This was my last week teaching Full Sail/emdtms’ LMO (Learning Management Systems) course and I couldn’t end our time together without a little conversation about Moodle. Enjoy.
Moodle is not a verb, or is it?
I’ve been hearing about Moodle at ed/tech conferences for longer than I can remember. In the early years it seemed to be an “under the radar” project bringing together the open source tech community and educators. More recently, with district administrators making decisions to roll-out Moodle, the concept seems to have shifted from a roll-your-own thing to something imposed upon teachers with little training, assistance or attempts to generate buy-in. In either case the platform has appeared to be largely text-driven and visually challenging. Wikipedia has an excellent overview of Moodle at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle.
The following video is intended to help those unfamiliar with Moodle’s module-mentality (and also for big fans of Legos!):
This next video is a good overview of the Moodle interface that includes a few commons tasks teachers might do:
For those curious for more in-depth training I located a course available through Lynda.com at
http://www.lynda.com/home/DisplayCourseN.aspx?lpk2=47547
Other tutorials are available at: http://moodle-tutorials.blogspot.com/search/label/Moodle%20Video%20Tutorials and
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Teacher_documentation.
One of the most important thing to remember about learning platforms, whether we have a say in their roll-out or not, is that it’s an opportunity to enlarge your reach with your students and that it’s your input that changes these things from being just tools to becoming learning opportunities.
Please review these videos and info and come to our Wimba session ready to talk about Moodle.
Sources:
* moodle logo. http://docs.moodle.org/en/License retrieved on 12/13/2009
* youtube video/image: Moodle explained with LEGO short version posted by moodlefan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XPZl6LLvik retrieved on 12/13/2009
* Youtube video: What’s Moodle? posted by jenericjarvis. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jY9KcHwIWI&feature=related retrieved on 12/13/2009
