Monday, May 16, 2011

Gremlins?

Does anyone else have the Gremlins in their Moodle Site?
Evidences:
1) The site is set to allow 500Mb uploads but suddenly you have one Forum  that won't allow anything more than 100Mb as an upload.

2)  Teachers get un-enrolled from their own courses and are suddenly students

3) Moodle assistant - administrators that could assist you for more than 2 years can suddenly not see an Administration Block.

4) 2900 people get un-enrolled from the entire site.  It happened over the weekend and you are the only one who can remove them. Oh and Internet was down from home so you know it was not you.


Gremlins!  That is what it must be.  It's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Just because you can does not mean you should

Everyday I encounter design and embed issues on teacher's sites. I really wonder because we have a tool, does that mean that every tool should be used. Teachers get a little crazy when we show them every web 2.0 tool that is out there. What we fail to do is check, "Can it really be embedded in Moodle" and "just because it is cool is there a sound educational reason for it"? Not everything embeds well. I hope that we would try it first then question the truly educational impact this tool can have before we add it. Just because we can ...add it... does not mean we should...or even need to. Some teacher pages right now could cause an epileptic seizure.
Is there not a tool already in Moodle that works?

I'm in a Go Digital workshop..interesting as it works in Blogger.com but will it work in Moodle? Here is a tool that could be an education nightmare if we show this to the wrong kid. justin.tv...live streaming TV. I can see an application in education but will it overwhelm the band width and then let's embed it into Moodle and watch it all slow down. We need to think about these things carefully.

Ok Let's get started


I have been a Moodle Administrator now for one year and 2 months. I have 47,000+ end users both students and teachers. I maintain 5 sites currently because the original Titanic site began to have issues partly due to our hosting company. I work in a school district that is pretty progressive. We have a 1 to 1 program that just rolled out that is relying more and More on Moodle. The mania begins the moment you finish training and realize that you know just enough to be dangerous and that the Administrator Books also do not answer your questions. The next mania comes from the Moodle.org site search that tells you some good things but never your exact question. I'm learning CSS and how to debug teachers pages that don't seem to get the fact that pasting from a Word document will corrupt your page. I found my logo online. I don't know who originated it but on a good day you do become Moodle Man. Able to leap tall Source Code with a single bound, Able to leap tall Topic Blocks....etc.

Welcome

Welcome to the Moodle Mania Page. These are my idle musings and ramblings. I am a Moodle Administrator armed with just enough to be dangerous. Join in by putting in your two cents. Venting is allowed within limits. No swearing please! All Enusers must be refered to as ID10T's or penguins only. Enjoy!