Moodle

From LIS 460 Summer 2007

1 About Moodle
2 Using Moodle in schools
3 Remaining questions
4 References and more information

About Moodle

Moodle is an Open Source course management software package designed to help educators create online learning communities. It is scalable (can be used for one class or an entire university) and free to download. It runs on any operating system that runs PHP (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Unix, and more). There are more than 200,000 registered users who speak 75 languages and come from 175 countries. Through Moodle, you can create

blogs
wikis
quizzes
surveys
chat
content resources and databases
RSS feeds for a course, blog, forum, etc.

The word Moodleis an acronym that stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment.

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Moodle's philosophy

Moodle call its philosophy "social constructionist pedagogy". Moodle tries encourage teachers to focus on what learners need in order to learn well--on learning from the learner's point of view. Moodle believes that students also contribute to their own learning process. There are four main concepts behind Moodle's philosophy:

Constructivism
Constructionism
Social constructivism
Connected and separate.

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Trying out Moodle

Their homepage was created in Moodle, so you can see one Moodle site in action. They also offer demonstrations so you can see how the site works. You can see working sites of people who have registered their sites with Moodle (28,000+ sites from 187 countries at last count).

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Modules and plug-ins

Users can download many modules and plug-ins. These applications are available in several languages. They increase Moodle's functionality by allowing you to, for example,

create podcasts using Moodle
change graphic themes
assign students a task and then grade it using Moodle
browse Moodle docs offline
place your users on a Google map
link to Second Life.

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Using Moodle in schools

Moodle seems like a good all-in-one product for schools. Since it is flexible and can be used to create blogs, wikis, quizzes, and other assignments, students and teachers will only have to get used to one interface. Some ideas for using Moodle:

post a list of resources
create Web pages for classes, class sessions, projects
create a school-wide blog or a class blog
submit student work online
take quizzes online
make a discussion board
post the syllabus and class assignments
create online student journals
handle your e-mail listservs
create pages of shared resources for different grade levels
share resources between schools
post a tour of the school library (audio or maybe a slideshow)
have a student art show
showcase other student work
have students submit answers for an contest in the library (anything from "guess the number of jellybeans" to "find the answer to a piece of trivia")
publish an online student newspaper
display sports scores
post podcasts of school events
create a "what's happening" page for parents.

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Remaining questions

Q: What kind of support does Moodle offer?

A: They have a "free support" section on their website. However, it looks to be mostly Moodle courses that you can take online once you register on their site. I do not know how comprehensive or how helpful this is.

Q: How much server space does it take up?

A: For Windows, you download a 53.2 MB .zip file. However, the Moodle FAQs recommend having a dedicated server if you're going to use it at a school-wide level.

Q: What if students don't have email addresses? Can you create a log in for them?

A: Yes, apparently you can. See this blog for a creative solution using non-working email addresses.

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