Moodle community sites

The State of Hawaii shows that you were recently associated with the school I mentioned and the school runs extensive Moodles..... In a place as small as Maui I merely noted that I thought someone there would be helpful..... and since you are associated with a Moodle (and had provided no detail about the Moodle you were inquiring about) I looked at the MK site, and mentioned the open enrollment issue (since it has been a scourge and you SHOULD be concerned.)

Reflecting back at the balance of my post it seems rather sympathetic to the new user (I in fact start off by indicating you have every right to complain about some issues.) I was a bit confused when you suggested you had complaints about installation support though I found no evidence of prior posts regarding installation. You indicate that you did post, but Moodle.org shows nothing from you in the installation or general problem forums regarding other than gradebook issues, hence my conclusion. There are quite a few folks whom I think might well be eligible for sainthood in this community who answer the same questions day after day gettings folks off the ground with Moodle, unpaid volunteers mind you....

It seems you take the greatest umbrage at my suggestion that Moodle installation is not for the average teacher. As I mentioned, if one spends time researching web hosts and has the necessary tools at hand, there are quite a few web hosts on which Moodle can be completely set up in just a few minutes for a few dollars a month. A huge amount of bandwidth is expended trying to support installations where someone has no access to mail, no shell access, or even no ftp access..... I am hopeful that the docs will soon expanded to try and steer folks clear of the myriad pitfalls that Moodle installation can present, but I still hold that without sysadmin skills Moodle installs can not only be troublesome and frustrating, they can become an embarrasment and a violation of student rights.

Additionally, one of the issues I have been concerned with is the situation where "rogue" teachers create school or district Moodles without or in spite of their IT Dept. While I celebrate that drive and creativity this creates friction, suspicion and potential future nightmares (and I do have some experience with this on both sides of the equation, as a sysadmin and as a rogue.....) I dont think it is inappropriate to argue that persons doing Moodle installs for the purposes of serving institutional needs should collaborate with the institutions IT department.... so I am glad ot hear that you did collaborate, though I would have to argue that if the IT dept. couldn't or wouldn''t address the nominal fees to place Moodle on a web host, then that makes a dramatic statement about the schools priorities.