Joined on 12-02-2003
TechSoup Member
I'm using a tool called moodle. I'd like to write a featured article because I think it is such a great tool to build a website for any educational topic or learning environment. You build the site without using Dreamweaver or any HTML tools, which you can use if you must. Is anybody out there in the techsoup or compumentor community using moodle? Reply to jrowe [at] igc [dot] org if you are. I'll put steps to build a moodle site up later. Basically you pay an ISP about $100 a year to host your moodle site. Once your site is started you as the professor just add quizes, lessons and other things like chats and discussions, much like the techsoup website. Mine is http://www.roweclassroom.com ; but it is currently restricted to protect my student's identity. I will have a public site soon with courses on bike maintence etc. check out all the schools that use moodle http://moodle.org/sites
I'd like to find out more about your site, and I might be willing to host it for you in exchange for letting me put some (tasteful) advertising on the site. Our hosting accounts are already set up to run Moodle (it has to be setup, but it's already to go...).
Hi WallyDallas,
We are having a week-long online event on online learning and collaboration tools in the third week of April, and we will be discussing Moodle. Will you ping me off-boards at susan@techsoup.org, so we can get you into the mix? I love when things fortuitously corss paths like that!
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Susan
Joined on 04-04-2005
TechSoup Member
Hi Wally Dallas, Christian SEO and everyone else here.... I am new to the Tech Soup community and am happy to be here. I am enjoying reading everyone's posts. I will be participating in the Online Event on Online Learning Communities during the week of April 18. In fact, I received an email from Susan asking me to give her a couple of sentences about knowplace. Well, yes... I will do this, Susan, I promise!
BUT - meanwhile, I am walking my fingers through the existing posts, so I can catch up with everyone and found the thread titled moodle. It caught my eye, (or rather my fingers) and here i am!
At
http://knowplace.ca we use Moodle for our learning community. We have a free and open weekend series of online short courses about a variety of topics pertinent to online learning and facilitating. Right now (in another window) I am busy facilitating our open weekend called
facilitating in moodle
which we offer every month (i think it is the second weekend of every month)
Anyways, won't take up any more space about moodle here, but just to say if you want to join our open weekend mailing list - here is the link
Open Weekends@knowplace All our activities are hosted in moodle and we help you learn moodle if you want to play with us.
Looking forward to getting to know everyone better as I wander through your posts, and hopefully you will join us in our dicussion about learning communities the week of the 18th. It is a subject which is very close to my heart.
Joined on 04-13-2005
TechSoup Member
We have been using MOODLE for over a year now. We evaluated a range of open source LCMS's before settling on MOODLE as the most feature rich and intuitive product. Each new release or upgrade enhances features and there is a good community which has grown up around it.
I don't want to over-evangelize the product, but it works well on both ends of the process (learners and content creators/instructors).
We do not have any "open" courses at the moment, but are developing some small modules which we will have online soon. I'llpost the link when they are ready for prime time.
Paul
Hi Paul,
be sure to share your experineces with Moodle in our online event next week, in this very forum. We would love to hear them.
Thanks and see you here on Monday!
Best,
Susan
Joined on 04-18-2005
TechSoup Member
Hey WallyDallas,
I am proudly developing a Moodle site for a project as part of my UW Developing & Designing Distance Learning course that I'm enrolled in...I love this LMS...I'm trying to convert my fellow classmates to invest time to find out about Moodle for their projects. Mine too is password access only but if you are interested in viewing it please let me know and I'll email you back with details.
I particularly find the quiz options and communication tools superb! Although not all of the quiz options allow for feedback :-( The interface is attractive and easy to navigate around and the tracking is excellent.
Looking forward to learning from this online discussion as a Computer Instructor for Seattle Goodwill.
Eimear
Joined on 04-18-2005
TechSoup Member
This sounds interesting. Moodle might be the way for our membership organization to put our distance learning course online. This is something we have been thinking about, but did not think the technology was affordable and readily available.
Let us know how it goes for your org.
Joined on 04-04-2005
TechSoup Member
yes - moodle is open source which means that a programmer can manipulate the code. Open source also means that it is free to download, install and use.
There are other open source learning management systems, but this one is the most robust and has the largest community of people helping to improve it.
Joined on 04-14-2005
TechSoup Member
Hi WallyDallas,
I have been experimenting with Moodle myself and trying to create a basic learning website. This is my first time using it and I must admit I am not the most technologically savvy person. It has not been too difficult to use, but...
I am having trouble creating the "lessons" component in an attractive way. When I type in content and it is then displayed, it looks funny and I can't arrange it the way I want. Any hints on how to do that?
I am looking forward to when you will post the steps to set up a Moodle site! Are you doing that during this conference or later on your own?
Nina
Hi everybody,
I have been using Moodle for about 2 years with my English for Architecture and Urban Planning students and with my graduate students in Applied Linguistics. I have six courses nested there and I am really happy with the flexibility of this open-source platform. The url is
http://80.60.224.77/moodle2 Unfortunately, my courses need a password :-(
Nice to be here,
Dafne
Joined on 04-04-2005
TechSoup Member
Bomba writes:
I am having trouble creating the "lessons" component in an attractive way. When I type in content and it is then displayed, it looks funny and I can't arrange it the way I want. Any hints on how to do that?
If you go to http://moodle.org there are many different tutorials and "books" that you can read which will help you. There are also forums where you can ask questions about specific tools. The people there are like you and me and I find that they are often willing to help people.
At knowplace http://knowplace.ca we have open/free weekends once a month where we guide people to use moodle (and various other topics that pertain to helping people get online.)
if you are interested write to carolec@knowplace.ca
hope this helps a bit.
Greetings, all.
I'm another Moodle user. I use it not only to support several non-profit organizations, but also as the delivery vehicle for a doctoral dissertation on learning communities. I'm doing this at a late stage in my career, which has included initiation and oversight of several successful distance education programs, sometimes using commercial platforms, but in one case a custom platform build by the college's computer applications department.
Even from this perspective, Moodle looks very good. Price, suitability for small web sites, robust features, and its special focus on sociability in its discussion forums are particular strengths.
Were I to pick out one feature that stands out, it would be its ability to email all posts in the discussion forums directly to participants, at the choice of the participants or the moderator. The e-mail message will include a reply button, so the recipient can go directly into that Moodle forum and post an immediate reply. A moderator can "force" a forum so that everyone automatically gets e-mail posts, or can allow participants the option.
There are many virtual communities that reluctantly use listservs instead of the more flexible asynchronous forums (like this one) because direct e-mail seems to prompt more responses. Moodle (or other platforms that include this particular feature) solves that problem very neatly.
Joined on 11-15-2004
TechSoup Member
How does this tool compare with Blackboard?