On 1/20/07, Nick McClure <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Money and Education? In terms of cost Moodle would cost us just as much > as Blackboard. In order to get Moodle to do the same things we do with > Blackboard it would cost us a lot of money.
I thought one could do anything with PHP and MySQL. =] You took a stroll through the plugins and didn't see stuff that fit the bill? You could see how much someone would charge to make the mods... Then comes the tech support aspect, with Moodle who do I call when > something doesn't work right? The man hours it takes to find the answer > to a problem are much higher. As with all "mainstream" OS stuff, there's a plethora of 3rd party vendors who do all manner of stuff. Moodle has way more than most, probably because it's MySQL and PHP. Not too easy for a college prof. to just pick up, install, whatnot. Prolly decent money in just doing Moodle stuff. Eh. Anyways, that's one aspect of Open Architecture that is pretty nifty... there are a ton of options, vs. just a few. I haven't really looked at the source code, but I take solace in the fact that I can. Theoretically, you can do anything you want. Can you do that with any of the non-open source apps? Don't get me wrong-- it's mostly a personal thing- I'm not on a crusade to make everyone move to some open source alternative to WebCT. We just got priced out of being able to use WebCT, which was ridiculous. Mostly, the fees were to pay for the overhead. They wanted money to run courses we had already developed. Tons of it. That's looney. But the licensing fees are such that that's just how it went down. Partly because of poor negotiations, perhaps, but still. I don't know how many users you guys are dealing with, but Blackboard > has a pretty good support team when there is a critical problem. When > 40,000 users can't get on to the system, people start complaining. Personally, we run a handful of courses for Cont. Ed. (to anwser Dana's question), but have you checked out the user base for Moodle? The main one (of course moodle teaches moodle!) has close to 180,000 users. That's quite a bit. A good bit have 45,000 or so. From their stats page. ( http://moodle.org/stats/ ) The College of Pharmacy is using moodle, and I've been tasked with fleshing out/integrating the registration process with our processes. Kinda. The whole university just switched to an Oracle product, which has been, interesting. I've been working on the fringe projects that don't really fit into an "Out of the Box" solution / tying them into the OB on the back end. I have high hopes for moodle, as it can potentially save a lot of people a lot of money. And be self-modified, or whatever. Give some courses on building courses, building plugins, modifying the code base, etc.. Have the students do stuff, cycle them around, some become faculty, the process continues. That would be awesome. =] Off for our date. Thanks Grandma! > -----Original Message----- > > From: Denny Valliant [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 8:32 PM > > To: CF-Community > > Subject: Re: moodle? > > > > Moodle rox'n. Good stuff. > Thousands of folks using it. > > > > Now, I'm incredibly biased. WebCT and blackboard can eat a bowl. > > A bowl of weenies. I seriously have a problem with both of 'em. > > > > I'd run with moodle over those two packages in a heartbeat. > > > > Moodle has a good bit of plugins (you do gotta watch what version > > they work with, etc.) and it's open source, so anyone can add > > anything. Hands down beats the crap outta webct and blackboard. > > > > Haven't messed with blackboard in years, so take it with a grain, > > but I've messed with webCT off and on, and it's just lame how > > much they want for the software. It isn't that special. Nope. No > > way, no how. > > > > Mostly I love that it's open source, has a crapload of users (which > > is a good part of a good OS package) and mailing lists with help > > full and like minded whatnots. > > > > This is a heart issue, mostly. Moodle has heart. WebCT and BB > > lack it. Money and education shouldn't be so tied together. > > > > Or maybe they should. Eh. CF seems to work, and it's a "pay" > > type deal... eh. Whatever. > > > > Big strong vote for Moodle over here. Education should be open. > > > > Or not. > > > > Well, with that bit of enlightenment, I'm outties to catch up a bit. > > > > On 1/10/07, Dana <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > another question -- does anyone have any thoughts or experience with > > > this? They are considering it as an alternative to WebCT. > > > > > > thanks > > > Dana > > > > > > > > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Upgrade to Adobe ColdFusion MX7 Experience Flex 2 & MX7 integration & create powerful cross-platform RIAs http:http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;56760587;14748456;a?http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/?sdid=LVNU Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:225289 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
