Apps/Websites like Socrative or Edmodo, can provide mush of the same functionality, but may have data protection issues with respect to exporting data out of the EU.

Best

Dr. Laurence Cuffe

[Claire Mc Hugh]

we;re using Schoolwise with vsware integrated and 365 login . 

C

[Ronan Herron]

I asked on Quora about Moodle's ugliness, (un)usability and arrgance in 2013 and got many replies including from Martin Dougiamas - https://www.quora.com/Why-after-all-these-years-is-Moodle-still-so-ugly

It msakes for an interesting if long thread.

Suffce to say the points you've all made above are what it boils down to.

Rgds

Ronan

Ronan Herron about.me/ronanherron

[Keith Shirley]

We started off with a local install of Moodle many years ago which I maintained. That's a bit too much to worry about when it's time to do updates etc.

For anyone running PLC courses in the ETB sector - SOLAS eCollege provide hosting services. We moved to this hosted environment last year and for us it has been great. The site comes with access to Learnkey and Skillsoft videos, virtual IT Labs, an eBook library (mostly IT and business stuff), Adobe connect and the Urkund plagiarism system. I have not checked the equation editor however but so far we have not yet needed anything extra installed.

We also use Moodle as the "distributed photocopier" but we also have a number of teachers that collect all their assignments electronically via Moodle, run quizes and do group discussions. Until May 2017 we were a mixed mainstream (200+ students) and PLC (750+ students) environment. There were very few people in the mainstream only environment that used Moodle. We have since split the campus and the mainstream teachers are using Office 365 and it seems to suit them better. The extra features we got after moving to the SOLAS hosted site increased it's popularity in the PLC area and now almost every teacher uses it in some form for their classes. 

If you want to know more about what the SOLAS Technology Enhanced Learning team can provide then I suggest sending them an e-mail - telsu...@solas.ie

Keith

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Keith Shirley

Carlow IFET

www.carlowifet.ie

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Sent: 02 September 2018 11:03

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[Mark Glynn]

Like all systems, trying to get institution wide adoption is always a challenge. The challenge is multiplied at second level in so far as the vast majority of schools do not have IT support for VLE's ( or other incredibly valuable services). This is why in my opinion systems "where other people look after it for you" tend to flourish but unfortunately with a few exceptions they all come at a cost. Institution wide - Google Classroom is very good if you have Google Suite for Education, but even that needs a level of technical expertise within the school to get it up and running. With regards to Moodle they recognised this and a few years ago launched Moodle for schools through what they call Moodle Cloud. This allows individual teachers who want to introduce a VLE have access to one "where other people look after it". It is fully managed and secure and is definitely worth having a look at until you manage to convince the powers that be of the value of an institution wide VLE (Moodle , Google classroom, Canvas or otherwise). 

Like or it or technology is here to stay and while there are numerous technologies available to teachers, VLE's are incredibly valuable for teachers because as well as having the potential to improve the learning experience they can dramatically reduce the administration workload of teachers. Let's face it most did not get into teaching for the administration side of the job :)

Kind regards

Mark

On Friday, 31 August 2018 07:58:06 UTC+1, Edward Kelly wrote: