Moodle 1.9 - Packt Publishing
I love Packt books! I love technology, I love learning, I love well-written books. I LOVE PACKT PUBLISHING!
I have spent a lot of money on their titles and pretty much every penny has been well-spent. All Packt books have a clearly practical bent and are always accessible to the newcomer as well as consistently containing valuable content for the “not-so-noobies”.
The first ever book I bought from them was called “Moodle E-Learning Course Development” written by William Rice IV. I am delighted to say this book has now been updated to cover additions to the latest Moodle release: “Moodle 1.9 E-Learning Course Development“. Read on for my a review of this particular book….
First let me say this…. Packt’s business model rests upon two fairly safe assumptions:
1. There is long tail of interest, both in reading and in writing, easy to follow guidebooks written on very specific software applications.
2. Although we know we can trust Mr. Google to give us the information we need with a flick of the keyboard…. it’s still worth splashing out a bit of cash for the privilege of being able to cuddle up with a nice, cosy well-written book.
The long tail?
Loosely defined, the concept the long tail refers to is that, while the majority of the market is interested in a minority of things (e.g. Hollywood blockbusters) there remains an attractive market of minorities who are interested in the majority of things (i.e. there are STILL plenty of people out there who like the watch the same “off-the-wall” type of films that I like to watch). In an age of online shopping and e-commerce “Love Film” can deliver the minority interest titles to the long-tail of people who are willing to pay to watch them…. and, similarly, Packt have realised that they can run a business by publishing LOTS of technology books aimed at LOTS of minority interest technological readerships. I am sure you can list a number of examples of the same business model being successfully applied to other minority interest areas?
Why books?
Most technologists I speak to will complain that books date too quickly. In an open source world where version upgrades come along more frequently than the number 16 bus… I mean number 17, no 18, no… now it’s 19….. the content of a book is likely to be out of date before it hits the bookshelf in your bathroom. BUT therein lies precisely the point…. You CAN easily read a book on the loo and when you are in bed on a Sunday morning… and when you are waiting for you wife to come out of the dentists…. and the battery doesn’t go flat.
ALSO…. I find I tend to SCAN for specific information when I read online…. or at most I skim long texts to glean an overall sense of the main ideas…. I will always value, however, the opportunity to read extensively from bound paper… It is more comforting to the eye, the posture you adopt when reading a book is more relaxing to the body than the posture you adopt when screen-reading ….and the feel of paper in your hands is just…. bliss. The book is still one of the greatest learning technologies ever invented. And, as for the problem with the rapid “out-dating” of the contents. To be honest, this is not strictly true…. Moodle 1.9 is essentially the same thing today as Moodle 1.6 was…. I would argue that to get an overview understanding of what a software product is about you can safely read a three year-old book to get you going and then use Google search to check out what is meant by the updates you encounter when using your software. BUT…. if a newer book on the product IS available, you are obviously wiser to read the newer bookwhich is talking about the latest version to get you going….. which brings me back onto….
Moodle 1.9 E-Learning Course Development
Like its three-year-old precursor, this book will still usefully introduce a new Moodle Teacher to what Moodle Teaching is about. Rice usefully subdivides Moodle’s resources and activities into three subsections: Static, Interactive and Social and then teaches us systematically how to set up resources and activities in each category.
Moodle differs from many Virtual Learning Environents because it is designed with an emphasis on social interaction, on Social Contruct learning psychology, rather than being a “clothes horse” for a sequence of “text-and-next” learning objects which ARE interactive… but are NOT social. Moodle can really be used as an online equivalent to face-to-face classroom activity. You can set up pair-work, group work, private tutorials with the class tutor and you can use a single, neat webpage (or Moodle COURSE) to set up sequential social learning activities in which learners debate, discuss, make friends, fall out and socially bond and learn from one another. William does make this point clear in this introductory book but he explores this idea much more usefully in his complementary Packt title “Moodle Teaching Techniques“.
The slant of this particular book is clearly oriented towards teaching you, the Moodle newcomer, to practically use the software to set up resources and activities using this software. It trires to teach your to be a Moodle administrator, a Moodle Teacher AND a Moodle end-user. Indeed, if I have to make any criticism of this book it would be that it makes the mistake of trying to be all things to all men. It is too complex and detailed for those who only want to be a Moodle end-user It really rather “skimps” on teaching us how to work with Moodle as an administrator. Moodle networking, for example receives nothing more that a cursory introduction. Packt, I know fill in this gap with their upcoming title: “Moodle Administration“. William’s book, however does serve as a useful introduction for those who wish to use Moodle in the roles of Course Creator and Teacher. It made sense for Rice to write a book which tried to cover all aspects of Moodle when there were no other Moodle books on the Packt bookshelf, but I really think that in the next release of this title, William should ditch much of the content in order to focus in delivering what he is, in fact, best at delivering…. solidly good advice re: Moodle E-Learning COURSE DEVELOPMENT.
In the meantime, I think Packt should commission a nice, simple, easy-to-read book aimed at the (partially technophobic) Moodle End-User (learner) to go alongside their new title on Moodle Administration. Do you think I should offer to write it myself??