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.

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

ScreenFlow - Screen Capture Software for MAC users

As an instructional designer, I had to create video tutorials for learners or instructors. Always I had the same problem. I had to use Camtasia ($299) or Articulate ($999). Software that have been created for PC users and not for MAC users like me. I tried several screen capture software for MAC but no one was similar or better than Camtasia/Articulate. But this belong to the past...

ScreenFlow ($99) is a brand new application for creating amazing screen recordings on your Mac. Using a unique new screen capture system, powerful enough to capture the contents of your entire desktop at the same time as your video camera, microphone and computer’s audio, it’s simple to create beautiful screencasts.

When resizing high resolution screen content into a QuickTime movie, ScreenFlow uses custom GPU algorithms to give your finished movie the best possible quality. You’ll find even small text suddenly becomes legible for your viewers.

ScreenFlow was designed for Mac OS X Leopard. It makes extensive use the best of Mac OS X technologies: Core Animation, QuickLook, Spotlight, QTKit, Quartz Composer, OpenGL, Core Data and many others.

You can download free the ScreenFlow by clicking HERE
If you want to see an amazing introduction video click HERE

Moodle Moot in San Francisco 2008

2008 Moodle Moot in San Francisco!!!

MoodleMoot is a conference dedicated to Moodlers (users), developers and administrators of the very popular open-source Virtual Learning Environment called MOODLE!!!

The MoodleMoot in San Francisco will be held June 10th and 11th at the South San Francisco Conference Center.

• Featuring Keynote presentations from:
• Moodle Lead Developer - Martin Dougiamas
• Former Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation - John Seely Brown
• Futurist and World Builder - Jamais Cascio

Registration is now open! Find details and pricing information for the event at the 2008 San Francisco Moodle Moot course, or go directly to the moot registration page.

The Call for Presentations is open. You will have to be registered at moodlemoot.org in order to submit a presentation for the moot.

I hope to see you all there guys!

Distance Music Course with the help of Moodle

Music is probably the last subject one would expected to encounter in a distance education course. However, some progressive music teachers have introduced distance music education courses in all levels of education.

The purpose of my study is to research, design, develop, and evaluate the conversion of Music Technology II, a face-to-face music course, that College of Musical Arts at Bowling Green State University, offers to undergraduate and graduate students into an online format.

Open source software such as Jing, YouTube, Flash player, and Slideshare were used. To achieve the best possible interactivity and effectiveness in the Music Technology II, web-based course, Moodle Learning Management System was used. In addition, Robert Gagne’s nine events of instruction, and John Dewey’s education progressivism were applied to the web-based course.

At last, the analysis revealed that distance music courses are effective when they have been carefully planned and are student-centered. The proposed format of the Music Technology II course is the hybrid format.

If you have time check the course that I created by clicking HERE

Also, enjoy the Slide show that I created! Critical Feedback is welcome!!!

| View | Upload your own

How to create and use a Survey activity in Moodle

The Survey activity module is a course activity that provides a number of verified survey instruments, including COLLES (Constructivist On-Line Learning Environment Survey) and ATTLS (Attitudes to Thinking and Learning Survey), which have been found useful in assessing and stimulating learning in online environments. Teachers can use these to gather data from their students that will help them learn about their class and reflect on their own teaching.

Adding/Editing a Survey

1. Turn on editing for the course
2. In the section you wish to add an activity, use the "Add an activity" drop down menu
3. Select the Survey activity
4. Give the survey a name.
5. Select the type of survey you want to give from the drop down list.
6. Click Continue.
7. On the following screen, edit the introductory text if necessary.
8. Click OK.
9. The next screen displays the question set you have chosen. Click Check and Continue at the bottom of the page.

In the following video tutorial it will be explained how to create and use a Survey activity in your Moodle course.



Join our online community for Moodlers

A Vision of Students Today

The truth is that I would love to post more tutorials but guys, I am developing my Major Project and my time is limited. Recently, I saw the video "A Vision of Students Today" and I would like to share with you some thoughts.

I was very impressed with this video because it shows the student's perspective of the education today. It seems that many educators began to realize that we should focus on the students; in their interests, skills, their preferred way of learning. When I see a classroom with 100 or more students, it seems to me like a massive production of "knowledge". It seems, that some people care about $$$ and not about the process of education.

I encourage you to watch the video, and share if you want your thoughts with me.