Web 2.0

[Ross Teller]

I've finished creating a course on Web 2.0 technologies using Moodle. It is going to be made available to librarians in El Paso, TX as part of the El Paso Area Library Consortium. It is going live on September 15th. If anyone is interested in previewing the content, poking around, and giving comments, please email me. I'll gladly give people access to poke around until September 14th, then I'm going to purge all registered users adn get ready for the course.

[Christine Voelker]

So, Ross, how did this course go? I taught an online Web 2.0 course last year for the teacher librarians in my district, and I am going to offer another one at the end of this school year for teachers. Possibly one for admin next school year.

[Roselle]

I'm very interested in knowing how you set up the on-line courses. We have a hard time getting teachers to come in to school for summer workshops. If I could set up an online workshop for the summer, it would be a great advert both for me and the library services we provide.

As it is, all I hear from the blog I set up, "I don't have time to read another email!" Kind of frustrating....

[Ross Teller]

Roselle,
I used Site Ground to host my page. They have easy support and set up for Moodle. Moodle is similar to WebCT or Blackboard. I, too, got a lot of the "I don't have time to check an online course," comments.

[Roselle]

Oh boy. Can you say 'free'? If not, we can't do it. I have less than lint in my budget...we're looking at yet another 10% cut from our state legislature which is going to cut funding to our public libraries, too and all of the special services we avail ourselves of during the year: copy cataloging, free databases....etc.

What I need is to do something easy, on-line (do it from your swimmy tube in the pool while sipping your margarita) and free.

i think maybe if we meet all of those requirements, plus add a few CEUs for course completion, we might get one or two staff to buy into it.

Why am I such a pessimist? (banging head against wall)

[Ross Teller]

Roselle,
Moodle is free; but you'll have to pay for a host unless you have a LAMP server set up at your library you can use. Or have a server you can set up as a LAMP server. I use Site Ground. It is about nine bucks a month. I pay for it out of my own pocket. I use it for school stuff, some stuff for a local librarian's group, and some other things.

[Roselle]

enLIGHTen me, please....what's a LAMP server?

[Ross Teller]

Sorry,
If you are going to have someone else host it for you, you don't need to worry about that. A LAMP server is a computer set up with Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (or Perl). This is the easiest way to set up a server for Moodle. You don't have to use Linux and Apache, though. MySQL and PHP work with other platforms, including MS. The easiest thing for you to do would be to have a third party host it for you. Just make sure they support Moodle.

[Ross Teller]

Christine,
Sorry it took so long to get back to you. The initial course's completion rate was a little disappointing. I've gone to a rolling, open enrollment format. I've had a lot of people sign up for this summer. I'll let you know when I've had a few finish.