Lounge

I have been long-time reader of of Christopher Dawson's blog on ZDNet Education, and until now had never read about Moodle there. Today, I was surprised when he highlighted the new features of the Moodle Joule Platform announced by Moodlerooms at the EDUCAUSE convention. Moodlerooms is a Moodle Partner in North America and provides supported hosting for schools for fee.

What I liked about the new "Joule" platform is that it integrates so much of the good third party plugins and options that do not come with standard Moodle. For example:

• e-portfolios
• rubric-builder
• repository of learning objects
• institutional reports
• student information databank
• outcome-based student evaluations
• plaguerism checker
• web conferencing
• much more

Dawson was so impressed that he commented, "..joule, at least at first blush, looks to be one of those tools for which educators might actually be willing to pay." So how much does it cost? That is not clear, because fees are not listed on the Moodlerooms site. Note that many of the features above are commercial plugins, so presumably there is a menu list of options to choose from. Also it is not clear if a non-USA customer can order a "joule".

I am also curious to know how this affects the direction of Moodle and the emerging economics of the Moodle ecosystem. Presently, my university uses Moodle and spends funds on its hardware, building custom modules (Sharing Cart, for example), ordering content for TOEIC tests, and installing a video-recording tool (Webswami). We also contribute to the Moodle Community by donating our plugins for free GPL distribution. So the economics are mix of open/free and commercial/paid. Now I am wondering how "Joule" relates to the open source Moodle standard release. Is it a simply how to get Moodle 2.0 now within a 1.9 core? My other questions concerning 'Joule" are:

• How much does cost? Is it available internationally?
• Which parts could I build myself from contributed downloads?
• Do Joule customers contribute their own custom modules to Joule?
• Which parts will Moodle 2.0 cover?
• Which parts will Moodle standard never cover?
• Will we see evolving a Moodle Bronze, Silver and Gold package? Some free, some paid?

Any thoughts? Actually, the main question is what directions are we going as a community? And what directions do you hope we are going?