GoAnimate.com: Episode One – Jenny Jobseeker by elleemployability

I’ve been working on a series of webquests on the use of the internet far careers guidance and counselling. And I stumbled on this great blog by Elle Dyson. Elle is making a a mini cartoon series following the journey of ‘Jenny Jobseeker’ as she battles through the unemployment jungle. As she says there are limitations to the free version of Go animate (the online tool she used to make the cartoon) but, she says, “it serves as (I think) a rather nifty tool for engagement – providing a little bit of advice, giving them a bit of a laugh, and most importantly engaging them in the service, encouraging them to access support from us, and in accessing local opportunities.”

From Futurelab:

Aimed at teachers and those interested in using games with an educational intent, this handbook aims to provide some useful anchoring points for educators to make sense of the area and to develop practical approaches for the use of computer games as a medium for learning.

It is assumed by some that the models games employ lead to learning, as young people effectively learn how to play without necessarily being explicitly taught, doing vast amounts of reading or interacting with others; while others see games as boring, tedious, time-consuming, and repetitive.

Both of these viewpoints can be true: as stated the impact of a game is dependent on the game itself, but also the player, circumstance of use, mediation of the teacher and other players. In fact, many academic researchers of young people’s uses of digital media argue, counter to the hype, that computer games have been insufficiently well researched as a medium for learning.

In this handbook we aim to summarise not only the key theories around why they are considered to have potential, but how they have been used in the past, how they are used for learning in a family context, which attributes lead to learning, and considerations for using them with young people.

Download the book

November is Sharing Good Practice Month at the college where I lecture so I thought I’d jump on the Chalkface blog and share two of my favourite things.

I love historypin. It’s a Google Maps mashup where you can upload pictures from the past and compare them to the current street view. You can add video and audio too. There’s heaps of potential for school projects and it’s a great tool for digital storytelling. Have a look at the Beatlemania tour for inspiration!

Continuing with the maps theme, every maths teacher needs to know about the Maths Maps project.  Again using Google Maps this collaborative resource links maths questions to physical places.  For example, a pin in Real Madrid Football Stadium invites you to zoom in and calculate the area of the pitch. Further more, one map can cover many topics and colour coded pins allow for age or level differentiation. There’s more information on how to join in with the project on the edte.ch blog.

Kid Cartoon by Andertoons

(Go see the free embed deal at http://www.andertoons.com/free-cartoons/ )

Inspired by Tom Barrett’s presentations based on one idea per slide, I just asked Graham how big a slide was. After a pitying look and a very sniffy technical response, he helpfully put up a powerpoint on his screen and we measured how wide it was with a wooden ruler. It was about 30cm. Then I went for full screen mode and stretched it to .67 metres, which is therefore the length of an idea.

Divide that into a kilometre and it comes to about 1500 (give or take a few slides that sneakily have two ideas and take away the title slides and allowing a factor for lap top size screens).  Then I counted the number of ideas already published on Chalkface, including Tom’s, and found 108. That’s 72 metres of idea already – not bad, and loads to come!

Now I want an electronic thermometer thingy – like they used to have to measure the donations towards replacing the lead on the church roof – to see whether we can get a kilometre of ideas in the next year.

I admit there are some conceptual problems here because everyone knows that ideas are traditionally are measured by weight (as in ‘I’ve got tons of ideas’) or volume (as in ‘Here’s a handful of ideas’ ).

Anyway – that’s the target. A kilometre of ideas for teachers.

Bored of Pontydysgu :  (

PS Graham has pointed out that tweeted ideas are smaller so if some maths teacher could work out how long 140 characters are….

Last year I posted 20 Things To Do With Mobile Phones (or something!) – here’s the next generation of ideas, started by Tom Barrett. Seems a fitting tribute to Steve Jobs

As promised – the first of the ‘mile of ideas’ topics

Great idea from Tom Barrett who started off the series of ‘How to…’ presentations. One idea per slide, add yours on the end and keep it rolling! And loads of thanks to all those who have already contributed.

If you want to join the party, look at the last slide of any one for information on how to do this. Meanwhile, twitter their existence and alert all those over-worked, short-on-ideas teachers you know. We are going to post the whole series here.

Tom has an excellent website This is a must-read for all classroom teachers. Please note – those of you who have accessed his site before – the url has changed. (For which he blames the bullying of Doug Belshaw!!) Whatever the address, you NEED this site!

The introduction of technology Enhanced Learning into institutions or the workplace implies change. This can be difficult to manage. senior and middle managers complain of resistance by staff to change. Many teachers I talk to would like to use more technology for tecahing and learning, but are frustrated by what they see as organisational inertia or the lack of management backing for change.

My colleague Jenny Hughes, has recently written a chapter called ‘Introducing e-Learning – getting started’ to be published in a forthcoming e-book series. The chapter looks at practical steps to introducing e-learning from the position of a senior manager, a junior manager and classroom teacher. As ever we would be grateful for your feedback on this first draft. Does it make sense to you?.

Introducing e-learning – getting started

If you want to introduce e-learning methods into your organisation the way you go about it will be largely determined by the position you hold. We have considered how you may approach it firstly as a senior manager (e.g Head of HRD or a VET school principal) then as a middle manager (e.g a training officer or section leader) and finally as a classroom teacher or trainer.

Senior manager

Before you even consider introducing e-learning, ask yourself why you are doing it – what problem are you trying to solve with it and what do you want to achieve?  Just as important, how will you know that it has been achieved? What are your targets? Over what time period?  Change needs to be measurable.  ‘Introducing e-learning’ is just not specific enough! Do you want to install a complete learning management system including computerized student / trainee tracking, a repository of materials and course content or would you be happy if a handful of creative teachers or trainers got together and started experimenting with social software tools?

• Consult early and consult often – if you force change on people, problems normally arise.  You need to ask yourself which groups of people will be affected by your planned changes and involve them as early as possible. Check that these people agree with it, or at least understand the need for change and have a chance to decide how the change will be managed and to be involved in the planning and implementation. Use face-to-face communications wherever possible.
• Try to see the picture from the perspective of each group and ask yourself how they are likely to react. For example, older staff may feel threatened and have no interest in adopting new technologies.  The staff who teach IT often consider that e-learning is really under their remit and resent the involvement of other staff in their ‘territory’.   Another very sensitive group will be your IT technicians. They can make or break your plans by claiming they ‘cannot support’ this or that and raising all sorts of security issues and other obstacles.
• Although you may be enthusiastic about e-learning try not to be too zealous – this is not sustainable in the long term. The idea is to convey your enthusiasm and stimulate theirs rather than hard selling e-learning. If you do, people will nod their acceptance then completely disregard it thinking this is yet another of those initiatives that will go away in time. Change is usually unsettling, so the manager, logically, needs to be a settling influence not someone who wants to fire people up with his own passion thinking this will motivate them.

• Think carefully about the time frame. If you think that you need to introduce e-learning quickly, probe the reasons – is the urgency real? Will the effects of agreeing a more sensible time-frame really be more disastrous than presiding over a disastrous change? Quick change prevents proper consultation and involvement, which leads to difficulties that take time to resolve.
• Think about the scale. Are you going for a top down approach which may be standard across the institution and include a Learning Management System and a Learning Content Management System? Or are you going to stimulate small scale explorations in the classroom with a few interested teachers and try to grow e-learning organically?
• Avoid expressions like ‘mindset change’, and ‘changing people’s mindsets’ or ‘changing attitudes’, because this language often indicates a tendency towards imposed or enforced change and it implies strongly that the organization believes that its people currently have the ‘wrong’ mindset.
• Workshops, rather than mass presentations, are very useful processes to develop collective understanding, approaches, policies, methods, systems, ideas, etc.
• Staff surveys are a helpful way to repair damage and mistrust among staff – provided you allow people to complete them anonymously, and provided you publish and act on the findings.
• You cannot easily impose change – people and teams need to be empowered to find their own solutions and responses, with facilitation and support from managers. Management and leadership style and behaviour are more important than policy and sophisticated implementation  processes and. Employees need to be able to trust the organization.
• Lead by example – set up a Facebook group as part of the consultation process, use a page on the organization website to keep people up to date with planned changes, use different media to communicate with staff, make a podcast of your key messages and publish it on YouTube

John Kotter, a professor at Harvard Business School has designed the following eight step model, which we think is really useful so we have included it in full.

• Increase urgency – inspire people to move, make objectives real and relevant.
• Build the guiding team – get the right people in place with the right emotional commitment, and the right mix of skills and levels.
• Get the vision right – get the team to establish a simple vision and strategy, focus on emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and efficiency.
• Communicate for buy-in – Involve as many people as possible, communicate the essentials, simply, and to appeal and respond to people’s needs. De-clutter communications – make technology work for you rather than against.
• Empower action – Remove obstacles, enable constructive feedback and lots of support from leaders – reward and recognise progress and achievements.
• Create short-term wins – Set aims that are easy to achieve – in bite-size chunks. Manageable numbers of initiatives. Finish current stages before starting new ones.
• Don’t let up – Foster and encourage determination and persistence – ongoing change – encourage ongoing progress reporting – highlight achieved and future milestones.
• Make change stick – Reinforce the value of successful change via recruitment, promotion, new change leaders. Weave change into culture.

Middle managers

As a middle manager, in some ways you are in the most difficult position if you want to introduce e-learning methods in your classrooms or workplace as you have to convince both those above you and below you. Convincing senior managers is usually fairly easy to start with if you present them with some concrete benefits of using e-learning in a specific context and tell them that in the first instance it will not cost anything. For example, telling management that you are going to get your first year building apprentices to set up a wiki around new materials or record their work experience on a blog and that there are no cost implications is very unthreatening whereas announcing that you are going to introduce e-learning across your department is going to raise all sorts of concerns.

The important thing is that once you have done something, share the success stories with your senior managers – get them to listen to the podcast your apprentices made or invite then to join your engineering students’ Facebook group.  This reassures them they made the right decision in allowing you to get on with it and actively engages them in the process. It is then much easier asking for extra money for a vid cam to improve on the audio podcasting than it would have been without any concrete outcomes.

A lot depends on how familiar your senior managers are with e-learning technologies and pedagogies and whether they are promoting it, indifferent or actively against the ideas.

If they are lacking in knowledge, one of your jobs is to educate them and the best way of doing this is to do some small scale stuff (such as the things suggested above) and show them the results. Make a clear, simple but well produced slide presentation explaining what you want to do and the benefits it will bring. Don’t send it to them as an email attachment – upload it to Slideshare and send them the link. In this way you are ‘training’ your managers in the use of e-learning –  don’t miss an opportunity!

If you do need extra resources, set out a clear proposal showing what is capital cost (such as hardware) and what is recurring revenue cost (such as broadband connection). Make sure you cost in EVERYTHING (see list above) – there is nothing designed to infuriate senior management as much as a proposal that is deliberately under-costed to increase its chances of approval then to find out after implementation has started there are extra costs which, if not met, waste the rest of the investment. Of course, this is true of any proposal but investment in e-learning seems particularly prone to escalating and ‘hidden’ costs.

When it comes to dealing with the people below you, the same rules apply as those set out for senior managers. To these we would add one or two specific ideas.

• Begin with a grass roots approach
• Start where you have most chance of success. – Find out who in your section or department is interested in e-learning or is confident about using ICT. Encourage and ‘grow’ these people and make sure you reward them in some way. (This could be a few hours non-contact time to develop some e-learning materials or chance to go to a training course, conference or visit. )
• Talk about the successes at staff meetings.  Most people will see e-learning as yet more work for which there is no payback – you have to motivate them in some way.
• Find a vocal group of beta testers
• Don’t set strict rules – encourage exploration and experiment
• Create opportunities for staff to look at e-learning being used effectively. This could be visits to other VET schools or training centres, (real or on-line), YouTube videos or practical training sessions – the best are those where they leave with e-learning ideas or materials or other products that they can use immediately in their classroom or work place.
• Encourage staff to join in on-line forums or open meetings about e-learning. If they are not confident to start with, it is perfectly OK to ‘lurk’ in the background occasionally. www.pontydysgu.org is a good site for finding out about on-line events for trainers

• Hold informal training sessions and encourage the use of microblogging as a back channel during training
• Constantly monitor feedback and make changes as needed
• Communicate the stories behind e-learning e.g How did social software start? What made Twitter happen? Will Facebook survive?

Teachers / trainers

If you are an individual teacher or trainer it can be very daunting trying to introduce e-learning into your teaching if you are working in an organisation where there is no experience or culture of e-learning. You cannot change this easily from your position. The best way of influencing things is to just try something out in your own classroom. You are definitely better starting off with some simple web 2.0 based activities as these have no cost implications. Choose this activity carefully – think of any objections that could be raised, however ridiculous. For example –

A Facebook group? – Facebook is banned or even firewalled because staff and trainees waste too much time on it.

A skype video interview between a group of apprentices and a skilled craftsman? – IT support section will not let you access Skype, (which uses a different port, which they will have closed and will not open for ‘security reasons’)

Sharing bookmarks using del.icio.us ? – the students will use it to share porn sites.

An audio podcast may be a good start if you have enough computers with built in mics and speakers or access to a mic and a recording device like an i-pod. Setting up a group wiki around a particular theme is also difficult to object to. Another possibility is to get trainees blogging (For detailed instructions on how to do all this, look at the Taccle handbook)

If you are lucky, you may find that your managers are just glad that someone is interested and give you the freedom to operate. There are very few who will actively prevent you as long as it does not cost them time or money, although you may find that some other staff have a negative attitude.

From this base you can gradually build up a small informal group of like-minded teachers to share ideas or swap materials.  A group of teachers will also have more influence. Make sure any positive outcomes are disseminated, preferably show casing trainees’ work.

One good way of doing this is to print out a list of guest log-ins and passwords to anything you are working on (e.g a wiki) or the url to web pages where your trainees are publishing work. Add a brief explanation and stick it on the wall as well as routinely sending it by email to other staff in your section ‘for information’. This has the double benefit of keeping what you are doing transparent and also makes some people curious enough to click on the hyperlink.

Invite other teachers along to your classroom when you know you will be using e-learning or invite them to drop in to your group meetings.

You will also need to introduce the idea of e-learning to your trainees.  Although many of the younger students will need no convincing, it can be difficult with older workers who may have a very fixed idea of what constitutes ‘training’ or ‘learning’.  Make sure that the first time you introduce a new application to a group that you allow enough time to explain how the technology works and time for them to familiarize themselves with it using a ‘test’ example before you start. For example…”let’s all try setting up a wiki about things to do with Christmas  / the World Cup / the best pubs in …” before you get onto the serious stuff.

Buying in Moodle – Jenny Hughes and Dirk Stieglitz

As a primary school governor, one of the issues I have been wrestling with recently is the installation of Moodle in the school. I have a particular responsibility for IT – so I want to make sure it works and does what we want it to and as a member of the Finance Committee, I want to know how we get best value for money. I suspect this is a position that lots of others are in right now.

We have decided that we are not going to host it ourselves – we simply don’t have the time or expertise to do it so in our case this means we have joined a consortium of schools with the local university acting as a full-service host.

However, when I asked to see the service level agreement, it was a little ‘thin’ to say the least. This is not to say that what being offered was unsatisfactory – just that a lot of issues were not addressed in the SLA.  In case others find themselves in this position, I have jotted down a series of questions you really need to be asking your host provider and why you need to ask them.  How – and if – you then want to include these in your service level agreement is really up to you.

(I have to say, it might not make you a desperately popular client…)

You also need to remember there is no ‘definitive’ list. If you are a small primary school, you will probably want your Moodle host to do everything and not have to worry about lots of the detailed questions whereas a large secondary school with an IT support department wanting to do more advanced things, will need to ask more technical questions.

So, in no particular order ….

Do they provide the Moodle admin AND the server admin – i.e do they support Moodle as a software package as well as providing and maintaining the server it runs on?

There are different people involved in a Moodle installation. There are users – these are your teachers who just want to use Moodle to create and teach courses.  Then there are people who take care of the Moodle “back end”, the Moodle ‘admin’, which could be someone in your school or it could be someone provided by the host organization or the Moodle admin could be shared between them.

Someone must also be responsible for ‘server admin’ that is, managing and maintaining the server and stacking the software that Moodle will run on. This person will work for the host providing the server.  Ideally, there should be a group that brings all these together so that the Moodle admin and server admin understand the classroom teacher perspective.

You need the following things to make Moodle run.

• a web server (often, but not necessarily Apache),
• PHP,
• a database engine (often but not necessarily mySQL),

The Moodle code itself will run on top of these.

There is an enormous variation in what web hosts actually provide for your money and the costing model they use. (Think mobile phone companies and te different contracts they provide!!)

So they may be offering:

A total package, which means providing and maintaining the server, supporting other server side packages as well as providing full technical support for the Moodle software and direct support for end users such as providing training or advice on content building or a help desk.

These are usually called full-service hosts and probably what you need if you are a small school with no in-house IT backup. However, you will almost certainly have an SLA in place for IT support either with a private organization or your local authority – it is worth checking out what support they can offer so that you don’t end up paying for the same thing twice

A limited Moodle admin without the server admin which just manages Moodle but not other software packages on the server, such as database management and php, cron, email (for more about why and if you need this, there is a geeky bit at the bottom of this post) This may be enough for you but it means you will have to do a lot yourself and you will need to talk to your IT support people to see if they have the capacity to do this.

A minimal package which may be just provision and maintenance of the server which Moodle will run on without much in the way of supporting the Moodle software package itself.

Are they a registered Moodle partner?

This is a financial and legal issue – as well as a moral one! Moodle is Open Source software and can be downloaded free off the web. Similarly, any web hosting service can host Moodle for their clients. However, in order to contribute to the development costs of keeping Moodle up and running and constantly improving, organizations who advertise themselves as providing a full service hosting facility for Moodle and who want to use the Moodle name and logo in their marketing, are expected to become Moodle Partners. This means they pay a (small) percentage of their income, like a royalty, to the Moodle organization in Australia and become part of a world wide network of Moodle partners. Personally, I think this is very important – not only does it give them access to the expertise of a huge community of practice but it gives them a lot of technical support from the Moodle organization itself. Anyway, I just think it’s fair and ethical – they are only going to pass the cost on to you anyway – and as this is likely to be the most popular choice, especially in a small school, it is an issue to consider.

What other packages, extension and add-ons are possible to extend the features and functionalities of Moodle?

In addition to the basics, Moodle offers many modules that allow the integration of external (third party) applications and access to web services.  So you need to ask, if you want additional modules, which ones they provide in the package. Do they provide them automatically?  Do you ask them to provide them? Do they install these extra packages or will you have to install them yourselves?  Is there a cost implication?

Most importantly, will they ALLOW extra packages?  Do they have fixed policies on this or are they negotiable?

For example, teachers my find Mahara useful – this is an Open Source e-portfolio / social networking module which will be integrated into Moodle2 but under the current version of Moodle is an add-on. At least 2 web hosts I have dealt with will not provide this.

Check which of these they do or can provide

For example….

• aspell – is a useful (and free) spell checker.
• dragmath – is a free “drag and drop” equation editor. It is a Java applet that can simply run within a web browser on most computers.
• asciimathml – ‘translates’ figures into maths symbols / notation – your maths teachers will love this one!

Or you may want to integrate access to flickr or youtube. If so you will need to make sure that your Moodle installation enables communication through API to these services.

In many cases, the host provider has already decided what packages they are prepared to install and you are stuck with that – whether you want them or not. Others have a menu from which you can select but the modules appearing on the menu may be pre-determined. In my experience, the modules the tech. people might select might not be the same as the teachers may have chosen : (

What training does your host provide, if any?

Who will do it? Some techies are excellent trainers, some are not. Find out!

How long does it take? Are they day time sessions, evening sessions, fixed dates or on demand?

How much does it cost? What comes free as part of the package? Can they provide additional training if you need more than that? How much will it be?

What will it cover?  Entry level training may just cover how to set up users, courses, upload materials and not much else. Useful and necessary but there are some very good on-line tutorials that can cover the basics.

Are there people who will help to create content? Does the training cover this? This is really important and really useful if teachers have no experience of creating web based content. It is not just about uploading stuff they do face-to-face in the classroom!

Also, you will probably want to customize the appearance of your front end – will they help you with layout, graphics, images and overall design?

In the longer term, what about support for development? Sometime in the future you may want to increase the functionality of your Moodle installation – do they have developers to work with you on this?

Updates – how often are they going to update the software and ensure compatibility?

Software is not static, it changes all the time. Moodle software sometimes changes daily! Software may be altered to fix security issues or to make improvements.

Also Moodle is not the only application that will be updated. As we said, Moodle is not “just” Moodle – it relies on a set of software applications and any time you are trying to keep multiple applications current you are bound to run into compatibility issues. Sometimes a fix in one respect causes a bug in another.

Also a BIG issue – as of writing this, Moodle is currently available as Moodle version 1.9.9 i.e the original version with updates. However, Moodle v2 is likely to be available in the near future.  When I asked what impact this was likely to have, I was told that they were not planning to upgrade to v2 at all. Hello? Does that mean that ten years down the line when Moodle v3, 4 or 5 is available we are still tied to an SLA that is using an out of date platform?

Access – what are you allowed to do?

You might like to ask what access (if any) you have to the back-end of the Moodle installation, including the database. (Typical access would go through FTP and phpMyAdmin.)  Access means, for example, that you can customize the appearance of your own site, you can access all any files uploaded on your installation and can back up your own data. Your host may or may not allow you to do this.

Backups – a BIG question!

How often will it be backed up? Who is responsible for backing up what? Who is liable if data is lost? What is the back up regime?  – these are just the basics!

You will also need to know when they are backed up and how long they keep the data.

A backup regime, including course backups, software backups and database backups is important so find out exactly what sort of back ups will be provided.

• Some web hosts provide “snap shots”,
• Some provide site wide backups.
• Some offer shell access and tell you to do it yourself

Moodle can do some of it’s own backups but they are only a small bit of a full backup programme that has to take into account all the different types of data that is held by a Moodle site. Each data type needs a different sort of backup regime.

Here are some further issues about back ups that you might want to address.

Front end back up facilities

Built in to the Moodle front-end is a function that allows your site administrator (i.e the person at school level who is responsible for the site) to back up your courses. There are several possible settings that can be turned on and off which control how often and what is stored, and, most importantly, where this data is to be stored

Some host providers over ride and turn off this facility. Or they may limit where the data can be stored.

Remote back up

If you have the necessary access and are planning to do your own backup, You will also need to find out how your host is going to handle the back ups. They can either script the system to address backups for all the different types of data or another possibility is that they replicate the data, either to a simple store or to a fallover unit. If you are going to do some of your own back ups, mysql replication requires access to mysql commands that some web hosts do not provide.

Back up of additional modules

Assuming they have allowed you to add extra modules (or they have done this for you) who is going to back these up? Do you have to do it yourself or will it automatically be done for you?

If they do back up the additional modules, does this also include backing up the user generated data associated with the modules or is it just the modules?

Similarly, any complementary software that you have integrated should be backed up. Who does this?

GUI (graphical user interface)

Will any themes or customizations be backed up? Your GUI is often neglected when addressing backups. The data that makes your site look like it does, that you may have selected from a range of options, will be stored in your Moodle code installation with any pictures or images in Moodledata. (see note below)

Code – will it be backed up?

This sounds a bit obvious and some providers may wonder what on earth this is to do with you – and almost certainly resent the question!

However, a lot of them figure there is no point in backing up the Moodle code when, if there are major disasters, they can just download it from Moodle and reinstall it.

This causes problems. One is that it will probably lose your customisation (see GUI ) and any added-on modules. The other is that the version of Moodle they download today is going to be different from the same version of Moodle they download tomorrow. A new install often causes problems on a restore in addition to the original problem. This means they will have to work out why what was working yesterday isn’t working today and that slows the whole process and increase the down time for users. You don’t want them to have to recreate your Moodle application – just restore it! See also ‘Downtime’ below

Moodledata folder

Will contents of the Moodledata directory be backed up? The data may be excluded in your Moodle backups but may hold some of your most important material such as media that was sited in Site Files.

Databases

How often is the db dumped and stored? Can you do this manually /remotely ?

Whatever database you are using, it is critical that you dump and store your db regularly, especially because it can be so simple to restore a site if you have a recent db dump. This can be accomplished manually via a GUI as with phpMyAdmin or mysql admin or via command line if the user has access and the requisite skills. It can also be automated via commercial or open scripting (as in HandyBackup or automysqlbackup). ]

Maximum file upload size and storage capacity

What is the maximum file upload size? Some hosts are putting heavy restrictions on this. The maximum size of file uploads for Moodle can be controlled via the Moodle GUI but are also constrained via Apache and PHP. To adjust these you may need to be able to edit .htaccess and/or php.ini. but the chances are your host will not allow this.

How much storage capacity do you get? What is the limit on Email volume, storage space for users and courses? How many accounts are you allowed? If either proves inadequate, can you buy more? How much is this going to cost?

Also, issues of scale can be very important. A relatively small number of concurrent users can generate enough email through forum postings to get you in trouble with your host.

If you have back end access and are planning to do your own back up and costing model includes paying your web host for bandwidth, then you need to remember this sort of remote backup can become expensive.

Downtime – when and how much?

All servers need to be maintained. This means it will not be available for users. You need to ask when the routine maintenance will take place and how long the server will be out of action.

You may get an answer expressed in terms of ‘9’s’.  This is just geek talk for 9%, 99%, 99.9%, 99.99% and so on.

Now 99.9% means the system is down .1% of the time. It doesn’t sound much (about an hour and forty minutes a week) but when does this take place? If this routine maintenance takes place once a week between 3 and 5 am on a Sunday morning, that is unlikely to cause problems whereas the same time could mean that it was down for a whole day once a month. Check it out.

Security – who has access to what?

Moodle holds different sorts of data:

• There is the data Moodle places in the mysql database.
• There is the data that Moodle places in the Moodledata file structure,
• there is the Moodle code itself.

All of these should be protected from unauthorized reading, writing and execution.

Who has what permissions? Who controls this?  How are users authenticated?

Is there a firewall? What level of security will it provide? Don’t think that the higher the level of security the better the service! On the one hand you need to stop porno spam reaching your pupils but there is nothing more frustrating than having to telephone the host every time you want to access a website that isn’t ‘approved’ by them or receive an email from someone the firewall chooses to block.  Anyone with a .mac account seems to be particularly prone to blacklisting.

Are particular ports blocked? For example, some web services and applications (e.g Skype) rely on free access to these ports. Can these ports be made available?

The following are some extra questions for the geeks

What operating system will the server run on? What database will it use?

This is really a question the IT section might want to know. The host server may use Linux, Windows or a Mac platform. This will make no difference to the end user as the Moodle software will stand between the server operating system and the users operating system. However, it might cause some problems for ‘advanced’ users in terms of some additional software they want to integrate. This same group, for similar reasons, may also want to know what the database option is (e.g MySQL, Postgres, MSSQL). Also ask what policy they have on updating PHP.