Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

Dwight Souder -
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Dear educators,

I'm in a bit of a panic mode.  I was recently informed that our county school network provider was no longer going to be supporting Moodle on their servers after this school year.  My school district cannot/will not support Moodle on their server.  So after this school year, much of my hard work is going to be gone.  Since I'm the only person at my high school who is using it, my district could not justify of maintaining the access to Moodle.  I teach Chemistry and Physics and love the Quiz features of Moodle and its ability to create individualized problem sets for each of my students (especially for the various calculations).  I've created quite a large library of problem sets of homework and tests, using Moodle's Quiz.  

I admit that I'm naive of how Moodle is supported, but I'm in desperate need of help.  Server and cloud based options are no longer an option and it needs to be free of charge.

I have some questions that I'm hoping some people could assist me.  First, is there an alternative to Moodle that has the same or very similar features to Moodle (especially the capability of creating individualized calculation problems)?  Perhaps even have the ability of transferring the data (homework and test questions) from Moodle's Quiz?  Sadly, some other educators suggested using Google Forms-Quiz, but that is seriously lacking the capabilities and diversity of questions that Moodle has been able to provide.

Finally, is there a way for my students and I to still get access and use Moodle's Quiz, but without having the server/cloud and be free of charge?  Perhaps something that is purely web-based?

Any Moodle alternatives and/or free web-based access to Moodle would be greatly appreciated! 

Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Dwight

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回复Dwight Souder

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

Rick Jerz -
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I'll take a stab at your questions.

1) I don't know of any similar product to Moodle.
2) I don't know of any way to provide access only to Moodle's quiz engine, free of charge.

It appears that your questions imply that you want to find a Moodle platform that is totally free. The only one that I know about is MoodleCloud, but that platform is free for only up to 50 students, and my guess is that you have more than 50 students.

Okay, I do detect your panic, and your probing. As you seem to know, Moodle is "free" but you must have a "server" to host your Moodle, which is not free. Yep, the analogy is that someone gives you a free car, but then you find that you must buy gas for it. Maybe nothing is life is free.

I think that you have to balance the cost of recreating your (excellent) quizzes, and perhaps your instructional system versus the cost of acquiring your own Moodle platform. However, do you sense that your school system would allow you to run your own private Moodle (even if it was free?) Some school systems are opposed to this idea.

In my own case, I run my own Moodle on a VPS that I purchase and manage. I pay for this myself. The cost is around $35-$40 US per month. Yep, seems like a big cost to some, but I am one who believes that I recoup this cost by being more productive and having higher quality courses. This is something for you to explore and assess on your own. (Others here on Moodle.org will provide more ideas.)

It used to be that Moodle could be installed on $5/month "hosted" servers, and still can, but the problem is that many "hosted" servers do not meet Moodle's minimum requirements. This situation is always changing, so don't give up hope, and don't give up your investigation.

Why not use the alternative that your school system is providing, might I ask?
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回复Rick Jerz

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

Dominique Bauer -
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Hello Dwight,

...my hard work...
...I'm the only person...who is using it...

These words unfortunately seem too familiar to me. I sympathize with you and hope that we can help you. Here are some comments and ideas.

Quizzes can be done with Google Forms but but I think like you that they will not be nearly as useful as those that can be done with Moodle. From what you say, if I were you I would try by all means to stay with Moodle.

The more teachers in your school that use Moodle, the more the administration will feel obliged to support its use. So you must not be alone. You should try to convince your colleagues to use Moodle in their courses, but this may not be enough. Since preparing quizzes in Moodle is a lot of work and accumulated knowledge, you should in fact help your colleagues to set up quizzes. At first, you could even do them for your colleagues, until they understand how to do them themselves and especially until they, as well as the administration, realize the positive effects of this teaching approach. Don't think I'm kidding because that's exactly what I'm doing right now in my school.

Rick mentioned Moodle Cloud. Here you will find the price list which includes hosting of Moodle and its use for a limited number of students. How many students would you need a license for? $250 Australian for 100 students, $500 Australian for 200 students, $1000 Australian for 500 students seem to me to be very reasonable prices. I hope that your school can afford such an expense.

The only problem I see with Moodle Cloud is that it doesn't support external plugins. Since I use the Formulas plugin a lot, the Moodle Cloud is of little use to me. (I think the Formulas question type should be core, but that's another debate).

If you are not already using the Formulas question type, I strongly recommend that you do so. You would therefore have to find a supplier other than Moodle Cloud. Although I am not a computer specialist, I was still able to set up by myself a Moodle site on Bitnami. It wasn't easy, but I got there. Value for money, this is probably one of the best choices for hosting Moodle. I believe that others are using HostPapa and that they are also very satisfied. As Rick mentioned, we are talking about $35-$40 US per month.

If these solutions are not suitable for you, you could group with other schools to share the costs. Isn't there a young entrepreneur in Ohio who could offer Moodle hosting and support services for elementary and high schools?

Also check if nearby universities, and why not companies and institutions, use Moodle. Maybe they can help you.

Be patient because you will certainly find a solution, maybe not immediately but it will come. In the meantime, continue to use Moodle.

Please keep us posted on developments.

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回复Dwight Souder

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

Joseph Rézeau -
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@Dwight,
You have all my sympathy. I've been in the same situation a few times in my teaching career. I know what it costs to be a pioneer and on your own. I know how administration does not care for teachers' work. I know that those who make decisions are not the ones who actually use the machines or the software.
Our friends Rick and Dominique provide some interesting solutions which you should examine. In the last resort, if you value the large amount of effort and time you have spent creating your Moodle quizzes, you may decide it's worth paying some money out of your own pocket to set up your own Moodle site.
An important question is: how many students do you have each year?
Bon courage !
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回复Dwight Souder

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

Tim Hunt -
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For up to 50 students, you can get a Moodle cloud site for free. https://moodlecloud.com/

Note that, if you can find a place to host your Moodle quizzes, then you can use those Moodle quizzes in another LMS. Moodle can be an LTI tool provider. Then you can easily link to your Moodle quizzes from another system. See https://docs.moodle.org/en/Publish_as_LTI_tool. (However, I am not sure if this works on Moodle Cloud. Does anyone know?)

Ironically, Chris Sangwin, the creator of the STACK question type for maths teaching in Moodle has to use this method. His institution officially uses BlackBoard. However, he has the support of his IT department, who run the Moodle server for him.
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回复Tim Hunt

STACK question type a rogue project?

Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Tim Hunt wrote:
> Ironically, Chris Sangwin, the creator of the STACK question type for maths teaching in Moodle has to use this method. His institution officially uses BlackBoard. However, he has the support of his IT department, who run the Moodle server for him.

So Chris makes STACK as a rogue project? What a shame!
伤心

I discovered STACK only recently after wasting time on various "half-mathematical" plug-ins. STACK does true formal algebra! Just to think that a senior academic created and maintain it swimming against the management is a crime!
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回复Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: STACK question type a rogue project?

Tim Hunt -
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It's not a rogue project. It is well supported by his university and department. It is just that this one project has not caused the university to change its primary VLE. Fortunately, thanks to LTI, that does not matter much.
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回复Dwight Souder

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

AL Rachels -
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Hi Dwight,
Years ago I found myself in the same situation and fixed it by taking an extra PC I had in my lab, and turning it into a classroom server. When the IT person then refused to let my traffic thru the school firewall so students could access Moodle from home, I moved all my data to a server at my home. Did not have the fastest speed coming out of my house, but the only time that affected Moodle access was when starting a quiz. We learned to just stagger the start, four students at a time, about 30 seconds to one minute apart, which worked just fine. I initially started with Moodle 1.4 on an old 66MHz MS NT PC. Eventually, when I retired, I was using Moodle 2.8 on a 3.8GHz Linux PC with a SSD. It could handle 54 concurrent users. For small classes nowadays, you could probably manage to get along with a Raspberry Pi4 running MoodleBox.

Most important thing for you to do right now is to make sure you have a copy of everything you have created. Thumb drive or USB plugin portable hard drives are cheap and can do the job.
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回复AL Rachels

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

Rick Jerz -
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Al got me thinking.

If all the students took their quizzes in the same location, like a lab, you might be able to set up a Moodlebox.
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回复Rick Jerz

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

AL Rachels -
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I bought myself a Raspberry Pi4 for Christmas, just to try out Moodlebox. However, been so busy adding new stuff to MooTyper, I have not "plugged" it in yet. Right now I am arm deep into adding a dictation exercise capability but will try to force myself to make some time for it this afternoon.
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回复AL Rachels

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

Marcus Green -
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MoodleBox is v cool. I have been meaning to update to the latest version for weeks now....
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回复AL Rachels

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

Rick Jerz -
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At GlobalMoot 2019, I gave on how to install a sandbox Moodle on a personal PC or Mac ( .)

My goal is to make a similar video showing how I install Moodle into Moodlebox. Nicolas does a great job on his website to get Moodle up and running quickly. I want to extend this a little to show how to make php modifications, do a backup, upgrade the Moodle, install plugins, migrate Moodles into Moodlebox, and other common tasks. This is on my list of things to do, but I too have been too busy.

My guess, Al, is that it might take you less than an hour or so. If you have been working with the Pi, maybe 15 minutes.
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回复Rick Jerz

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

AL Rachels -
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Hi Rick,

Yes, I have a little experience with Pi's as I have 16, and the new Pi 4 makes 17.

I usually like to work in terminal mode, but unfortunately, I have tried the latest Moodlebox image on a Pi 3 and the new Pi 4. Both boot up fine, but I cannot get direct access to either one. Both stop in terminal mode at the moodlebox login prompt and all three keyboards I have tried to use so far, have got me nowhere. Will try a different attack plan tomorrow.

I have managed to use WinSCP to ssh in to the Pi 4. In Firefox, I can't seem to get a response using moodlebox.home, but have gotten into Moodle by changing from moodlebox.home to using the IP address supplied by my router.

I will start building up the Moodle tomorrow. Burnt out today from trying to get my poor brain wrapped around what I need to do to get an audio dictation mode set up in MooTyper.

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回复AL Rachels

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

Marcus Green -
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'Yes, I have a little experience with Pi's as I have 16, and the new Pi 4 makes 17.'
Ummm, that is excessive. But quite exciting.
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回复Marcus Green

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

AL Rachels -
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Probably is excessive, but when you want to experiment with clusters, it is nice to have hardware to play with. Plus, having them makes it possible for me to have my own "render farm" to play with when using Blender. Sadly, since I took over MooTyper and Hot Question, I haven't had the time for doing 3D stuff.
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回复AL Rachels

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

Rick Jerz -
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Yes, Al. I know what you mean. But there is a way to work in terminal mode with Moodle Pi. I have done it. I have some notes. I just need to go back and review, and then make a video so that I don't forget. I can also FTP into moodlebox.
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回复AL Rachels

Command line access to MoodleBox

Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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AL, you are welcome to ask in the MoodleBox Community.

MoodleBox is thought to be a (headless) server. So the command line access is from a (network) terminal through SSH. See https://moodlebox.net/en/help/command-line-connection/. But if there is a console connected to it, of course you should be able to login on the console. The credentials are documented on the page above.

@all, MoodleBox is a nifty gadget, I use one regularly.
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回复Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Command line access to MoodleBox

AL Rachels -
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I am pretty sure it was because all three keyboards I tried, were wireless Bluetooth keyboards. When I get a chance, I will try again with a wired keyboard, but right now, I'm too excited about trying to get dictation capability added to MooTyper, and that is taking up all my time.
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回复AL Rachels

Re: Command line access to MoodleBox

Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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I too have a bluetooth keyboard, Logitech K400 Plus. Never had problems. May be the keyboard interface is generally sensitive in RPi, can't say much since is it for "emergencies" (boot failures) only. That said, my new RPi 4B might get the keyboard permanently connected, as a desktop - but with full Raspbian, not MoodleBox which is Raspbian Lite.
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回复AL Rachels

Re: Command line access to MoodleBox

AL Rachels -
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Followup: It was the keyboards...two had dead batteries and the other I was using the wrong Bluetooth plug. With the correct USB Bluetooth plug, I can log in directly to the Moodlebox terminal.
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回复Dwight Souder

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Hi Dwight

If you teach science subjects in high school and created a "library of problem sets" they are definitely of a high academic level. Forget Google, Microsoft and the gang. No other "free" or web-based quiz system come close to the one built in to Moodle. You need to keep on with Moodle.

The only free Moodle as a full service is the MoodleCloud free plan, to my knowledge. They charge according to the number of users, not their usage. So if you have a large student base but use Moodle only a little, it gets expensive. How many students do you have? Even if the number is below 50 I would go for the Starter package. You don't risk them disconnecting the site due to inactivity. Are 55 USD (80 AUD) p.a. too much? I guess, you need to drink one coffee less per week.
眨眼

That said, I remember a Moodle Partner in Australia or New Zealand once offered Moodle free. Can somebody update on that?

I regularly read about USD 5 /mon shared hosting which also provide Moodle. Generally not recommended since you are stuck with what their (modified) Moodle and silly GUI tool. Pricewise you are still in the same range, 60 USD p.a.

If do it yourself type the MoodleBox is a cheap (USD 40) and energy saving device, if the students work only in the classroom and they have some sort of a computer or a mobile device (tablet). To access Moodle from home, your IT staff must help you. Which is not the case I understand.

Your current Moodle will be in operation till the Summer break? Then no reason to panic, there is time to find an alternative. (We had a case, where one teacher had 3 days time, two of them were the weekend - during the Christmas season.) You can start asking the IT team for a Moodle https://docs.moodle.org/en/Site_backup and test the https://docs.moodle.org/en/Site_restore process.
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回复Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Alternatives to Moodle - My district is doing away with Moodle

Marcus Green -
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Despite its low power you can get about 20 students doing a quiz on a Moodle box.
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回复Marcus Green

Capacity of MoodleBox

Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Hi Marcus

MoodleBox is meant for RPi 3A, 3B, 3B+ or 4B. So one can not give a single figure. Here's a comparison I did with Moodle Bench: Benchmarking MoodleBox on different Raspberry Pi models.

Could you get those 20 students connected to the Wi-Fi of MoodleBox? The wireless transmitter seems to hit a physical limit, starting at 10 devices. Read Very low amount of WiFi clients can connect.
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