Edu 2.0

Hello all. I am searching for a free course management system that can be hosted completely externally. The one I keep coming across is Edu 2.0. I’ve taken a tour of its features and am very impressed. I was wondering if anyone else out there is using Edu 2.0 and can tell me what they think about it. Also, are there other free online course management systems worth looking at? Cheers.

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ian Grove-Stephensen on May 27, 2008 at 7:35am

Thanks for the kind words about Yacapaca, Cheryl. Yacapaca and Moodle actually integrate very nicely. I know quite a few teachers who set up assessments in Yacapaca, but then deliver them via Moodle. This way they get all the cool Yacapaca analysis whilst keeping the student workflow in their preferred LMS.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Cheryl Capozzoli on May 27, 2008 at 10:47am

Wow that is great to know. I just learned something new!! Thanks!

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Derwin Kitch on May 27, 2008 at 9:30am

I checked out edu2.0 and liked it but, unless I'm mistaken, the students have to register themselves. I teach in a private school at the elementary level and many parents do not like the idea of younger students having to register.

Is there a site that has similar features but where I can bulk create the logins for the students?

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ian Grove-Stephensen on May 27, 2008 at 3:00pm

Yes! Yacapaca! Sorry to bang on. Yacapaca is designed exclusively for K-12, which is why it focuses on assessment and includes really easy features for enrolling a whole class of students at once. Here is a short overview.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Graham Glass on June 21, 2008 at 2:52am

Hi Derwin,

This is Graham Glass, founder of edu2.0. Did you use the community forum to suggest this improvement? We usually add new features quickly, but usually only when people actually ask for them ;-)

Cheers,
Graham

(graham.glass@gmail.com)

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John Plummer on May 27, 2008 at 9:40am

Thanks for replying Ian :-)
Maybe terrible wasn't really the right word looking back at my post, I was trying to say it was terrible for me to find what I was looking for and not describing the site itself which I liked the look of and really wanted to try out. I will try joining the authoring groups and am also going with my students about this site to see if they would like to try it out. They are accustomed to trying out new stuff online and I like to try as many things as I can because some students like one thing and other something else and I like trying to give a choice. I think my problem is that most sites I use seem to have a big 'click here to start button' and I was looking for this or something similar. I'll have another look at it later on today and follow your advice of starting with an authoring group first :-)
THanks again :-)

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ian Grove-Stephensen on May 27, 2008 at 3:02pm

John, you are absolutely right. We do need a "click here to start" button for authoring. Now I just have to figure out how to do that within our collaborative authoring model. Thanks for the feedback.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John Plummer on May 29, 2008 at 3:34pm

Hi again Ian!
I followed your advice and went straight to the Authoring and now I understand things more clearly, thanks a lot. I think having it open at the student page was what threw me off but as you said from the author page and looking in the sandbox I saw how things worked. Although we don't use K-12 here in Brasil I think It'll be a great way for my Beginner English students to assess themselves :-) I'll try to get a few teachers from my school to join and see if they want to collaborate with me here.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ian Grove-Stephensen on May 29, 2008 at 3:43pm

Hi John, that's really fantastic. We have a good user community in Brazil, both English- and Portuguese-speaking. If you'd like me to put you in touch with any of them, let me know.

> Although we don't use K-12 here in Brasil
Nor do we use it here in UK :-) but as Classroom 2.0 is inhabited mainly by Americans, I tend to default to their nomenclature. When in Virtual Rome...

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John Plummer on June 6, 2008 at 3:32pm

Hi again Ian :-)
I'm having a trouble find out how to alter the size of the font in the questions. I created a quiz and all works just fine but the writing is really small and I can't seem to find an option to make it bigger. I tried clicking the forum link I found but it says its something in the future? I'd like to get in touch with these user communities you mentioned above, can you please tell me how to do this? I really like the way the site works as its similar to the extra exercises my students use that Cambridge set up for their course book. I think they'll enjoy it a lot once I have some activities set up for them :-)

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ian Grove-Stephensen on June 14, 2008 at 2:46pm

Sorry for the delay in replying to this, John: you already know the reason.

> how to alter the size of the font in the questions
Font size in quizzes is automatically optimized; there is no direct user control. First, in the student view (but not teacher previews, yet) the quiz will try to grab the whole screen and give you the biggest font possible. Second, the more text you include, the smaller the font has to be. Editing questions to keep them short is both a skill and a discipline that it took me quite a while to learn; I'm sure you will be quicker!

> I'd like to get in touch with these user communities you mentioned above

Here are four authoring groups you could look at/join.

The first is run by Oswaldo Georgi, who is Mr eLearning for Sao Paulo Region; the others I think are run by his students. My lack of Portuguese has left something of a communication gap here.

There are also a few International Schools in Brasil who are using Yacapaca in English. I've not spotted anyone other than you using it for language teaching in Brasil yet. You are blazing the trail!

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John Plummer on June 14, 2008 at 9:44pm

Hi Ian!!
I think I see why my problem with the font now as I always see it in the teacher preview but see others in the students view. So my students should also see it in a larger font. I want to use it mainly with my beginner students who are studying Cambridge Touchstone 1 so the questions will probably start out being very short, I'll have to remember not to make them so long when they become more advanced :-) I've used Hot Potatoes most of the time to make exercises for my students and usually don't worry about the length of things so it'll take me a little time to switch from one to the other.

I didn't find anyone here near me that is using Yacapaca but I told a few teachers in both schools I work in so that they knew about it. I just took over running the second school I work in with my wife so I'm hoping that we can try to get the students to use Yacapaca as part of the classes as well as at home once we have some decent computers for them to use in the school :-) I found the Facebook group easily enough but searched in Google and only found links back to Yacapaca's site. Facebook is something pretty new for me, I only started using it recently because of taking over the school and wanting a good social networking site to use instead of Orkut which is really popular here in Brasil. Hopefully more people will join the Facebook group soon.

I'll check out the sites and have a look see tomorrow. I've been browsing the other teachers exercises and stuff, I love the animation too, the Touchstone books students site has a lot of animation so my students should like it a lot :-) Now I just have to find more time to get in front of the computer to create some stuff..