For the fast-approaching upcoming assignment for ETEC 565, I’ll be posting a full proposal outlining for the head of my department why we need to adopt the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS), and since my department head doesn’t know anything about Moodle or any other LMS for that matter, an important component of my proposal will be about HOW to implement it.
One of the best things about Moodle is that it’s “free.” The word “free” goes in quotations because as we’ve talked about in our course discussions, much of the open-source content available on the web is free like puppies, rather than being free like beer (thank you John P. Egan) for that analogy). What is meant by that is basically that yes, you can take this program and install it on your computer and you don’t have to pay for it at Costco or Amazon or anything like that. BUT, you’d better be ready to spend some time learning how to take care of this program, because when you have a problem, you can’t call the “geniuses” or tech support to fix your problems for you, you have to figure it out on your own, or rely on your fellow Netizens to help you out of the kindness of their technophilic hards.
Despite knowing there would be some difficulties, I decided that it would be easier to write a proposal if I could say to my boss that I knew the ins and outs of installing and running a Moodle server and could handle the responsibility of doing so, if we were to begin using Moodle in our very small department. The problem with my plan is that I had never installed Moodle before, never set up a server, and had no idea where to begin.
Enter Moodle Docs, which tells poor souls like myself “everything they need to know” about Moodle. Just follow instructions, and I’ll be fine…or so I thought.
So I began my journey.
Hardware requirements…check, and check. Off and running!
Okay…PHP script, don’t know what that is. MYSQL…nope. Apache…hmmm….this may be harder than I thought. Let’s do it anyway! (brilliant, right?)
I found the installation guide for all these strange letters, and learned some more (XAMPP, CVS, htdocs), and after a few missteps dealing with ZIP files and a few unexpected successes, I had stumbled my way into setting up my computer as a server (yay!). Now what?
I created a database by following instructions carefully, then had some issues in trying to make it secure, since my version of windows is in Korean and I was worried that by messing with the user security controls I might lock myself out of the system. I decided to skip that part (I was starting to think maybe I wouldn’t be able to present myself as a Moodle expert in my proposal at this point).
At this point, I came to the line in Moodle docs which instructed, “To run the installer script (install.php), just try to access your Moodle main URL using a web browser, or access http://yourserver/install.php directly.”
Well, “just try to access your Moodle main URL using a web browser” is something that is apparently not yet part of my tech tool skills, because I didn’t know what that meant or how to do it. I searched around, I tried a few suggestions I found, but was stuck in a failure loop, continually coming back to where I started without having advanced at all. The http://yourserver/install.php address led me to an error page, and I found myself at an impasse.
The hope and excitement I’d felt earlier in this process were dissipating fast, and I found myself feeling discouraged and incompetent. I had run out of time I could spend on this side project, and needed to get back to preparing for final exam week coming up – I was reminded of this each time I checked my email to find more of my students’ final essays being submitted. I didn’t have time to learn how to install and run a Moodle server right this second. It would have to wait.
I went home and lamented to my wife how much time I’d wasted on something that wasn’t actually even part of what I needed to do for my proposal, and how frustrated I was. Being the smart cookie that she is, she asked me why I had bothered to take on such a task in the first place, and if I’d expected it to go smoothly. The truth is no, I hadn’t expected it to go smoothly. I thought it would be hard, and be a mess, and that I would fail. I thought I would fail a lot more quickly than I did actually, and that I would be able to move on. The fact that it took me a few hours before I got to a point I couldn’t get past was a small victory in itself.
This whole experience just goes to show that I have a lot left to learn, and gives me good reason to redouble my efforts. In my proposal, I won’t claim I can run the server – I know now that I’m not there yet. I’ll talk about the costs involved in getting someone else to set up and manage a server for us – minimal costs for such a small program. But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up. Being able to run the server on my own would be a great victory, and I’m still determined to do it.
After all, just because a puppy needs taking care of, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy one 🙂