I am the technology coordinator for a small, very rural school in Northcentral PA. My superintendent has asked me to look into hosting our website locally. He wants it to be intuitive and interactive. My first thought was that I could do this with Moodle. My questions are:
1. Has anyone used it this way?
2. What problems did you run into?
3. Is there a better program to do this?
Thanks in advance
You could - and I have seen people who have used it - but Moodle is more course oriented. I would suggest Drupal - open source and free (to a point, you have to buy a server and such) they are more content oriented and they have an education module that has a lot of educational friendly options. We are looking into using Drupal as our content server/website and using Moodle as our Course management system.
Drupal and Moodle are similar but do have different function. I would compare them as apple and oranges (both are fruits and taste good, but yet are different) I believe Purdue University is using Drupal as their webpage backbone.
Good luck!
Yes you can use Moodle very effectively as an interactive website. I host and manage several of these type sites; here are just a few:
http://www.kywritingproject.org/online/
http://www.royalspringmiddle.net/web/
http://www.ekuwritingproject.org/online/
http://www.modellabschool.com/online/
A little customization and thought in the way you configure the settings is all that is needed. There may be better programs, but if you already know Moodle then you need to weigh and decide whether it's worth it to spend the time learning another CMS...it has been my experience that most good CMS's like Mambo, Joomla, Drupal, etc., are pretty difficult to learn even for tech savvy people.
Steve
Just to second Steve's excellent point here, Drupal/Postnuke/enter CMS here, these systems are at least as complex as Moodle, and will require an equal investment of faculty/staff time to learn as Moodle does. I've used Postnuke, Xaraya, Drupal, Xoops, and Mambo on different projects, and they all have steep learning curves to get to the point where you can use them effectively.
If you have time/staff limits and already know Moodle, or if learning/providing an LMS is a higher priority than one of these 'CMS' systems-e.g. you just have the time to invest in getting good with one system, then sticking with Moodle for your website makes sense. Some folks have created one 'course' per user to give each user their own home page, for example.
If you have time/staff limits and already know Moodle, or if learning/providing an LMS is a higher priority than one of these 'CMS' systems-e.g. you just have the time to invest in getting good with one system, then sticking with Moodle for your website makes sense. Some folks have created one 'course' per user to give each user their own home page, for example.
To everyone that has responded:
Much thanks! Especially for the example websites. They really let me show my superintendent the power of Moodle.
My only concern now is this: How user friendly is it once the courses are set up? Will my teachers have a hard time setting up websites? Is the interface intuitive? I'm a CAPE partner and they have a Moodle server, so I have asked them to contact me. I'm hoping that I they can set me up with an account so I can get a feel for the teacher side of this. As far as the administration side, I've had steep learning curves before. I'll get over it. But I really need to find something that once it's set up the users can work with it easily.
Much thanks! Especially for the example websites. They really let me show my superintendent the power of Moodle.
My only concern now is this: How user friendly is it once the courses are set up? Will my teachers have a hard time setting up websites? Is the interface intuitive? I'm a CAPE partner and they have a Moodle server, so I have asked them to contact me. I'm hoping that I they can set me up with an account so I can get a feel for the teacher side of this. As far as the administration side, I've had steep learning curves before. I'll get over it. But I really need to find something that once it's set up the users can work with it easily.
This is only my opinion based on my own experience...it was very easy through version 1.6. After the introduction of roles in 1.7, things got a lot more complicated.
All my sites are on 1.6 and I do not look forward to upgrading any of them higher. Even if the bugs get worked out, the simplicity of the interface and general "workings of Moodle" has been lost. The best thing that could happen to Moodle right now, again in my opinion, is to have an option in the admin panel that allows you to completely disable roles (like you can the blog system) and revert to 1.6-type behavior.
So, again in my opinion, it really doesn't matter whether you use it as a LMS or CMS (or both), it's pretty easy and initiative with 1.6 and earlier.
Steve
Steve > The best thing that could happen to Moodle right now, again in my opinion, is to have an option in the admin panel that allows you to completely disable roles (like you can the blog system) and revert to 1.6-type behavior.
I second that. This would be the only reasonable way to go for moodlers who want to keep abreast of new developments in Moodle and do not need the unnecessary hassle that the roles have introduced. Unfortunately, I do not think it will be possible.
Joseph
There could be a middle ground: making those legacy roles to be non-removable, and their names could be changed via the lang packs only. The settings for them could be fine tuned, but it would make some UI decisions ("[ ] Students can post") easier, which are now difficult because the role could be there, or not.
Roles have been one of the most highly requested features for years now, as Don pointed out here:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72411#p330139
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72411#p330139
A couple of years ago we took the decision to use Moodle as the basis of our staff intranet. I thought it worked well, in fact I thought it was the best of all our Moodles (the others are used in their traditional role as a VLE). Unfortunately some of the staff didn't like it, and very unfortunately the ones that didn't like it were key people like the Assistant Principal, so the staff intranet is now being redeveloped using Microsoft SharePoint (oh God... If they thought Moodle was hard to use wait till they try SharePoint!). Moodle isn't designed as a CMS, so be prepared for some negative comments from users when you try to use it in a way it wasn't designed for.
Incidentally, I tried Drupal and some of the other free PHP-based CMS's, and wasn't too keen. It made me realise that one of the great things about Moodle is that when you want to add or edit anything you just turn editing on and then you're looking at the actual page you want to change but with a load of buttons added to it which you can use to do things. With the others, when you want to edit anything you have to go into a separate edit section, which bears no resemblance to the actual page you want to change, and work out what it is you want to do from there. The Moodle way of doing it is so much easier and more intuitive - congratulations to whoever (Martin?) decided to do it that way!
Chris