Thursday, March 12, 2009

Why Moodle

Why use Moodle to enhance classroom learning? It's a question that some ask. Here are some of the responses I found "out there" using Google. This is open-ended...what I'm really looking for is how YOU are using Moodle with your students.
  1. Enable greater communication and collaboration in the classroom, anytime/anywhere (Source).
  2. Enables safe modelling of social networking tools (e.g. blogs, wikis, online chat, RSS, audio/video podcasting).
  3. Easy sharing of TeacherTube,, YouTube, Google Videos embedded in Moodle web pages.
  4. Allows for online/offline assignments, individual and group work, online assessment that can be graded or ungraded
  5. Central location parents, students, teachers and other can access.
  6. Access can be controlled to safe-guard copyrighted items used under fair use
  7. Calendar of classroom-related events
  8. Paperless assessment via randomless quizzes, uploaded student documents with option for teacher comments.
  9. Modules that include questionnaire, photo galleries to collect and share information with constituents.
  10. The Moodle environment includes a platform for several features including: class schedule, assignments, participant profiles, chats, wikis, an interactive glossary, e-mail, lessons that the teacher can create, quizzes, surveys, and workshops. Chats, forums, wikis, and workshops enable students to work collaboratively.

    The workshops, which include an adaptable rubric, allow students to engage in peer feedback as well as self-assessment. Wikis, forums, and chats serve as useful platforms for brainstorming, discussions, and debates.

    On the teacher’s side of Moodle, there is a platform for creating and delivering lessons, which the students can access independently, or in groups. Teachers can also post resources, including text or links to webpages that the students can use to complete their assignments and for further independent learning. Feedback for any task can be given in plain text or HTML. There are free help resources, as well as collaborative discussion forums among other professionals using Moodle, including the ability to share courses with other teachers. (Source)
  11. Easy to create electronic portfolio for each student.
  12. Use Moodle as the ever-evolving technology that adapts to fit ever-changing new definitions of literacy (Source)
  13. Allows for the integration of a wide range of resources. These include any kind of text-based or html-formatted documents, multimedia resources such as graphics, video or audio (e.g., MP3 files), SCORMs (Goodwin-Jones, 2004), PowerPoint, Half-Baked exercises (, or Flash-based applications.(Source)
What else?

Be sure to read the following Moodle articles...
  1. Moodle Tips Roundup - a list of tips I've picked up in my Moodle journey.
  2. Doing the Moodle Mambo
  3. Moodle Habitudes: Constructing Online Learning Environments
  4. Book Review - Moodle 1.9: E-Learning Course Development by William Rice
  5. Why Moodle? A few reasons culled from around the Web using Google
  6. Moodle-izing Education (due for publication in Education World...find it here in mid-March, 2009)

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1 comment:

gdunc said...

Saves paper!!

How many assignments do you print? Wouldn't it be nice to receive a digital copy?

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