MoodleMoot is the name given by the international Moodle community to the Moodle conference programme. MoodleMoot Ireland took place on the 10th September 2004. I couldn't make it to Ireland so over a period of days I've watched the movie instead. There are many interesting presentations and discussions in the full event but in this article, with one exception, I am going to concentrate on the contribution to the conference by Moodle's creator, Martin Dougiamas. It's worth visiting the MoodleMoot site and if prompted login as guest. The edited streaming video of MoodleMoot is nearly 4 hours long so I hope you find my highlighted timecodes useful.
Martin Dougiamas had a virtual presence at the conference through a video link to Australia. He had two slots during the day. In the first he gave a fairly detailed review of background, philosophy and technical infrastructure of Moodle. In the second slot be was one member of a panel answering questions. As it turned out most of the questions were directed at Martin! I have found this particularly helpful in giving me a more complete picture of Moodle. In the rest of this article I have distilled out some of the main points that were made by Martin. I have done this following a format first started by Derek Morrison in his UKeU: The Movie article, by giving you the read time markers from the video and a very brief statement of what you can see and hear at these points.
AT
2:01:40 Martin's overview of the development process and why Moodle is not like a traditional software company.
2:03:20 The hopes and dreams of Moodle. An ever growing number of users circa 1832 registered users in 92 countries. These range from the very large to very small, e.g. one student and one teacher
2:04:45 Moodle modular structure makes it possible to plugin different bits and pieces. Easy customisation.
2:09:00 Question raised about Moodle. I have oftened wondered. See the answer here!
2:09:45 What can we expect in the future from Moodle?
2:10:05 At this point Martin looks at the importance of the Moodle forums. This is one of the key support features designed into Moodle.
2:13:20 How do new features get into Moodle and what about the tracking of bugs? See 3:41:35 for an anecdotal acccount of how the bugtracker worked for one person.
2:15:35 There is a business arm to Moodle, called moodle.com. Hear how this fits in?
2:18:05 Moodle moves forward at speed with no little thanks to the external developers ie people giving back to the wider community
2:20:20 Who are the Moodle partners?
2:23:20 With so much development taking place with Moodle how is it all managed and controlled. At this point Martin explains the importance of CVS and how it helps protect…
2:26:25 against possible software patents being taken out.
2:27:45 Sourceforge is the place where you get the Moodle parts. An understanding of this is required if you are the system administrator of Moodle.
2:35:45 Martin's final part of his presentation in his first slot was to cover the very important aspect of the testing of Moodle.
Questions were then raised by the conference audience.
2:37:30 The presentation demonstrated how much energy that Martin has for Moodle. This prompted the question of What would happen if Martin gets bored (or even worse) with Moodle? There are some reassuring words in the answer.
The final event of the conference was the panel session where Martin featured a lot. Fast forward the video here.
3:24:05 Are WebCT and Blackboard quaking in their boots because of the emergence of Moodle? Martin gives a measured and reasonable response.
3:25:45 What features and further developments do you see in Moodle particularly to support the social/constructivist pedagogy? An interesting answer to this one.
3:29:15 Martin was asked to elaborate on how Moodle is dealing with issues of accessibility.
3:33:23 A conference member made the arresting statement 'Wiki is dead, long live markdown'. I have to admit Martin's answer did not mean too much to me until I carried out a Google search to find out what is markdown!
3:34:23 Explain how, in its present form Moodle supports the social/constructivist pedagogy. So, does Moodle cut the mustard. Listen to the answer.
A number of questions were raised about support issues, not directly to Martin and you can listen to the last part of the conference to hear the responses. However I will conclude with the anecdote that I referred to earlier in this article, from Dr Barry McMullin of Dublin City University.
3:41:35 You can find the anecdote at this time point.
Again, we think Moodle is worth watching and we think its takeup and influence is likey to grow a view reinforced Dr Howard Miller, the University of Glasgow delegate who announced in a 'news flash” at timecode 2:58:50
“The University of Glasgow adopts Moodle as its centrally supported VLE”.
Now Glasgow is a large, major league, research intensive institution which has been biding its time in the VLE stakes, so we should pay attention.
Enough said!
