Otago Polytechnic Students

I just have a wee question regarding the Moodle shell if you are able to provide me with more information? What is the current status - i.e. when will it be available for public use? Is it expected to be used within the schools as well? In addition to this, what are you expecting from us in terms of our involvement with Moodle? We are interested in building upon the idea of the Moodle shell as our resource so the group and I are beginning to think about ideas related to this. Do you want resources, increased accessibility for youth, design or a different perspective?

re Moodle – BC-ICLR - Attached is a short presentation on how the platform came into being and its main aims

Currently it is in development – it is at proof of concept stage. We are disseminating the concept to key groups (Town Council, Medical Practice, mental health counsellors, College, etc). The next stage is to develop mental health and community project content so that when it is rolled out it will be engaging to the community users.

It is our intention to start the public roll-out from the end of July as we are hosting a major Community celebration day then.

re its use in schools (College). We are working closely with the College (11-16 age range) Currently the collective feeling is that we would not roll it out to students of this age from the perspective of safe guarding. This would require parental permission and there are too many potential pitfalls for us

We are planning content to support parenting skills. We are also considering how best to support students at the time of their leaving the College. Several of them do not cope well with the independence needed and we feel that it is at this point that they are at their most vulnerable and many would benefit from support. Too many move to drugs or alcohol to escape the stresses and often this leads to anxiety and depression. We have just learned from the College that there have been 13 young male suicides in the past 13 years – one per year. This is really shocking and our key focus should be in targeting the College leavers we feel.

So with regard to your involvement. Rather than providing a physical resource to help mitigate the issues your team identifies, we think it would be amazing if you were able to provide some content we can add to our Moodle platform that will help the target group. This might be in the form of a video, podcast, or perhaps some written content that is age appropriate and engaging to the group targeted. Or perhaps it might be advice on how to design engaging content for the age group concerned?

Additionally Jean mentioned to ask you about the lottery grant that is being applied for, are you able to give more insight into this?

This would be for supporting our Thrive Community Hub project – see leaflet and presentation attached. However, there are currently issues regarding the lease on one building and the repairs to another that look like causing a significant delay before we would be in a position to start writing a bid. So the project is not a short term one.