I posted this recently to the revision site for our courses…

Just a short “lessons learned” from this particular revision.

I have Moodle 2.0 installed on my own server at home. After all, I’m a “computer person” and have been working directly with comptuers since 1979. There are few computing “jobs” that I haven’t done, from programming to building and selling the horrid things (worst. job. ever.)

So when I want to learn a technology, the best way forward for me is to get the latest packages and install it locally. That way I can experience the whole deal, from being an installer/admin to all the various roles. That certainly has been the case with moodle.

Unfortunately, some technical issues prevented me having a full working copy of Moodle 2.0 until very recently, and it was only yesterday I could really play.

What I learned by creating one of my very old (1990’s) C programming courses is that there are a lot of ways to do things in Moodle, and many of them easy and fun.

Were I to repeat this revision, I would immediately erase the alfresco links to the study guide and place the content into moodle pages, which I am fully capable of editing – even remotely. This is in contrast to the impossible situation I found trying to remote edit alfresco documents. In the end I had to give up completely on alfresco. It’s probably great if you are local (i.e. in an office) in Edmonton or Athabasca, but horrible from where I am.

I don’t think anything would have been lost with respect to my course putting the content back into moodle (where it was in the beginning), but what I would have gained in time and ease of revision would have been phenomenal.

As I said, just a few thoughts on the experience to date.

-R

My reason for posting is twofold. First, the obvious. The edit process had some horrid bits (alfresco access) and I wanted to mention them again.

The second reason is more important. I want to counteract the notion that we academics just like to complain. Speaking for myself and others I know in Comp. Sci., we often spend a lot of our own time experimenting with technology. Keeping current in our chose field is essential, and that includes teaching technologies in our field.