Are you a teacher and / or Moodle aficionado? Can you help Christchurch students and schools?

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeAs you will be aware the earthquake in Christchurch, NZ has disrupted a huge amount of schools and students. Jacqui Land of Papanui High School is working with Moodle in Schools to find ways of reducing the long-term impact on students' learning, and has put out the call for help below. If you are able to help, please contact Jacqui Land or Margot McKeegan, or you can drop me a line and I will pass on your message.

The following was originally posted at Moodle in Schools- By Jacqui Land of Papanui High School on Mon, 07/03/2011 - 18:33

The GCSN (Greater Christchurch Schools Network) are trying to get some material up onto a Moodle 2 site asap to help schools and students who have been affected by the recent Earthquake. The idea is to upload material and courses onto this site and then share them with other schools via the Moodle in Schools HUB.

We are urgently looking for either people to upload the material onto courses on the GCSN Moodle site OR people who have lots of resources and / or good ideas. (The material needs to carry a Creative Commons license and be freely available to distribute to other schools).

If you are able to help we will be writing / producing courses from 9.30 am on Tuesday 8th March until Friday 11th March at South Learning Centre, 66 Colombo Street (cnr Hunter Tce and Colombo St), Christchurch. You do not need to commit to the whole time, but if you can spare an hour or so sometime during this period please feel free to pop in. You do not need to be a Moodle expert, we can provide training / help. Alternatively, we can provide you with access to a course and you can add content from your school or home.

Image via Wikipedia

Moodle in New Zealand Schools (Jacqui Land - Moodle Moot NZ 2010)

Image by hazelowendmc via Flickr

This session was taken by Jacqui Land (Jacqui is a teacher at Papanui School in Christchurch), who opened by talking about the Moodle community, and the fact that it is open, caring and sharing. The Moodle in schools site is an NZ Ministry of Education initiative, and a lot of the development has been done by Catalyst.

Jacqui gave a 'guided tour' of the site. The Moodle in Schools home page has a variety of forums, screencasts, sample courses, school stories and a demonstration. You can access the site also to see which other schools are using Moodle which could be a good way to network, and possibly share ideas, and even courses (that are all categorised on the site). You can add videos and other resources for the Moodle in Schools community. The sample courses resource is pretty useful as you can go and get inspiration for your own course design, or some courses can be zipped and download the course (but it has to be used under the Creative Commons licensing requirements).

It is well worth having a look at the site if you are planning to implement Moodle in your school, and you can pose questions to schools, IT folk, etc who have already made the leap.