Review of the Moodle CMS (Content Management System) for Educators

[mandy]

Why use Moodle?

One reason I recommend Moodle is because it provides a full variety content of activities that teachers can add to a course. Moodle has more than 100 gradable activity modules and plugins such as chats, forums, and tests. While other gradable modules, such as flashcards, podcasts, LAMS, and galleries, are not included in the standard package, they can be installed as modules later. Moodle also allows administrators to back up and restore courses. Once created by a teacher, a course can be reused in subsequent years with little effort.

Another reason to recommend Moodle is because of its philosophical foundations. Moodle is designed with a social constructionist philosophy, a belief that people actively construct new knowledge as they interact with their environment, and that learning is more effective when you're constructing something that others experience. In other words, collaborative learning and discovery are at the foundation of this CMS application. You may not agree entirely with this philosophical foundation -- I do not -- but educators in the sciences and in the humanities can accept much of this philosophy since the social constructionist philosophy lies somewhere in between the strict qualitative and quantitative extremes...

full article: http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/01/22/170214