Moodle Introduction

Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is available in source code
form: thesource code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders
are provided under afree software license that permits users to study, change, improve
and at times also to distribute the software.

Open source software is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Open-
source software is the most prominent example of open-source development and often
compared to (technically defined) user-generated content or (legally defined) open
content movements.

A report by the Standish Group states that adoption of open-source software models
has resulted in savings of about $60 billion per year to consumers.

History

The free software movement was launched in 1983. In 1998, a group of individuals
advocated that the term free software should be replaced by open source software
(OSS) as an expression which is less ambiguous and more comfortable for the
corporate world. Software developers may want to publish their software with an open
source license, so that anybody may also develop the same software or understand its
internal functioning. Open source software generally allows anyone to create
modifications of the software, port it to new operating systems and processor
architectures, share it with others or, in some cases, market it.

Moodle
Moodle is a software package for producing Internet-based courses and web sites. It is
a global development project designed to support a social constructionist framework of
education.
Moodle is provided freely as Open Source software (under the GNU Public License).
Basically this means Moodle is copyrighted, but that you have additional freedoms. You
are allowed to copy, use and modify Moodle provided that you agree to: provide the
source to others; not modify or remove the original license and copyrights,
and apply this same license to any derivative work.
Moodle can be installed on any computer that can run PHP, and can support an SQL
type database (for example MySQL). It can be run on Windows and Mac operating

systems and many flavors of linux (for example Red Hat or Debian GNU). There are
manyknowledgeable Moodle Partners to assist you, even host your Moodle site.
The word Moodle was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic
Learning Environment, which is mostly useful to programmers and education theorists.
It's also a verb that describes the process of lazily meandering through something,
doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to
insight and creativity. As such it applies both to the way Moodle was developed, and to
the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an online course.
Anyone who uses Moodle is a Moodler.

Features

Moodle has several features considered typical of an e-learning platform, plus some
original innovations (like its filtering system). Moodle is very similar to a learning
management system. Moodle can be used in many types of environments such as in
education, training and development, and business settings.

Some typical features of Moodle are

 Assignment submission
 Discussion forum
 Files download
 Grading
 Moodle instant messages
 Online calendar
 Online news and announcement (College and course level)
 Online quiz
 Wiki
Developers can extend Moodle's modular construction by creating plugins for specific
new functionality. Moodle's infrastructure supports many types of plug-ins:

 activities (including word and math games)
 resource types
 question types (multiple choice, true and false, fill in the blank, etc)
 data field types (for the database activity)
 graphical themes

 authentication methods (can require username and password accessibility)
 enrollment methods
 content filters
Many freely-available third-party Moodle plugins make use of this infrastructure.[6]

Moodle users can use PHP to write and contribute new modules. Moodle's development
has been assisted by the work of open source programmers.[7] This has contributed
towards its rapid development and rapid bug fixes.

By default Moodle includes the TCPDF library that allows the generation
of PDF documents from pages.

Background

Origins
Martin Dougiamas, who has graduate degrees in computer science and education,
wrote the first version of Moodle. Dougiamas started aPh.D. to examine "The use
of Open Source software to support a social constructionist epistemology of teaching
and learning within Internet-based communities of reflective inquiry". Although how
exactly social constructionism makes Moodle different from other eLearning platforms is
difficult to show, it has been cited as an important factor by Moodle adopters. Other
Moodle adopters, such as the Open University in the UK, have pointed out that Learning
Management Systems can equally be seen as "relatively pedagogy-neutral".

Pedagogical approach
The stated philosophy of Moodle includes a constructivist and social
constructionist approach to education, emphasizing that learners (and not just teachers)
can contribute to the educational experience. Moodle supports an outcomes-oriented
learning environment.

Social Constructionism as a Referent

I have these five points on a slide which I use in every presentation I do. They are
useful referents taken from research that apply to education in general, boiled down into
a simple list that I carry around under the moniker of "social constructionism".

1. All of us are potential teachers as well as learners - in a true collaborative
environment we are both.

It's so important to recognise and remember this.

I think this perspective helps us retain some humility as teachers and fight the
(very natural!) tendency to consolidate all your history and assume the revered
position of “wise source of knowledge”.

It helps us keep our eyes open for opportunities to allow the other participants in
our learning situation to share their ideas with us and to remind us to listen
carefully and ask good questions that elicit more from others.

I find I need to constantly remind myself of this point, especially when the culture
of a situation pushes me into a central role (like now!)

2. We learn particularly well from the act of creating or expressing something
for others to see.

For most of us this is basically “learning by doing”, and is fairly obvious, yet it's
worth reminding ourselves of it.

It's surprising how much online learning is still just presenting static information,
giving students little opportunity to practice the activities they are learning about.
I often see online teachers spending a great deal of time constructing perfect
resources for their course, which no doubt is a terrific learning experience for
them, but then they deny their students that same learning experience. Even
textbooks often do a better job, with exercises after every chapter and so on.

Most importantly, such learning is best when you are expressing and presenting
posts, projects, assignments, constructions etc for others to see. In this
situation your personal “stakes” are a lot higher, and a lot of self-checking and
reflection takes place that increases learning. Seymour Papert (the inventor of
logo) famously described the process of constructing something for others to see
as a very powerful learning experience, and really this sort of thinking goes right
back to Socrates and beyond.

3. We learn a lot by just observing the activity of our peers.

Basically this is about “classroom culture”, or learning by osmosis. Humans are
good at watching each other and learning what to do in a given situation through
cues from others.

For example, if you walk into a lecture theatre where everyone is sitting in seats,
facing the front, listening quietly to the teacher at the front and taking notes, then
that's most likely what you are going to do too, right?

If you are in a less rigid class where people are asking questions all the time,
then it's likely you'll feel freer to do so too. By doing so you'll be learning about
both the subject itself and the meta-subject of how learning occurs from
overhearing the discussions of your peers and the kinds of questions that get
asked, leading to a richer multi-dimensional immersion in learning.

4. By understanding the contexts of others, we can teach in a more
transformational way (constructivism)

As you probably know from experience, advice from a mentor or friend can
provide better, more timely and customised learning experience than with
someone who doesn't know you and is speaking to a hundred people.

If we understand the background of the people we are speaking to then we can
customise our language and our expression of concepts in ways that are best
suited to the audience. You can choose metaphors that you know the audience
will relate to. You can use jargon where it helps or avoid jargon when it gets in
the way.

Again this is a pretty basic idea - every guide to public speaking talks about
knowing your audience - but in online learning we need to be particular mindful
of this because we often have not met these people in person and don't have
access to many visual and auditory cues.

5. A learning environment needs to be flexible and adaptable, so that it can
quickly respond to the needs of the participants within it.

Combining all the above, if you as a learning facilitator want to take advantage of
your growing knowledge about your participants, giving them tailored
opportunities to share ideas, ask questions and express their knowledge, then
you need an environment which is flexible, both in time and space.

If you discover that you need to throw your schedule out the window because
your participants know a lot less than you'd expected when you first designed
the course, you should be able to readjust the schedule, and easily add new
activities to help everyone (or just one group) catch up. Likewise, some great
ideas for a simulation or something may have come up during discussions, so
you should be able to add those later in the course.

Origin of the name
The acronym Moodle stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning
Environment (in the early years the "M" stood for "Martin's", named after Martin
Dougiamas, the original developer). As well as being an acronym, the name was
chosen because of the dictionary definition of Moodle and to correspond to an available
domain name. "Moodle" is a trademark in many countries around the World registered
to Martin Dougiamas. Only Moodle Partners may legally use the trademark to advertise
any Moodle-related services such as hosting, customization, training and so on.

Moodle Introduction

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Moodle Introduction