I love Web 2.0 (or whatever you call it).
Do you know what I love about it most? Hosted services. I love that everything I want is now online. I love that I don't have to use a flash drive anymore. I love that I can do all of my lesson planning from any computer or Wifi network I run into. I love that these services don't take up any server space in my school. I love that my students can use Wikispaces and Google Apps from home. I love that they can hand in their homework from their home as well, by uploading it to our free Web-hosted LMS, Edu20.org.
This, to me, is what the freedom of the new Internet is bringing us. So what is wrong with free, hosted Web services? Apparently a lot, depending on who you ask.
According to Julian Ridden, a.k.a. @moodleman, the self-named "Moodle evangelist" from Australia, "from an IT perspective you usually want control. When you host it yourself you know it's up, stable, fast and backed up." This is a statement that I've heard re-iterated at tech conferences. I understand that there's a conundrum for school districts as to what to do with content. There is a growing fear of losing content.
But is this fear realized- the fear of losing content? Is there any evidence of teachers or districts losing content because a free online LMS or Internet service has gone under or gone offline? I ask @moodleman again. He states, "LMS hosting is new so [I] can't give examples. But think about Google videos' collapse. They are now shutting down that service after 3 yrs." I don't know that the education community was reeling too much from Google Videos' collapse.
Working Out of the Box
All I know is what works for me right now, and what is working is a myriad of hosted services, including my LMS. I'll tell you, as a teacher and a technology teacher at that- I want things to work out of the box. I only have 10 weeks a trimester with my kids, and if we get hung up on sites that take forever to load or have a monumental set-up process, it affects the flow of learning. I'm a Mac/Apple guy as well, and perhaps that has biased me, but when you take it out of the box, you plug it in, and it just...works. Shouldn't all technology work so simply?
Now, I can say this about the many tools I use in my classroom, especially our LMS, edu20.org. When I went there, I signed up, added my classes and students, and it just...worked. And has been working for the past 2 years. I can also say this about drop.io, wikispaces, voicethread (to a point), and just about any Mac program except for iMovie '08. I cannot say that for any hosted educational blog service yet, namely edublogs.org or classblogmeister.com.
The Moodle Questions...
Moodle has me curious in three ways:
Curiosity #1: Why not Web-hosted?
The Moodle chatter on Twitter is lighting up like a fireworks display, so something amazingly awesome must be going on. I'm not curious about what Moodle is, I'm curious at the direction that Moodle is asking us to go. It's open-source, which is great, but why, if the direction of the Web seems to be going into hosted services, is Moodle asking us to go backwards and host on our own servers? Does it give us some sort of satisfaction if we can see our own server sitting in a closet? Although Moodle is open-source (yay), isn't it Web 1.0 to host it on my own server?
Curiosity #2: It's look and feel.
I've asked to see examples of what Moodle can look like. Some nice Twitter folks sent in these examples here and there. Should I judge the look of Moodle, based on these? I suspect professional designers did not design those, but tech coordinators did. I very much want my LMS to have a playful, engaging look to it. I want my students to turn on their computers and say "Cool! This is where we do our classwork?" Based on the handful of examples I've seen at these links and at conferences, Moodle does not feel engaging. It feels functional. Maybe function is more important at this juncture- I'll accept that- but if my middle schoolers are not engaged by their online learning environment, then I have lost them right off the bat. Maybe Moodle works better for high school and college environments, where the term "playful" takes a back seat to "work." So: Can Moodle look better than this?
Curiosity #3: Should I Moodle?
Maybe that's what I need to be doing: learning how to develop and adapt my own Moodle for my middle school. This way I can contribute to the Moodle community and help improve the Moodle experience for everyone. A colleague tells me that there is a two-day workshop in the area, if I'd like to learn how to do this. Two days? I spend so much time on my own development, my own curriculum, getting a second Masters, especially for my own classroom, I can't imagine having two days to learn how to develop my own Moodle. And then content managing it, designing it- that sounds like a job for a new-hire. Should I spend this much time on this, when a free LMS already exists and fills most of my needs?
"Technology should bring us to a point where we are doing less management- not more."
A Teacher's Viewpoint on LMS
If this all feels daunting for a technology teacher, then what could one expect from a regular classroom teacher? One of the larger frustrations I hear from colleagues in my Master classes, is that it is taking classroom teachers a long time to adopt Moodle to their classrooms. Is this one of those typical frustrations from Ed-Tech: you can purchase the products, but the teachers won't use it? I suspect that's because the coordinators are still vetting the product, improving it, writing new code, and classroom teachers already spend so much time in professional development, that they want to use technology that is already vetted and ready to go.
From a middle school teacher's standpoint, a teacher who loves technology and loves the Apple environment, I enjoy using all of the cutting edge tools with my students. I also enjoy when things work out of the box. This isn't me being lazy, but only because- it's possible. It is possible to have tools- just work. Technology should bring us to a point where we are doing less management- not more. Isn't that where we will be with Web 3.0?
Web 2.0 Really Works
I already have a LMS: it's fun, engaging, secure, and sure- hosted off site. It took me all of 30 minutes to sign-up, add my students, and the look and feel of Edu20 is automatically engaging. It also works as an educational social network, and I can turn on and off any of the functions that I deem my students aren't ready for, like chatting, messaging, and profiles. So in that way, it's sort of "open-source" (I say that with quotes). It already has all of the functions that I want, I just need to turn off the ones I don't want.
Do I worry about losing my content? Not any more than I worry about Google going under or my school falling into a sinkhole. Why would I trust my servers any more or less than Edu20's servers? Just like any online tool, the more people use it, the better the environment gets and the more safe and reliable it becomes. It already integrates with all of the Web 2.0 tools that I already use, like Google Docs and any embeddable content. The number of users grows every day.
Perhaps a tool like Edu20.org is better suited for a primary school like K-8, I don't know, but when it comes to engagement, ease-of-use, fun, and, yes, control, it just...works. I'm having fun using it, and it doesn't require very much management. That has freed me up to- teach, which is what I do best.
So, to all those out there with content anxiety, I ask: what's wrong with Web-hosted? If we all use it, won't it always be there? Should we be this concerned over controlling our content, or should we be more concerned with creating it?
Thanks to on Ingorrr on flickr for the image of the empty cup.
