Moodle or not to Moodle

[alan-d]

We have various systems inplace that allow things like room booking, access from home, shared areas, forums etc. These have built up over time and are working fine.

However, I'm thinking it may be time to make all these tools & resources available from one place on an intranet.

Moodle or Sharepoint are looking like the way to go, but I have no experience of either.

Anyone got any comments on either system, such as eases of setup, ease of use for both admin and users.
What do you use it for? ie what facilities are available etc.

Sharepoint I could probably run from one of my existing servers as with moodle. I also have an old server that ran NT4 stored in the depths of my storeroom (Can't remember the specs), Would moodle run happily on that?

I'm new to both these technologies so when replying speak slowly and don't use words of more than 2 sylables.

[GrumbleDook]

Being honest ... and as unbiased as I can ... I would seriously recommend that not only do you look at various school sites that have been set up with either of these ... but actually visit the school to see how they are being used.

There are obviously technical differences ... but it is how they are used that is key.

[Geoff]

Well the current way things are heading here at the moment are:

MRBS for room booking.
Moodle for VLE stuff (accessable externally too).

On the ToDo list is:

Some sort of CMS for the main school Intranet/Website. Probably Joomla/Mambo/etc.
Squirrelmail for email for kids. OWA for staff.
For external files access I'm playing with IIS + WebDav. I'm a little concerned about the security situation though.
IRM at some point for Helpdesk/fault logging/Inventory.

Now apart from the external file access and OWA this is all going on one LAMP based box setup with IP based virtual hosts. A non-descript Dell P4. Its not even stressed. I suspect the reverse proxy will die long before the webserver here in school will.

I expect your old NT4 box will make a fine LAMP based Moodle server. Try it and see.

[alan-d]

Being honest ... and as unbiased as I can ... I would seriously recommend that not only do you look at various school sites that have been set up with either of these ... but actually visit the school to see how they are being used.

There are obviously technical differences ... but it is how they are used that is key.

Yep - thought of that - just looking for a local one

Geoff - somehow I just knew you'd use big words and strange abbreviations I should have mentioned I'm a Linux free zone at the mo ie know nothing about it - but I'll have a look at your suggestion

Basically - externally we are pretty much set up with BGFL+ and our portal - I'm looking to create a common site internally that could expand to other uses as and when required.

[russdev]

we are looking into moodle now to see if sutable for us

will link to leas single sign on so users only have to remember one password

russ

[Geoff]

Geoff - somehow I just knew you'd use big words and strange abbreviations Sad I should have mentioned I'm a Linux free zone at the mo ie know nothing about it Sad - but I'll have a look at your suggestion Smile

You wont get respectable performance out of that NT4 box then. You'll need to upgrade it to w2k(w2k3? Is it a P3?) server and hope for the best. IIS + PHP doesn't jibe too well, Windows is terrible at context switching.