General Help for Moodle Newbie

General Help for Moodle Newbie

by Lauren Ziegler -
Number of replies: 6

Hi Everyone, 

I'm interested in building a personal Moodle (2.7.1) for myself for testing purposes on a hosted server. My end goal is a production site is for to handle company training and be a reference and resource center for End Users and general product knowledge. Are there any other resources you guys can recommend out there or classes?

I'm thinking about taking either Remote-Learner or something from MoodleBites.  I've been reading the Moodle Documentation, messing around with Gnomio, and reading books like Alex Buchner's "Moodle 2 Administration" which have proved very helpful. I have no real background in LAMP, so some of the more technical elements are beyond my understanding and would appreciate any suggestions you may have. 

Also, are there any recommended web hosted servers for Moodle? Amazon maybe?

Thank you! 

Lauren

(Apologies if this isn't the right forum!)


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In reply to Lauren Ziegler

Re: General Help for Moodle Newbie

by Jhon Carlos -

Hi,

i'm also a newbie... do you know some free subdomain providers to host moodle ?

Thankz...

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In reply to Lauren Ziegler

Re: General Help for Moodle Newbie

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

It would be helpful if you described your computer skills, and how much of the work you want to do yourself versus having somebody else do the administration.

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: General Help for Moodle Newbie

by Lauren Ziegler -

Hi Rick, 

I'm not in the IT Department if that's what you're asking, but I do help customers with IT related tickets from time to time. I've done and still working on Code Academy, and can do updates to website HTML and CSS. Further, I have 2 people in my company who are dedicated SysAdmin, and a developer team that can help occasionally. I won't lie they are very busy as we are small company.

My current position is more a Course Creator, and the Moodle Admin in charge of configuring the site, upkeep, and adding all necessary materials as long as it is not too technical. I'm teaching myself about Moodle Administration for both personal interest and to assist at work.

My question is two fold: I'm asking for resource recommendations in teaching myself and courses online. And ways to implement a Moodle Test site for teaching and testing purposes before we create the production site.

Thank you!

-Lauren

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In reply to Lauren Ziegler

Re: General Help for Moodle Newbie

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

Packt Publishing has a lot of books about Moodle.  I like Mary Cooch's book(s), and Mary is very active here on moodle.org so you can ask questions when you have them.

Also, the moodle docs are really quite good, but I forget if they provide a step by step.  I know that whenever you have questions about a moodle tool or feature, you can refer to the docs.

You should probably get moodle up and running somewhere, so that you can practice.  At the bottom of almost every moodle webpage, there is a link for "docs about this page."  There are also many "?" marks to click on in Moodle, which are very convenient way to learn.

I forgot to ask, how many students and courses do you anticipate having each year?

I am just a professor who wanted a better LMS, so I just enjoy using and learning Moodle and helping out when I can.  I use my own Moodle for about 15 courses each year, around 300 students.  So I consider this a small moodle site.

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In reply to Lauren Ziegler

Re: General Help for Moodle Newbie

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

Lauren, your skill set should be fine.  I do find myself doing some CSS modifications to themes.  I never touch any of the PHP code.  Since I manage my own VPS, I have had to learn some (but not a lot) server administration things.  I don't do server setups, instead, I buy my VPS from Godaddy so a lot of the server is already ready to go.

I would say that for moodle, one needs to be a good self-learner, willing to be patient, and willing to dig into (sometimes) technical issues.  I find this stuff to be fun, and personally rewarding, so I don't mind doing it.

One more point.  One can really modify moodle to do all sorts of things.  I prefer to use moodle, as designed, making adjustments to internal settings and themes.  I see a lot of folks here on moodle.org trying to get moodle to do things that are (well, to me) something special.  Moodle is a great LMS, much better than pay-for products like Blackboard (which my school uses) and Desire2Learn (which my other school uses).

Here is a link to a series of videos that I provide to my students about my Moodle.  My current look and feel of moodle had gone through some changes, but is still pretty much what you see in these videos.

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