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  • My Google Cover Letter - GMoodle

    By Joshua Kim July 8, 2010 8:39 pm EDT

    Dear Google. Thank you for this opportunity to apply for the Vice President of Global Higher Education. Rather than talk about my experience, strengths, etc. etc., I'd like to use this opportunity to lay out my plans for Google Higher Education in my first year at the company.

    Within One Year, Google Will:

    --Offer a free Google Moodle (GMoodle) learning management system (LMS) to any educational institution.

    --GMoodle will be re-developed to include full integration with Google Docs and Google Apps for Education. GMoodle becomes another module in the Google Apps for Education suite.

    --The re-development of GMoodle will allow faculty and students the choice to make any course content private (only course members), open to their institution, or open to the world. Learners will be able to easily attach Creative Commons copyright protections to any piece of content loaded into a GMoodle course.

    --Tools will be provided to allow seamless automatic migration from commercial LMS vendor platforms into GMoodle.

    Why Create GMoodle?

    --Google's mission has always been to "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." A great deal of the world's best information is locked up in closed and siloed learning management systems. Learners and educators have no good way of easily sharing their course content and learning interactions with the world.

    --GMoodle aligns with Google's ambitions to utilize technology improve lives. There is no more important goal than that of spreading and improving education. A free GMoodle, when combined with the Google Apps for Education, will allow education institutions to focus investments on their core competencies of teaching and learning. By reducing the fixed costs of providing high quality, Web based education, GMoodle and Google can be part of the movement to bend the educational cost curve and insure that high quality learning is not restricted to the most affluent.

    What is the Business Case for GMoodle:

    --GMoodle offers the greatest ROI in the educational space. Moodle is a stable and mature open source platform to build on. The architecture of Moodle lends itself to efficient integration with the existing Google Apps offerings.

    --For a relatively modest investment, Google will offer a system that insures that the company's services are critical and relevant to the everyday lives and tasks of learners and educators.

    Thank you again for this opportunity to apply for the position of Vice President of Global Higher Education. I look forward to further detailing the specifics of how I'd lead the GMoodle effort in my first year of employment at Google.

    Yours truly,

    Joshua Kim

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Comments on My Google Cover Letter - GMoodle

  • Moodle 2
  • Posted by Colin Matheson , Ed Tech at Carmel USD on July 8, 2010 at 11:15pm EDT

  • Great Concept!
    Check out the new Moodle Course Hub concept in Moodle 2. It will create ways for people to share content and courses across the world.

  • Really?
  • Posted by Jim groom on July 8, 2010 at 11:15pm EDT

  • * Google's mission has always been to "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." *

    I always thought that was the Internet Archive's mission, I thought Google wanted to turn a profit.

  • But it's Open Source
  • Posted by Brian Mulligan , Open Learning Coordinator at Institute of Technology Sligo on July 9, 2010 at 8:00am EDT

  • I probably don't fully understand the mechanics of Open Source development. I would worry that we would have 2 versions of Moodle, the regular one and the Google one. Google state that they are committed to Open Source (eg. by making Wave an OS system), and so, I presume, would have no problem with contributing to an OS project managed by someone else. I would suggest that they just need to contribute to the Moodle code so that with some additions it integrates 'seamlessly' with Apps and that would do the trick.

    Can someone enlighten me on this?

    Brian

  • already done
  • Posted by Doug Holton , Assistant prof at Utah State University on July 9, 2010 at 4:00pm EDT

  • I think there already is a plugin for google apps integration in moodle.

    Also, as someone else pointed out, an issue with google making its own distribution of moodle is that moodle is open source, and the google apps are not.

    Anyway, you also can do a lot with a course also using google apps and other web 2.0 tools outside an LMS.

  • Received an offer yet?? ... and Google knol
  • Posted by Sloane Thompson , Director of Career Development at IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI on July 9, 2010 at 5:30pm EDT

  • Hi Joshua, Have you received an offer to interview and/or for the position yet? I think you've got some great ideas!! Also, what are your plans for integrating/expanding Google knol? I enjoy reading your blogs! ~Sloane Thompson, IUPUI, Indianapolis, IN

  • Plan B
  • Posted by John Hill , Academic Advisor on July 9, 2010 at 7:00pm EDT

  • That sounds like a great business plan for a start up as well. If Google were serious about the move, that's a pretty aggressive plan.

  • Why Moodle? Why not something better?
  • Posted by JaQuinton , Student at Georgia Southern on July 9, 2010 at 7:00pm EDT

  • Google should definitely look into moving more into the high education space providing LMS, Course Manage, and pretty much everything Blackboard has come to dominate. Moodle is great but I believe Google has the potential to build something even greater. Something that combines the best aspects of every LMS, the communication interfaces of the best social networks, and much better apps for teachers to use.

    I can see Google building something that does all this and replace the traitorous Ning.

  • Please, Google, hire this man!
  • Posted by communications instructor , Associate Professor, Communications at Hawkeye Community College on July 13, 2010 at 2:00pm EDT

  • I agree with Joshua Kim's assertion that "A great deal of the world's best information is locked up in closed and siloed learning management systems. Learners and educators have no good way of easily sharing their course content and learning interactions with the world." With all of the emphasis on portfolio development, it is somewhat ironic that these materials are so inaccessible, since they demonstrate our skills and contain the content for our courses.

    For a number of years, before and even after I began using WebCT, Blackboard and now Angel, I posted my course materials online, using a faculty page on the college website. About a dozen times a year I would get an email from a stranger who wanted to use one of my power points, or a writing assignment, or a worksheet. They had found my public website thanks to a Google search. That is not possible now, since I use an Angel website for each class. It is not all that easy to share those materials with my on-campus colleagues, either.

    I also agree that the idea of a Google run Moodle would fill out Google Aps for Education nicely. One of the frustrating realities for us at the Community College level is the high cost of the CMS, even as the colleges look to hire more adjuncts to teach--to save money.

  • Just a Summer of Code Project away ...
  • Posted by Dirk Herr-Hoyman , eLearning System Architect on July 30, 2010 at 4:00pm EDT

  • I think Joshua is onto something here. If you could tap into the community spirit of Moodle and bring in the great modular eLearning tools within Google Apps, that would be something indeed. But, rather than building on Moodle proper, I say go for it and leapfrog the technology into a next generation app. That's what Martin D did way back in the beginning (circa 2000) when he dabbled with PHP/MySQL, after tiring of WebCT, and came up with Moodle.

    I used to think that putting together a web-based eLearning system was hard, that it would take years and years to put together, this was like 2002. And then I saw what D2L did, with just a few recent grads (another WebCT killer) and a few years later here comes Moodle picking up steam. Ok, so now I ask, why not use the Google App suite and it's various APIs? The heart of an eLearning system is a discussion forum and quiz tool. Surely the progress Google has made in AJAX and what's happened in Gdocs, Gmaps, and Gvideo (that's You Tube) can be leveraged. Heck, this stuff is getting used all over the place in higher ed already, with or without the help of central IT. And Google keeps running their Summer of Code grants, seeding both good ideas and the next generation of software developers.

    So Joshua, how about changing your application to be Team Lead of a Summer of Code 2011 project to produce GMoodle? This would mean you'd have to get some of the core Moodlers involved, but hey I'm sure you could get a few to go along for the ride. Take the best ideas from Moodle and recast them into Gapps, using the best new talent (who haven't been tainted by preconceived software notions) to crank out a prototype. And your proposition would be that at the end of this SOC 2011 project, you'd have a proof of concept which the edu community could kick the tires on. If it's good, it will take off in an exponential growth. If not, well I imagine there would be some good ideas that someone could use.

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