Have you heard of Moodle?

First posting to this list, so please be patient with me.

During this semester, I have had a look at TYPO3 and Moodle as different CMS.

These are being considered as private alternatives to using the standard Blackboard LMS.

May I ask for any comments or suggestions from others that may have already used Moodle and TYPO3 in their own schools /classrooms?

Regards, Bill Oldham

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Comment by Mike Haudenschild on December 11, 2008 at 9:34am: Hi, Bill -- I won't make a recommendation, because I think each school's situation is different, and the various LMSs out there have implemented features in slightly different ways that a certain organization may find useful, while another may not.

I will, however, pass along some Moodle-related resources:

Top 5 myths about teaching with Moodle:
http://human.edublogs.org/2008/10/09/top-5-myths-about-teaching-wit...
Good stuff when getting teachers on board, especially for teachers championing the effort in their schools.

Top 10 myths about Moodle, technical AND teaching, from Moodle.org:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Top_10_Moodle_Myths
Good stuff for the techie crowd.

One school’s path in playing with, learning about, then deploying Moodle school-wide:
http://human.edublogs.org/2008/08/06/how-can-moodle-change-a-school/
A couple of short (10- and 5-minute) video clips from an EduBlogger from Australia. Some interesting insights in the progression of teacher usage.

Comment by Vivek Sharma on December 13, 2008 at 6:35am: I find it useful and worth the try.

Comment by Daniel Bassill on December 13, 2008 at 8:13am: We're just beginning to use Moodle in a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago. Part of our goal is to build student and volunteer (and parent) habits of going to the Internet for information, learning, network building and problem solving. We have 70 pairs of teens and volunteers active each year, plus an alumni base of more than 450 students and 500 volunteers.

Can you point to some examples where people are capturing user frequency by individual, and aggregating this by group. For instance, I'm trying to create reports that show a growing use by growing percent of active students, volunteers, staff and alumni, as well as a frequency of use, and quality of use.

I think the third goal is subjective, but the first two are quantitative. I know there are ways to capture individual frequency of use and download this to Excell, then create reports. I'm trying to find examples of where this process has been automated, so I or other managers, or donors, can pull up a screen and see summary reports.

Thanks for any help.

Comment by Joanna Farrer on December 13, 2008 at 8:28am: Hi Magical Bill I am interested by your Moodle query and the fact that this is your first posting... why??? because this is also my first posting but I have set up my own Moodle for my classes. You can have a look at my Moodle if you are interested ... it's still a work in process as I only started it 8 months ago and have no assistance so it's all 'learn as you go'. My site is www.esischool.com.
I use it for a few of my classes, you will see if you visit it. I teach ESL mainly and can use the data from quizzes for reports ( not high stakes but as a term grade... interesting though how closely the grade from the Moodle exercises correlates with the final term grade.)

Being a non digital native each process has not been easy but it is becoming easier.
I don'tknow the other systems but as I was paying wanted a "free system"
Hope these comments are useful
Jo Farrer