I am Offering Free Course Hosting

I am Offering Free Course Hosting

by Zachary Reed -
Number of replies: 16
I am offering Free Moodle Course Hosting. I need some teachers who are looking for websites to host their courses on. I have unlimited space so all files are accepted to upload to courses. If you are interested in making courses please go to my moodle website, and create an account, then E-mail me at zreed92@gmail.com and i will make you a teacher and a course creator . My moodle URL is http://www.zarvss.justfreespace.com
Also i am looking for free Moodle Themes to install, if anyone could give me some links to free themes that would be great. I am using moodle 1.9 stable. smile I hope i will find some teachers. Also, if you know of any promoting website, enter my URL in it, so more people will find out about it. I want to have as many students and users enrolled on my moodle site.
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In reply to Zachary Reed

Re: I am Offering Free Course Hosting

by Frances Bell -
HI Zachary,
Welcome to Moodle. That is an interesting offer. Would you like to tell us a bit more about the purpose of your venture and what are the copyright arrangements for the content uploaded? It's quite a good idea to include any commercial/academic affiliation in your profile, particularly if you are not known in Moodle.org.
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In reply to Frances Bell

Zachary's Post

by Alexandre Enkerli -
My 2¢, just in case...
While I was a bit surprised upon seeing Zachary's post, I thought his questions and project were appropriate for the Lounge. Like Steve, I'm assuming he doesn't have ulterior motives. But, you know, even if he did have other motives than collaborating with teachers and finding themes, I fail to see why the Lounge can't be a place to discuss Moodle hosts. After all, it's "just" a forum and there are fora out there about just any subject. The risk of free publicity is relatively low given the fact that we can (and do) discuss alternatives. Sure, search results about free hosting for Moodle courses could eventually lead here, but the Lounge is "out of the way" enough that the advertisement value is extremely low.
Reasons I tend to trust Zachary include the fact that he's giving us what seems to be a personal email address (the same he uses for school video projects) and that what he set up seems to be a regular Moodle site. To me, it looked as an enthusiastic Moodler who wanted to try out Moodle hosting and eventually offer some of those courses for fee. Judging by his email address, he might be rather young.
But I still acknowledge that his message was surprising. First, we don't know him. Cold calls are always difficult and forum etiquette dictates introductions. Second, the title of his post may sound a bit self-promotional, out of context. Third, he didn't describe his project in any detail. Fourth, he didn't address Moodle Partners or the fact that independent Moodle hosts already exist. Fifth, he literally talks about promoting his site without describing his goals.

Put briefly(!): Zachary's post was surprising but I don't see anything wrong with that.
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In reply to Zachary Reed

Re: I am Offering Free Course Hosting

by Steve Hyndman -

Sounds like a great service Zachary. I see you are running this on a dedicated server. Many times people try this on a shared host and it doesn't work out...good luck.

I don't need course space, but if you are truly offering this for free with no "catches", then if you ever find you need help with anything, just let me know. I know a thing or two about Moodle and would be willing to help out (for free) anyway I can.

For themes:

There are 4 free ones here...a few years ago they offered several free ones, but then they became a moodle partner, and as they say, the rest is history. They are not for 1.9, but could be easily upgraded: http://themegurus.com/free_themes.php 

There are several here on moodle.org: http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?id=6552

There are three free ones here: http://newschoollearning.com/themes/

Steve

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In reply to Zachary Reed

Re: I am Offering Free Course Hosting

by Alexandre Enkerli -
In a Moodle context, this restriction in JustFreeSpace's Terms of Service is somewhat amusing. wink
Promotion or display of instructional information supporting illegal activities this includes, but is not limited to, instructions for the building or use of weapons, propagation of "spam" email and/or computer viruses, or any material that infringes the intellectual property rights of third parties

So, my course on "Rifles, botnets, and the RIAA" couldn't be hosted by JFS. wide eyes
Ah, well... wink
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In reply to Alexandre Enkerli

Re: I am Offering Free Course Hosting

by Zachary Reed -
Hello Everyone,
Wow, i cant believe the responses. Though i am young, and yes i am behind the http://bshszach.magnify.net website, i am just offering free moodle course hosting. I hate that since moodle is free, people charge to host. I thought that it would be cool to have a website, where anyone can host courses. I am not behind some crew trying to get people to do, oh i don't know what. And no this is not a scam, or what ever you all called it. I just think that free software should be hosted for free. I love to install things on the internet anyway, so i said to myself, why not upload moodle, since i know everything about it anyway. My plans for this website are simple, offer open source course hosting, and no, there are not any copy right junk on anything, just as long as you don't violate T.O.S from my hosting company. So upload what you want, when ever you want. I think you can upload up to 10 MB anyway, but still upload what ever you want. I cant wait to hear new messages being posted on the Forum. Once again thank you.
- Zachary - ^_^
http://www.zarvss.justfreespace.com
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In reply to Zachary Reed

Re: I am Offering Free Course Hosting

by Manish Verma -
Hi Zachary,

While your offer is appreciated the issue is that if everything is free then how does someone earn who has created that free stuff. This is the key issue in open source which is not just free but open as well.

I have also heard about several beliefs about education being free and here also the same issue crops up and has often made be wondered. This is a wider issue regarding freebies and I do not think is specific to Moodle. Either one charges for services or one runs advertisements. It may sound amusing to imagine that a classroom is going on and there are televisions placed around the room where advertisements are going on (incidentally, Vyew has done something like that in their conferencing system free version). Either one evaluates the possibility of running strictly related advertisements (thoughts from teachers are welcome on this) or one charges for the services. These two seem to be two possible solutions with the first one subject to lot of debates. Many may argue that education is not about distractions and advertisements may distract attention.
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In reply to Manish Verma

Re: I am Offering Free Course Hosting

by D.I. von Briesen -
It's worth remembering that the vast majority of education world-wide is publicly funded- as such we've got an 'education industrial complex' to rival the military industrial complex. While millions more make money off education, the real movers, and the ones paying that money, are publicly funded institutions (or perhaps endowment funded private institutions). These institutions, whenever they put out something for free (like apache, or sendmail) are essentially competing unfairly with private corporations. When Yale puts out a full online physics class, or hippocampus puts out all their AP courses for nothing, what does that do to the guy who makes a living putting together training in these fields?

I don't know, but am glad I have a job in government-funded education!

I do think however there's a lot to be said for marketing, personal contact, desire for accountability, etc... If someone, say Open University one day started offering unauthorized moodle commercial hosting- would people really go for it? If they offered FREE hosting to schools, would the schools go for it? I think many, for better or worse, will still go with a partner - they want an invoice, a dollar amount, a helpdesk, and their own deal on their terms.

d.i.
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In reply to Zachary Reed

Re: I am Offering Free Course Hosting

by Frances Bell -
I can see the responses must seem a bit strange Zachary. I think that some of the reactions are because of the discussion in the other thread about discussion 'rules'. It is just a coincidence that your posting came around the same time.
Thanks for answering my questions and for updating your profile. I certainly wasn't accusing you of a scam (and I don't think anyone else was either) - I just wanted to know more about what you were doing as you seemed to be new to Moodle (that was your first post).
Good luck with your ventures.
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In reply to Zachary Reed

Re: I am Offering Free Course Hosting

by Steve Hyndman -

Zachary,

In my initial response to you I assumed you were the admin/owner of justfreespaces.com and were running this on your own dedicated server. After your follow-up message to me, I get the impression that you have simply installed Moodle on a free account on justfreespaces. Let me just be frank here and tell you, if that is the case, it's not going to work and while I do applaud your effort, I wouldn't recommend people put a lot of time and effort into trying to run a class from a site like this...you will simply not have the computing power to do it. If that is not the case, please reply and correct me. I think this is important information for people to know before they put a lot of effort into building something on your site. 

At any rate, I don't want my reply to mislead anyone into thinking this is running on a dedicated server....it seems it is running as an account on justfreespaces.

Steve

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In reply to Steve Hyndman

Re: I am Offering Free Course Hosting

by Zachary Reed -
This is true, i made an account on justfreespace. But it has been working, besides the times when the hosting company has to do server work, which isn't very often. But i thank you for your concern. I haven't really put allot of effort into this site, because another company with dedicated servers is working on adding the capability's of moodle. So soon, i will be hosting moodle on a dedicated server, so everyone, please wait as i find out when these capabilities will be complete, i will then move to another site. ^_^

- Zachary Reed -
zreed92@gmail.com
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In reply to Zachary Reed

Re: I am Offering Free Course Hosting

by Timothy Takemoto -

Oops, I recommended a free account at Globat for a moment but I hear really bad things about them.

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In reply to Zachary Reed

Re: I am Offering Free Course Hosting

by José Luis Granda -
Let me make a suggestion. Everybody can try into OpenEQaula, the First Social Opencourseware.
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In reply to José Luis Granda

Re: free course hosting

by Stuart Mealor -

We have recently launched a completely free Moodle hosting option.

You can visit http://www.freemoodle.org and have a look around the documentation, read about why this has been created, its aims, and then join the community area.

One of the few conditions is that your course should be open for others, and you can't charge for the course.  So it's free Moodle hosting, for courses that are free for others.  You can however separate your own students from the public by using Groups and Groupings (an example might be for using Assignments).

This service does have some (understandable) conditions, but does come with the full backing of a Moode Partner (so it's not going to disappear overnight!), and no catches.  We think this is a really important development, and are looking for people who want to help too smile

Check it out !  (and maybe get involved?)

Stuart Mealor (Managing Director of HRDNZ, Moodle Partner)

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