moodle global chinese students.

moodle global chinese students.

by john Simpson -
Number of replies: 17

First of all, please excuse my current internet technology ignorance.

I have a moodle sight, and I am at last trying to sell efl, esol courses globally from Russia. I have two web hosts, one British and the other American.

I recently received an enquiry from a Chinese person requesting an English course for her son to pass Cambridge FCE. She had an MSN .CN email address which is in fact MSN China.

My concerns are that. Is there not an internet wall with China and the outside internet world? Would I be able to offer courses to Chinese interested in taking courses through Moodle. My researc shows that even if I could offer this service, that moodle would be too slow for Chinese residents, and I would need to have moodle in a Chinese based server. Am I right?

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In reply to john Simpson

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by Justin Hunt -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

I don't really see any problem in what you are doing. The speed depends on their internet connection and your server. I would wait for feedback before doing anything hasty. In all likelihood it will be fine. 

As you probably know, YouTube is blocked in China, so that would cause a problem if you had video content hosted there.

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In reply to Justin Hunt

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by john Simpson -

Perhaps I'm reading too much in the news that Chinese people have restricted access to the world wide web. Also that it is difficult to market and sell to Chinese people outside China. In reality some Chinese do appear to communicate to the world wide web.

China is a big market, so there must be a lot experienced small business men interested in China, and I would like t hear from them.

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In reply to Justin Hunt

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by William Lu -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

I had my holiday in China last month.

..'YouTube is blocked in China', No one can access Google, nor Gmail !!! (Nor Facebook)

To access Moodle.org or anything outside China is rather slow.

Young people can use some apps to 'Over the wall', but slowness is the big problem.

 

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In reply to William Lu

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by john Simpson -

There must be some way to market China from outside. China has benefited well from the outside world over the past 14 years, and China should understand it should be give as well as take.

this alibaba Chinese company might be a key way to go http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/alibaba-cn.html

Most certainly using local chinese agents or partners is a possibility. possibly sharing a server? A chinese web host, if allowed?

Sorry, brainstorming at the moment. Any suggestions

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In reply to john Simpson

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by William Lu -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers 
A chinese web host, if allowed?

Yes, it is allowed.

Finding a host service inside China is the better way to achieve your goal.

Access a Chinese website from anywhere in the world never be a problem (and pretty fast smile ).


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In reply to john Simpson

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by ryan sanders -

never realized china was that closed up.... i knew there was some countries that were firewall off to an extent. but. googling it some... wow...

internet is all through government, i think i read, teaching or getting like license is done through government as well (tutoring included).  (no third party doings possible), it is all through the government to get approval or get access or like. 

=====================

no idea what "slow" means.... 

you might get a old dialup phone account... and test through it... if possible setting modem to 28.8K  vs 56K.  keep it all text, and limit amount of images. to very few, or place images (size 640x480 or smaller) inside of activities / resources that limit amount of how many are displayed at one time. 

keep file sizes under 5megs, (pdf files, audio, text files, etc....) smaller the better within reason.

larger files, would need direct access so a "download manager" could be used.  that can pause resume...and deal with ugly broken up slow speeds and disconnects.   not even sure if moodle allows "hot linking" to files? so a download manager can be used?  most likely needing to set the files in say... www.yoursite.com/extfiles/    vs uploading files through moodle itself.


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In reply to ryan sanders

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by William Lu -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Slow means:

  • When I access this site (moodle.org) in Auckland, take no time.
  • When I access this site (moodle.org) in ShenZhen (one of the most open/modern city in China, with a broadband connection which my brother has in his house), it took several seconds (I was using an iPad and Android phone) to several minutes to load every time (When I was using an iMac with cable connection). Nowadays, no any dialup service in China any more. There are broadband and Wifi everywhere.
  • Using same gears in the same location to access any Chinese site took no time.
  • Using same gears in the same location to access my favourite sites of New Zealand took several seconds (took no time when I am in Auckland).
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In reply to William Lu

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by john Simpson -

I can't be the only one interested in Moodle easily being international, especially if you're selling English as a second language.

When I meant slow, I meant potential students in China using a moodle site based outside China, that would become so slow in using that it would be unworkable. There is also the issue that the Chinese find .com for example untrustworthy, and would prefer their local .cn Outsides getting a .cn is not an easy process.

This is the best link for advice I have found so far, and I'm seriously thinking it over.

http://www.mychinahosting.com/



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In reply to john Simpson

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by William Lu -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Thanks to John, that site (http://www.mychinahosting.com/) answered every question, fantastic.

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In reply to William Lu

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by Justin Hunt -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

This is all very interesting!

So is there an equivalent of YouTube in China that would allow us to host videos for people there?

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In reply to Justin Hunt

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by john Simpson -

There is youku. Number 10 on youtube alternatives, and youku being the youtube alternative for China. Funny though, being in Russia, I'm banned from using youku.

http://similarsam.hubpages.com/hub/sites-like-youtube-2

Also on another note, looking at the moodle partner list, there are no moodle partners listed under china.

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In reply to William Lu

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by ben reynolds -

We  offer web-based courses from servers in the U.S., and have not had many complaints recently about slow servers. When we began (early 2000s), students often timed out, mostly in cities not Shanghai or Beijing. Hong Kong has never been an issue.

It's my impression that the Great Firewall of China is not imposed upon all equally.

My institution has a branch in Nanjing, so that may be one reason our timeouts have ceased.

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In reply to ben reynolds

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by john Simpson -

Ben, how do you deal with being searched for by the Chinese people and organisations now that google is banned? I heard Baidu is their main search engine, and how difficult is it to register with them.

http://chineseseoshifu.com/blog/top-5-chinese-search-engines.html

It appears there is contradiction in speeds of internet from servers outside China, as one blog claims that Hostgater and Bluehost do very well in china.


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In reply to john Simpson

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by ben reynolds -

Search isn't really an issue for us in China. We accept students who score very well (top 5%) on above-grade-level standardized tests (in English). The students come to us. And the number of qualifying students in China is so huge that we're more in danger of having to turn people away than not having enough.

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In reply to john Simpson

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by Jez H -

The problem is really something your potential customer needs to worry about rather than yourself.

There are indeed issues with people accessing from China, we have had many problems with Chinese students accessing our UK based Moodle site in the past.

There really wasn't anything we could do about that, our Moodle site was fast from the USA, Europe etc, the issue was in China itself.

I think the best thing you can do is let this person access your site, or access some test courses on the site and see if they are happy with it before proceeding.

I would add that Chinese students COULD access our site, but it was often slow and painful for them to do so.

I am not sure if things have improved now, probably not...

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In reply to Jez H

Re: moodle global chinese students.

by john Simpson -

That's what I was planning to do, in giving the student a free 7 day trial to allow them to assess if the courses and of  the workability in speed of moodle from wherever they are from. Also feedback from their experiences would be appreciated.

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