Lounge

Yes, For example the math facilitators have their own site where they share information, lesson plans, resources. Middle school literacy specialists rolled out a new curriculum for teachers last year. German teachers collaborate. They actually were enjoying communicating in German when the person in charge of humanities and world languages for the district asked them to convert back to English since she could not read German. One administrator used Moodle for the teachers to read a book on teaching and have online discussions.

Teachers file share, use the forums, wiki and in the case of one high school use the quiz module. Our Wellness coordinator uses the wikis for employees to sign up for classes and massages.

The other tool we use for teacher collaboration is Google Apps. We have the education version. I believe there is a way to integrate that into Moodle but I haven't had the courage to try that yet since we authenticate to our Active Directory accounts. If you are not familiar with Google Apps it is a great way for students and teachers to collaborate and teacehrs especially like that if they are on at night and one of their colleagues is there the built in chat allows them to text back and forth as they work on a file at the same time.

LauriBeth

This is a multifaceted question.
If you have teachers in the same institution, there is no problem just setting up a private course. Across insitutions: this is another matter.

If you want to look at a good community based on Moodle, I'd suggest http://scope.bccampus.ca/

What functionality do you need for this sort of professional community? I'd suggest

1. interactions and discussions
2. file sharing (with detail, maybe votoing/comments) Finding the good stuff is always a problem. The remembering where it is.
   
3. a collaborative work area. Moodle wiki? I havre mixed feelings.
   
4. Then you need to know who is there (profiles). (I like the idea of "I'm interested in Z, Y and X, feel free to chat if you like")

Forums as standard are powerful, but still just a little primative. No drafts, only one attatchment, search is a bit clumsy. But there are many many communities that live with these very well.

There are a few challenges to this type of sharing which in my opinion have to do with a couple of missing functionalites in Moodle. One is the lack of a good file sharing functionalty. [This is one reason why people like Google Apps] You can of course add a file as an attachment to a post. But only one, in the standard Moodle. It is then soon lost. Webcrossing has had this power for over a decade, and I missed it when coming to Moodle.

And once the forum has a few posts, then keeping track of the files there is hard. For example here in Moodle.org, there are hundreds of files, but not way of seeing them in a list. Certainly no way of 'harvesting' the good stuff. There is a difference between a nice thought out item and a quick one off answer to a query.

In the forums, Even something very simple like this would be good:

1. At the post level: Attatchment field, Optional description field at the bottom of a post and then
2. "Display all files attatched in the forum" function
Filename - Date - Poster - Link to forum post