(Webmaster - please excuse me if I am violating some terms of this website with this post.) There is a website named Lynda.com that offers an extensive selection of IT training. It has some Moodle courses as well. Has anyone taken this? and if so, what did you think of them? What is the best use for them - from bonehead on up, or as supplement to other training? Please feel free to PM me if it is not appropriate to respond on this site. I am considering this site's service for many other apps, not only Moodle.
Its not violation of anything, as you are asking question, not offering services.
and as for Lynda's course on Moodle, that as far as I know, was developed by Mary Cooch from Moodle head quarters, as you'll see her many replies around this forum.
you can ask her as well, she may have some affiliate link that may give you discount as well.
Hi both. Just to clarify
Lynda.com is nothing to do with Moodle (in fact, they are trademark violators) I didn't develop their Moodle course, although before I joined Moodle HQ a couple of years ago I was asked to update their training to 2.5. I believe others have updated it since, but obviously I am no longer involved with them as I work for HQ (and they are trademark violators.) There's nothing wrong with the quality of their courses if you want to pay. However, why pay when you can get official Moodle HQ free training on Learn Moodle (next course starts in August) or paid for online courses with Moodle partners (see https://moodle.com/partners/?service=training ) If you are going to pay, then the advantage of purchasing Moodle partner training is that a percentage of what you pay goes back into the development and improvement of Moodle (unlike Lynda.com.) By all means use Lynda's other IT courses.
On that link you'll find several partners offer online training - one example (and, like in the TV ads, "other partners are avaliable") is the NZ partner HRDNZ who offer http://www.moodlebites.com/ and the official Moodle Course Creator Certificate.
Mary also writes some good books about Moodle (see https://www.packtpub.com/books/info/authors/mary-cooch) (don't you Mary?).
Some of these are based upon older versions of Moodle, but they can still be valuable resources.
Packt Publishing produces books by other authors, too.
In addition to books and videos, these forums on moodle.org provide a great place for you to ask questions about things in moodle that confuse you. Moodle is a product that must be learned. The moodle documentation is excellent. I suggest that you always do your best to study and try things with Moodle, and when you get stuck, to then post questions. Commonly, if it appears that one has not read the documentation, someone will redirect you to it. But it is always fine to ask any questions.
I was going to reccomend moodlebytes as they concentrate on Moodle. I have used Lynda resources in the past and they were fine, but they are a big operation that does all manner of things rather than a specialist. They rcently got bought by Linkedin for $US1.5 billion.