I think it's time IÂ became more informed about this increasingly popular Learning Management System.
I've been hearing a lot of buzz about Moodle, a widely used free, open source, public domain courseware application, for the last year or two, but my interest in it has been limited because I am more experienced and comfortable with the traditional paid application model. My main concern is that Moodle is open source software.
Concerns about not having a traditional vendor relationship and support arrangements to rely on make me reluctant to seriously consider open source software, particularly in a smaller institution such as mine. For example, I assume we would need to dedicate a couple support specialists to develop the expertise to act as sole support for the app, and this could be a real resource stretch. But this is an uninformed assumption. I imagine I may like some of what I learn if get a better understanding of how these solutions really work.Â
Moodle.org
I'll start my self education on this topic by looking around Moodle's main home on the web – Moodle.org. This site is simple and well organized, and it is built using the Moodle application. It is organized into 6 main sections: About, News, Support, Community, Development, and Downloads. Here's a few brief points about some of these site sections:Â
- About: The About Page gives a quick overview of the application and it's history. Here I learned that “Moodle can be installed on any computer that can run PHP, and can support an SQL type database”, and that “the word Moodle was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment”.Â
- Community: The Community page provides access to a wide variety of resources, including Forums, Events, lists of Registered Sites (institutions who have chosen to share the fact that they are Moodle users), and a Moodle Jobs database (“Moodle-related positions world-wide”).
- Development: “The main development of Moodle is led by the core team at Moodle.com, helped by hundreds of other developers around the world” (more on Moodle.com below). The Development Page includes access to the development forum, Developer documentation, a Moodle Roadmap, a Tracker app where you can “see who is working on what, and contribute to any conversation”. This page also provides access to the full source code, and links to modules and plug ins.
- Downloads: This page is where you'll go to pull down Moodle software packages and plug-ins (available for Windows Server or Desktop and Mac OS X).
- Forums: I think it's pretty interesting that Moodle.org's forums are delivered in the form of “courses” right on the site (note that you have to register in each forum ‘course' to use it). The forums are grouped on this page into three areas: a support and development forum for discussion between between users and developers, the primary forum for Moodle users to communicate with each other, and then all other forums (there are a lot, some in English and many in other languages).Â
- Support: The Support Page has links to Documentation, Forums, Books & Manuals, and Commercial Services. I've heard good things about how effective the support community is at helping to support the application.
Moodle.com
Moodle.com is an official partner site to Moodle.org, and provides a range of additional information and resources, such as:
- Consulting: This page provides links to dozens of qualified Moodle consulting specialists across the world, by country.
- Themes: Professionally designed Moodle themes, to give your Moodle installation your own look and feel.
- Training: Lists of Partners who provide training.
- Certification: Lists of Partners who can provide certification, based on a rigorous and highly-regarded assessment program.
Next Week
This is a good start, but I've only scratched the surface. We'll continue this learning journey next week, as I do more research, and share knowledge I gain through continued browsing, dialogue with collegues, reader responses, and more. Please come back and join us.Â
If you are an experienced Moodle user or administrator, or just someone with informed observations to make about the application or about open source software, please comment and share your insights and experiences. Thanks! Â
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A special welcome to readers of Microsoft’s Teacher Tech Blog!
I’ve been selected as one of 5 education technology bloggers to guest post this week on Microsoft’s Teacher Tech blog. They published this post on Friday announcing the 5 chosen bloggers and the series of posts we'll be doing. My post, “5 More Internet Technologies Educators Should Be Aware Ofâ€, was published on the site on Tuesday, May 4. Please stop by and take a look around this fun and informative blog site.
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 Â
Etudes.org – a free, hosted Course Management System
Learning about Lecture Capture Technology
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Moodle are able enough to take a position as a top quality elearning website. Apart from those standard functions there are a variety of plug-ins available which can be incorporated with Moodle to create the website even more extensive – plug-ins can be of little application characteristics.
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We have been using Moodle for several years. I ran a free, 9-part training course last summer that covers all the tools in the pre-2.0 release. All the sessions were recorded and I have a Moodle course page at our site (open to guests) that has mini-tutorials on each tool individually. Feel free to stop in and take a look around. Just look for the Moodle for Teachers course in the course listing.
Moodle has a bit of a learning curve but you can focus on just a few of the tools and get started and add the less well used ones in to your course as the years go by. That is what I did to teach myself. Our program is completely run by volunteer home school parents. I train them in and they build courses and teach from them.
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Thanks for the feedback Joseph, and the great resources – I’ll be checking them out right away!
great synopsis of the Moodle.org structure. I can verify that the community is both active and very supportive in the forums. Not to mention there are other sites throughout the community (independent of Moodle.org) where you can meet other users, find resources and connect with collaborators (moodletutorials.org, Moodlecommons.org, moodlemeet.ning.com just to name a few).
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I had been reading about moodle for a few months before I actually decided to give it a try. I can’t live without it since then, students love it too! It seemed impossible at first, but now it’s a breeze. I have even taught teachers not into technology how to use it. The possibilities are endless. Apart from the activities that moodle offers , you can also create activities using other applications and add them to your course. For younger students, I have found many game generators where I can create games and add them to my courses. Moodle has also helped me reduce preparation time. I simply choose questions from the question bank and add them to a quiz – computer-based or traditional pen and paper.
Good luck!