Classroom Management Software

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rodney Ford on July 17, 2009 at 3:15pm

Hi Kelly

We use Moodle and are in the early stages of implementation. At present there are only a few enthusiastic teachers who are using it regularly. They vary from Maths to Digital Literacy to Media Studies and Classical Studies. At the present time the Junior school have just started experimenting with it for younger students. Their issue is that they do not have a full lab of computers and will have to stagger their students through courses and assignments.
It is Open Source and very well supported with a sizable market share in Australia and New Zealand. (Many US schools, colleges and universities have adopted it just look for the nearest reference site from the Moodle.org site http://moodle.org/sites/) There are also ample forums and help from within the Moodle community. I attend a Moodle Moot every year to speak to the developers and the many varied users. You will need a certain amount of technical expertise to manage the database but there are companies that specialize in Open Source support - a quick look through any search engine will give you names of local support. It is customisable through generous free themes - just enter Moodle Themes into Google or Bing and you will be swamped with pages of useful themes that you can customise for your own requirement and level.

I personally swear by it and after 29 years of teaching and supporting computers this has been the definitive tool that I have used. It allows students to manage their own pace of learning and to get immediate feedback on their progress. Any quizzes or test results are immediately available as are my comments, suggests and encouragement to get on with the work!! as the reporting system is excellent. But the best part of it is that the students form learning communities and interact and collaborate in the best possible way and are encourage by each other to take command of their learning.
It also integrates backs into our Student Management System so students are aware of school wide activities and are able to get copies of their timetables and schedules of assignments that are due.
I also use it for staff Professional Development and to create staff learning communities centered around professional topics and interesting teaching ideas through forums and distributing interesting and relevant videos, podcasts and weblinks.
I personally do professional development through organisations such as November Learning who use Moodle themselves as a learning/content management tool.

Hope this helps.

Permalink Reply by Kelly on July 18, 2009 at 8:44am

Thank you so much.... It is difficult being in a small school with no one to bounce ideas off of. I'll check into Moodle.

Permalink Reply by Jacqui Murray on July 25, 2009 at 4:38pm

We have Falcon.net at our school. It provides a homepage for each teacher, blogs, the basics. I've given a link to my blog--the webpages are difficult to read if you're not logged in. It's a bit pricey, but provides a fill-in-the-blank approach that good for starters.

Permalink Reply by Kelly on July 26, 2009 at 6:30am

Thank you, I'll take a look at this...

Permalink Reply by Dave Peterson on December 29, 2009 at 12:14pm

Check out ITALC. It is open source and free. It allows the teacher to see, control, modify, take over the student stations. She can shut them down, start them up, show her screen on their screen, show a student screen on all student screens, start an application. We use it in Fiddlehead and it works great.

Permalink Reply by Kelly on January 4, 2010 at 3:07pm

Thanks Dave... I think I looked at ITALC, not sure it works with VISTA yet..... I'll check out Fiddlehead also. I appreciate the response.

Permalink Reply by Dave Peterson on January 5, 2010 at 5:16am

We use it with Vista. It is harder to set up because of Vista's security exclusions, but it works.