[Air-l] Moodle conference

[Derek McMillan]

In the Moodle

In the past “Virtual Learning Environments” were regarded with suspicion 
by teachers as a sci fi concept in which teachers are replaced with 
computers. After attending Moodlemoot ’06 at the Open University, I can 
honestly say that Moodle, the open source course management system, is 
actually whatever the teacher wants it to be.

The course seminars included teachers from diverse disciplines from 
Science to English to Music and of course ICT who all used Moodle to 
teach in the way which suited them.

Although the system is based on a social constructivist model of 
education, teachers frequently start out using it to replicate 
traditional classroom activities like essay-writing, feedback and 
redrafting or quizzes/tests with the slight difference that these are 
self-marking and pupils get instant feedback. Teachers only then go on 
to some of the more unusual features of Moodle like Wikis, blogs, 
asynchronous discussion groups and podcasting.

And because it is Open Source free software, teachers can contribute to 
the future design of Moodle without some acquisitive corporations we 
could mention seeking to block them under the pretext of “business secrets”.

Moodle is now used by over 100000 registered users, including the Open 
University. It is free to download and use and many schools and local 
authorities who have poured hundreds of thousands of pounds into the 
coffers of Microsoft are keen to find free software.

If you want to find out more there is a website which talks about the 
conference and demonstrates the program at the same time. It is called 
http://moodlemoot.org/ and all of the conference is available as audio 
or video files. I recommend the audio file because the video quality 
will depend on the quality of your computer.


	
	
		
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