Thursday, May 22, 2008

Moodle Tops 20 Million Users

Moodle Tops 20 Million Users
Moodle is quickly becoming the world's most popular LMS

Perth, Western Australia (5/22/2008)– This week Moodle, an open source learning management system (LMS), has passed the 20 million-user mark. Currently 20,336,559 users in 196 countries speaking over 70 languages use Moodle. The rapid growth and adoption of Moodle can largely be attributed to the community development and no licensing fees. The open source software model is one that is receiving large adoption in financially crunched schools. In addition to the cost benefits, Moodle's freely accessible code provides third parties software companies the ability to integrate with Moodle. This flexibility gives users and organizations an LMS that works with existing software solutions. Moodle can be downloaded for free at Moodle.org.

Moodlerooms, a Moodle Partner, provides Moodle services for organizations looking for a fully hosted, maintained, and supported solution. As a Moodle Partner, Moodlerooms gives 10% of all revenue back to the continued development of Moodle. In addition to financial support, Moodlerooms provides education services, code enhancements, bug fixes, integration services, and continued testing of the Moodle platform. A complete list of Moodle Partners can be found at Moodle.com.

Martin Knott, CEO of Moodlerooms, had this to say about the milestone: "We are very excited to see that Moodle has continued to grow and expand its user base, 20 Million users is a monumental achievement. However, we are also not surprised. Moodle is a great solution for anyone, an individual, school district, university, or the corporate sector. Our clients are very pleased with Moodle and continue to participate in the open source project."

About Moodle
The name "Moodle" is both an acronym (Modular Object Oriented Development Learning Environment) and a verb (to let the mind or body wander creatively meander through the various activities of a course, tinkering towards insight and creativity). The Moodle community is a global group of thousands of educators and developers working together on moodle.org to promote pedagogically sound education tools through the creation of open source software for online learning. Learn more about Moodle at www.moodle.org.

About Moodlerooms
Moodlerooms delivers wrap-around technical support services for the hugely popular, free Moodle open source LMS software. As the preferred Moodle Partner, Moodlerooms provides essential services, including hosting, training, support and customization, to make the most of Moodle. Learn more about Moodlerooms at www.Moodlerooms.com.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Moodle 100 for Individuals: Introduction to Moodle

As online student and recently online instructor at Moodlerooms Incorporation, I thought to make a post about Moodle 100. As a result, I would like to share with you the course description and the objectives of Moodle 100.





Moodle 100 is a 10-contact hour or 1.0 CEU instructor-led, interactive online course. It is a prerequisite for all other Moodlerooms Training courses.

Over fourteen (14) consecutive days participants should expect to spend 30 minutes to 1 hour each day completing Moodle 100 activities and preparing to build their Practice Course. Throughout this course there are tasks and assignments to introduce Moodle’s features, basic navigation, course layout and settings, add resources, enroll students, and prepare for course creation in Moodle 101.

During Moodle 100 you will explore Moodle primarily from the perspective of the learner or student while you develop basic Moodle skills, become familiar with the interface, and prepare to build your own course during the next class, Moodle 101 - Course Creation for the Enterprise. This way you will understand Moodle better from the learner's perspective which will inform your instructional design choices later during Moodle 101 when you will explore Moodle primarily from the instructional designer’s or instructor’s perspective.

Pre-requisites: Participants should have basic computer and Internet skills competency to succeed in this course. Before commencing Moodle 100, participants will complete several readiness activities to determine if they're ready to learn online.

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
  • define basic Moodle vocabulary
  • navigate a Moodle course using breadcrumbs
  • edit profiles and add profile pictures/avatars
  • post and reply to a Forum discussion
  • create a Glossary entry
  • plan and coordinate basic course settings
  • integrate course Calendar features
  • manage student registration and enrollment
  • create and add resources (e.g. text pages, web pages, and labels)
  • link to websites and upload files
  • aggregate and co-locate digital (and other) Practice Course materials
  • begin the planning process for a Practice Course to be developed during Moodle 101
  • participate in a Moodle community of practice
Completion of this course makes individuals participating in the Moodlerooms Certified Trainer Program eligible for the One-Star Moodlerooms Trainee (1MRCT) designation.

Participants should have basic computer and Internet skills competency to succeed in this course. Before you commence Moodle 100, please complete this short survey to determine if you're ready to learn online.

Are you ready to learn online?
Please share with me your results!

Also, join our online community for Moodlers