“I wasn’t always a fan, but I’m a convert now.”
That was a quote from one of our county people about Moodle. See, this person was big on BlackBoard. After all, BlackBoard was offering great prices. The county was comparing BlackBoard to Moodle and BlackBoard was “prettier” at the time. (And I would agree, BlackBoard was a bit prettier then, but I had some other usability issues with it at that time.) So the county pushed local districts to adopt BlackBoard.
Anyway, the county always thought that we were the odd balls. We liked Moodle. We worked to make it more user friendly. (In fact, I was able to do some contract work to make another Moodle more user friendly. Those teachers were blown away by the changes that I thought were pretty simple and obvious.)
See, I’ve always proposed that you are investing in something. You are investing your time, your energy, your efforts, your thoughts, your money and more. The question for me has always been are you investing in yourself or in someone else. Now to be clear, it is necessary to invest in others. There is no way that you can do everything your self. However, for really important things, I generally prefer to invest in us. I consider lesson delivery pretty important. So I invested in us.
A few years later, at least one of our county people agrees. BlackBoard pulled the great funding rates and suddenly districts were faced with significant costs if they wanted to continue using BlackBoard. Most districts couldn’t take on that kind of cost. We stayed the course with Moodle and have continued to develop our skills. Chris Kenniburg has grown from being an excellent Moodle Administrator to developing Moodle plugins. Great things can be done if you are an excellent Moodle Administrator, but even more control can be had by developing your own plugins and themes. (Seriously, check out the Fordson Theme and Easy Enrolment, these focus Moodle on the K-12 environment).
Teachers face a similar situation with the various tech tools out there. Many teachers follow the “fun, shiny” of a wide variety of apps, sites and more. Much time is spent learning how to certain things, training students, etc. This is an investment in someone else. Some teachers will invest in themselves by learning a great tool and becoming an expert at that. Moodle provides such a vast range of tools and learning opportunities. It is open source. And if you fortunate enough to have(or persistent enough to demand) a Moodle Administrator that cares and will put the effort into making Moodle work for your environment, you can count on a fantastic learning environment for your students.
You are always making an investment. Be sure to know who you are investing in and why.
