Blackboard replacement?

Hi all-

I just learned that mys district's planned implementation of Blackboard will not take place this year. Money is tight and I have no issue with the loss of BB.

However, with two weeks to go, I need to fill a void for some teachers who had planned to use Blackboard for an online course. Any suggestions for a single-login, free or low cost option? I don't feel like cobbling something together across multiple services.

Their needs are:
-secure login for students
-the ability to moderate comments BEFORE they go live on the site
-the ability for students to upload/download files
-forum/online discussion tool
-school appropriate ads are OK
-some wiki features would be icing on the cake!

Moodle? Eduwiki? Ning? Google Groups? Blogger? Wordpress?

Thanks in advance. Your feedback will save me a lot of time.

Rod

Tags: blackboard, course, online

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Permalink Reply by Anthony VonBank on August 8, 2009 at 4:12pm

Moodle sounds like exactly what you are looking for. Your district can host and manage it, or there are several services that will host for little or nothing. If you are interested in knowing more, please email an instructor I know who has a wealth of knowledge in this platform, and would likely help you get started. Jon Fila jfila@cseced.org

BTW: Moodle itself is free!

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Permalink Reply by Jason de Nys on August 9, 2009 at 9:21pm

Moodle is well featured (although the interface can be painful) but a bit of a hack job being open source. It generally works very well but you need to have a techie who can administer it and fix bugs as they arise. Moodle 2.0 is looking good but who knows when it will be available.