Hello all,
I currently work for a UK Official Moodle Partner and I have a presentation tomorrow to a group of Primary School Headteachers and I am hoping to prove the virtues of moodle over a commercially backed Virtual Learning Environment as well as using this thread to highlight the support available through the moodle forums.
Does anyone have anything they would like to highlight to them or me!?
You only have to say two things and show two things:
- Say: Millions of students and teachers are using Moodle worldwide, look at these statistics from Moodle.org
- Say: I can install Moodle for you and take care of all the problems for a yearly price of ... against the conditions, written down in this SLA. And then handover your SLA-proposal: They will realise that they will have a contractor to blame when their endeavour fails. (of course it will not when they choose Moodle, but they will feel secure.)
- Do NOT show how rich of functions Moodle is, because your competitor wil say to the hedmasters: That is to difficult for your not so techy teachers...
- then try to sell the two pearls of Moodle:
- the complete transparant (headmaster management?) overview of a course on one page: the section overview of each course.
DO NOT - inspired by their applause - show all the extra options on that page (see point 3) - End your show with showing how easy it is to integrate multimedia in Moodle by using the WYSIWYG editor. Especially the module Book will impress headmasters, because they start with the idea that you first must put books in the VLE: show them that this can be living books for children...
- the complete transparant (headmaster management?) overview of a course on one page: the section overview of each course.
P.S. Try to show them the new 1.9 with the rounded corners theme of Urs. It looks fresh and modern: we use it next month in a project where we show Moodle in a try-out week to 42 primary schools in our regio
(Only in Dutch: http://test.studiewijzerplus.nl )
As Ger implies, keep to a few points and don't make it too technical. Practice your presentation on someone who is not technical to ensure that it keeps relevant and focus on benefits rather than features. Headteachers will probably be looking for comfort, the feeling that they are making a safe choice that many others have made before them.
Keir - Best of luck with your presentation! I think it is a great idea to use the Moodle.org forum as an example of the type of support that the community offers. I have continually been impressed with the generosity and knowledge of the community. Because Moodle is used in so many different context and in so many places around the world, it is rare to have questions that others have not already faced. Having access to a solid group of dedicated educators with years of experience using Moodle in their classrooms is for me one of the biggest strengths of Moodle. Peace - Anthony
Also from usability and pedagogical perspective, you might find this article useful:
http://www.humboldt.edu/~jdv1/moodle/all.htm
hope this helps.