Using Moodle to build an SIS (or why bother?)

This week I had a breakthrough with a proposed Student Information System that I'm working on (that I've been asked to work on). We'll be adopting Moodle for our teacher pages this year. As I experiment with it to see how it will work for the teachers, I found much more uses for Moodle than just the teacher pages.

We could actually use it for a student information system (SIS). And it's open source - FREE!!

Moodle already has an attendance module but our district's Moodle doesn't have it so I provided a workaround. Using the database module, I was able to build a decent searchable attendance database. Our office could just pull up one page to get all the attendance information and can even edit it if an absent student turned up later.

With the success of the searchable attendance database, I considered how I might build a student database. Since Moodle is secure, this would be an ideal setup that could be accessed from anywhere there is an Internet connection. I was able to build a database that looked pretty good to me.

Here's my dilemma.

I'm totally psyched about Moodle and its capabilities. When I try to convey this excitement to some of my co-workers, they say they don't understand why I would put in the time and effort when there are commercial products available out there. I don't understand why they don't appreciate my efforts to save money for my schools. I am the Technology Coordinator, after all.

How do I react when I am proactive about improving technology for our school without spending a lot of money...but I get "shot down" with my efforts? And to top it off, these comments are from the very people who asked me to find an SIS for the schools!

Am I taking this too personal?

Moodling with Mac

I've just started working with Macs this year and it's been quite a delight. Actually my very first computer was a Mac with a whopping 4MB of memory!

My schools use a combo of Windows and Mac computers so as the Technology Coordinator, I needed to get back up-to-date. Whoa Nelly! I've been missing out!

It felt a bit daunting last night as I downloaded Moodle4Macs 4 to my MacBook so that I could play with Moodle as an admin. Unlike Windows, the process was much smoother than expected. I didn't get to play as much as I wanted, though, before my head hit the keyboard at 1am so I'll be venturing further into this great new tool for education today.

Stuffit - arrgh!

Using WinZip in Windows is fairly easy if I just want to open a folder. So is Stuffit in Mac.

However, I'm having trouble getting the files to work properly after I've unzipped them with Stuffit. I had the same trouble with WinZip at first but then I figured it out. Maybe that's what will happen with Stuffit too.

Dealing with mySQL is proving to be a slight roadblock. I can't get into the database I created! Ack!

But therein lies the challenge of the learning curve. I'll come out of this on the other end knowing more than I did yesterday....once I figure it all out!

I'm so ready to set up my Joomla education template!

Journey with Joomla

After the years of light (but laborious) web building, God has sent this wonderful tool called Joomla.

For someone that has a difficult time staying organized, it definitely looks like the answer to my prayers!

My summer will be filled with learning Joomla and using it as the tool to build our schools' websites!