MySandbox.net - David Le Blanc

David LeBlanc's site has some good resources. David is a Burnaby, BC teacher who's completing his PhD at SFU on the topic of Instructional Design for Collaborative Learning in Distributed Environments, using Activity Theory. If you're curious about what that means, check out a 10 minute presentation, in which he uses video and slides to introduce the theoretical framework. David is also involved with a collaborative Moodle server community, Learning Together Apart, which offers some free-enrollment professional development courses for teachers.

Learning Together Apart

A Moodle site/server that "...has been established for professional educators and their learners. Courses are developed, delivered and maintained by individual instructors and supported by the collaborative participation of the members of this community." There are a few free-enrollment professional development courses, so have a look around. If you start with the first item on the menu when you get to the site, "Miscellaneous", you'll find Exploring Moodle Modules, a "Sample Course [that] will show examples of everything that you can do in Moodle".

Dancing with the devil: a view from Blackboard’s European conference

What's new & coming soon in the Blackboard systems? See this blog post written by Niall Sclater, a Moodle proponent who attended the Spring '08 Bb European Conference.

WiZiQ Online Teaching, E-Learning and Live E-tutoring for Education

"A FREE alternative to expensive conferencing tools selling as online teaching/learning software." WiZiQ is virtual classroom that's also a multimedia platform, "equipped with live audio-video communication, chat, content sharing, and session recording capabilities." Includes a whiteboard, video and audio chat, document sharing including PDF, and Microsoft PowerPoint, Word and Excel. Similar to commercial options like Adobe Connect, Webex, Elluminate, Marratech, etc. "WiZiQ brings students and teachers together regardless of the boundaries. With absolutely no cost to join or use its state-of-the-art virtual classroom, WiZiQ is becoming a vital tool in an online teacher’s or a student’s toolkit." Also check out their WiZiQ Live Class Module for Moodle.

Moodle: Using Learning Communities to Create an Open Source Course Management System

In his blog post introducing this paper, Stephen Downes says: "There are many lessons to be learned from the development of Moodle, not the least of which is how the creators used learning communities to help them build a product to support learning communities." The paper was written in 2003, co-authored by the founder of Moodle, so it's a now-historical look at the beginnings of and ideas behind the Moodle open source strategy. (At the time, the paper indicated a sense of Moodle's future: "The system is already proving quite successful...")

Moodle Resources

I've just added this new page to my Resources site. I grabbed and collated all my Moodle entries from other pages so they're now in a single location. Several new resource links added today, too.

Planning a course ~ 3 step approach

from Cornell University. "A 2 page handout (pdf) that quickly addresses the 3 main steps in planning an online course using MOODLE. This is a very broad brush document that indicates an approach to planning."

Moodlerooms

Want to try out Moodle but you need a server/host location? Check out this company. They offer hosting for individuals as well as organizations. They also offer user training, moodle customizations, and more.

"Moodlerooms’ values are all about community, collaboration and communication in the interest of lifelong learning. We seek to build, facilitate and be part of a community of like-minded educators endeavoring to extend and enrich the learning experiences of their students. We also seek to foster a community of educators who understand that teaching is a collaborative thing. We believe teachers and students learn more when they share knowledge with each other, challenge each other, and inspire each other."

Moodle Test Question Importer by Respondus

Their "QTI Importer plug-in allows the importing of test questions that have been exported from Respondus 3.5 in an XML format known as the IMS QTI. Respondus Inc. recently updated this plug-in and will provide maintenance and support of this code in the future" The page I've linked to has FAQs that explain what the Respondus QTI Importer can do -- and what it can’t.

Moodle Playpen

"This site demonstrates the use of Moodle when augmented by community code." Helen Kershaw of Knowplace says, "The best Moodle theme expert in the world. We're not kidding -- this fellow is just the best! On his site you can take a look at the leading, bleeding edge of the latest Moodle versions and manipulate things too!"

Moodle Buzz

A collection of links to "Moodle news and publications from around the world."

knowmoodle

A new community devoted to all things moodle. Links to moodle resources as well as moodle courses and facilitation skills.

Moodle eLearning Course Development

The SchoolForge site has a link to the 73 page book here [5 mb]. Read about the book here.

"A complete guide to successful learning using Moodle, focused on course development and delivery and using the best educational practices. Moodle is relatively easy to install and use, but the real challenge is to develop a learning process that leverages its power and maps effectively onto the content established learning situation. This book guides you through meeting that challenge."

Open Source Project: An LCMS Alternative -- Moodle

My link above is to EdTechPost's description of a funded research project wherein "6 institutions have done pioneering working to investigate the viability of Moodle as an alternative, and have made the resulting reports available for all to see. The project was funded by ... BCcampus." What grabbed my attention was that one of the several offerings by the research group is documentation about how to migrate WebCT 4.1 courses to Moodle.

e-Learning Centre: Using Moodle

"This page provides links to a number of resources that provide you with more information about using the open source course management system, Moodle: reviews and tutorials and other materials on how to use it. Listed in order of entry with most recent first."

Blackboard vs. Moodle

This report is easy to read, with % comparison statistics on various items, as well as graphic comparisons.

View other Management System comparisons via links from my website's Content Management Systems page.