Moodle

Our Moodle Course includes:

Assignments

Polls/Questionaires

Forums

Grades

Internal Mail and Messaging

Chat

Blogs

Practice Quiz

Glossaries

Navigation

Calendar

There are also many other features that are built in and not so obvious, like: plug ins and multimedia integration

• Why would you want to use a CMS/LMS?

A CMS/LMS platform provides a space where students can go and access all the information that they need to proceed through a course.  I am currently teaching grade 5/6 Math and would like to try using Moodle as the platform.  I want to do this because then students access videos, games, assignments, and quizzes all in the same area.  

• What features of Moodle do you like?

I like the Navigation feature down the side of the page.  This makes everything available with the click of a button.  I also like that if you choose to, you can set up the course so that it is in Units/Modules.  So instead of having all the assignments on one page I can break it up by Units so that younger students are not overwhelmed by the amount of information being shown.

• What features would you like to see added to Moodle?

I'm still really new to Moodle and at this point and I do not know which features I would add to Moodle.  Maybe from a student's perspective... customization for the user.  The designer gets to choose the colours and such and the user just has to deal with it.  

• How do commercial CMS/LMS systems compare to open source CMS/LMS systems?

I have to admit, when I think of open source or open education I think of free.  This is not the case with CMS/LMS systems.  Although the cost is quite lower as can be seen by the attachment from Itslearning.  

One of the biggest differences between Open source and commercial is that the commercial LMS/CMS systems have the support from the company.  With an open source you need to have technological capabilities.  You can not be scared to get in and try something and possibly have to spend a large amount of time customizing and figuring out the process.

If you leave cost and support out of the equation open source and commercial are relatively similar.

I like using Moodle but I need to find time to play on it more and try and create a course.  I was wanting to put my math modules on Moodle so that they could be accessed from home but I have not had time to do so as of yet.