Welcome to the Helena Public Schools 2010 NCCE Blog!

A boat-load (well, bus load) of Helena Public Schools teachers are traveling to the NCCE educational technology conference in Seattle, Washington March 3-5, 2010 to see the latest and greatest in educational technology. See our reflections, thoughts and reactions here!

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Moodle Under the Hood with Jeff Patterson (Live Blogging at NCCE 2010)

Good morning Seattle!  Mike and I are kickin' it at NCCE 2010 in Seattle, Washington at "Moodle Under the Hood" with Great Falls Public Schools (Great Falls, Montana... my home town and our closest neighbor).

I will take notes below, with my own comments in ALL CAPS (I loves me the screamin').

Jeff's notes are here.

Moodle: When
  • Secondary was most interested in pushing Moodle.
  • Initial 5-12 offering; but willing to go down to as low as 2nd grade.
  • Adopt rate was fast; need to scale hardware two times.
  • Registered users near 5000.

Moodle: Steps for Implementation
  • Costs: NOT free... hardware, infrastructure, licenses, backup/recovery strategy, configuration time, help desk volume, resolution of student issues, training cycles for tech and teaching staff (JEFF COULDN'T BE MORE RIGHT ON HERE; SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE TRAINING COSTS).
  • Sponsors: need a sponsor for the agenda to get Moodle up and running.  Curriculum director and secondary leaders critical to implementation.  Superintendent on board; grassroots teacher sponsors need to be on board as well.  Absolutely must get teachers on board; not necessarily your geeky teachers, but, your teacher leaders.  Support usually means money.
  • Getting Started:  Don't use a Windows server... it is a recipe for disaster (AMEN BROTHER).  Learn Linux... it will save you time and problems.
  • Users: Must support individual students in Moodle; be sure to set up a individual accounts.  (YUP... :) )
  • Taxonomy: Predefine categories; define Professional Development or Staff category; Come up with a class naming convention; let teachers build their own classes; don't force them through a process.
  • Train
  • Prepare: Think about messaging (Great Falls built functionality to allow teachers to see messaging); scaling scaling scaling; test your backup and restore; make sure to have a backup lesson plan (ALSO VERY GOOD ADVICE).
Wow... great things going on in

Cross-posted at the Helena Public Schools NCCE 2010 Blog and the Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

Posted by at 9:32 AM

1 comments:

  1. Hey guys - it was good meeting you there and thanks for the post! Hope all is well with our neighbor to the south. Stop in next time you're in town - Jeff

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