Moodle Testimonials

The following is a collection of testimonials on the use of Moodle in K-12 settings. You can add your own testimonial by clicking on the EDIT link in the top right, then entering a password—no login—of available. Be sure to type four dashes “----“ on a separate line to ensure a division between your testimonial and the next. Thanks for sharing!

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• The ability to track how students are using the service, and to check to see if a student did indeed try to submit their homework, or that they saw the page that described a project.
• The kids are much more engaged in the content of their classes because of the discussion boards. They talk in class and outside of class. One participant mentioned that she was, at that moment, monitoring a conversation of her students.
• Another teacher is talking about a teacher who has to fly back to London to clear up a Visa problem. So, she sits in the Chicago airport, connected to the Net through her Tablet PC, with head set on, and lectures her lession, recording it, and posting on the class Moodle site. Now we’re seeing the lesson, here in the conference. She’s talking, and on the board, we are seeing her work through the algebra problem. Are these the capabilities of a 21st century teacher?
• One distinction that one attendee found to be interesting was that as they started watching the logs of use of Moodle, the saw that tens of thousands of activities were being logged. However, when they looked at the content that teachers were posting, it just wasn’t that robust initially. Of course it has become much more robust, but it indicates that students have been chomping at the bit for this kind of information activity.
• This is simple but important. Nothing gets lost. Kids use to lose their rough drafts, their homework assignments, etc. Now, everything’s online and safe (reasonably).
• Individual teachers feel a part of the entire knowledge base of their students, as they can visit the Moodle pages of their other teachers.
• At the primary grades, Moodle is being used for the sake of parents, to give them access student work and to conversations with each other.

via David Warlick from Bill Pickett

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We are part of a consortium of small schools that has what is considered the most successful virtual high school in the state (thanks to our work with Gov. Bill Ratliff). We (SUPERNet) have made the decision to change over from Microsoft Class Server (which we have used for four or five years I think) to Moodle. Our first session training our teachers from around our 20ish school districts is in a few weeks. If you are interested in talking with our coordinator in charge of it shoot me an email and I will get it set up for you.

Scott Floyd

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Hit me up on Skype, and we can talk Moodle for as long as you like, I’ve used it now for almost a year with my sixth graders. I use Moodle with my sixth graders all the time, for Spanish and Latin classes. I am in graduate school and am forced to use Blackboard heavily. I like that my kids are getting exposure to VLE’s now before they are thrown to the Bb wolves if they go to school around here. Start the Open Source revolution young, right!

Chris Craft (Crucial Thought)

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Call this guy about Moodle: http://www.ahistoryteacher.com/wordpress/?p=187

Ed Darrell

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In our district teachers and administrators have found a variety of uses. In second and third grade the teachers use it for book discussions. In other grades it is an extension of the classroom, a place to put the resources and continue class discussions. Some departments have moodle courses to place commonly used resources for staff and continue staff meetings discussions. Our Special Ed department uses it as repository for all the forms they must use.

Beth Knittle

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Miguel, I have been using Moodle this year as my professional development vehicle. That way the faculty becomes familiar with it and all materials are in one place for later reference. Our entire district had to take a mini-course in copyright which also extended its “reach.”

In high school a few teachers are using Moodle for blended courses, mostly in English class. They are extending classroom discussions in some cases using forums, or actually posting assignments and having students respond through Moodle. I plan to begin a project with a grade 8 class moving a bookstudy from phpBB to Moodle. We will explore some of the features that it offers beyond discussions.

Lastly, let me also recommend the PACKCT publishing book, “Moodle, E-Learning Course Development,” by William Rice. I have the Cole book and it is very good as well.

We are really just scratching the surface in our use but if you would like to have a look: http://web2.plainvilleschools.org/moodle and http://web2.plainvilleschools.or…s.org/ mspmoodle http://learnemgood.net/moodle

Tom Kennedy

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Hi Miguel, as you know I am a ‘fervent moodler’. One of the beauties of it is that it is so easy to revisit and review work that is already there; I still want to find more ways of making things increasingly interactive for students. They need a lot of encouragement to wiki and post opinions. I have begun one for our local Future Problem solving teams on our school site - http://moodle.mmc.school.nz - (email me if you want to log in for a look) and thought these teams might interact more but so far no wikiing there either. A great benefit of ‘moodle’ is for students who miss classes for one reason or another - there is no excuse to miss work or assessments! Parents like it to as they know what is going on and I think feel their kids are safer using this than blogging.

Sharon Harper

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Hi Miguel,

Moodle is great, a very powerful and flexible tool. I love the variety of options available and for a great price. My only criticism of it is that it is not user friendly and is quite complex in the development of resources and materials.

One of the add ons which is worth looking at is LAMS (its also a stand alone LMS) LAMS is learning activity management system. This product is allows the teacher to sequence (visually) a series of activities - i.e read objectives then view movie, do questions, write up notes in journal give feedback etc. This is quite neat. http://lamsfoundation.org http://lamsfoundation.com Like Moodle there is a open source and commercial arm.

In development at moodle at the moment is SLOODLE - second life moodle… This is worth a look http://www.sloodle.com/

cheers

Andrew Churches (Educational Origami)

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I use moodle for teaching physics, media studies and remedial maths. It does everything I could wish for and just keeps getting better. The technology is pretty obvious and I’m always surprised that this is the bit teachers fear. Being continually creative and dealing with students individualities is the hard bit. I’d suggest that a good test of the technology is to get teachers to try and do a moodle thing e.g. a wiki - on a piece of paper instead of online. sometimes the paper is a good option - but most of the time people are reaching for computers.

Anne Nicolson