Building Educational Web Sites with Moodle

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself," a Chinese proverb says. The same can be said about technology at schools and in the classroom. If used properly, technology merely opens the door.

Technologies likeMoodle, an Open Source course management system ( CMS), allow even non-technical teachers to set up and maintain a Web site where students can log in, access course information, interact, share, and teach others. 

As a middle school teacher, I don't use Moodle because it saves me time and paperwork; I use it because it helps my students learn more cooperatively and independently. Moodle also lets me learn from and work more directly with my most neglected and gifted students (who are often one and the same).

I feel heartbroken when I see technology doing more damage than good in schools. Computers and software are often abused as tools in education, but if used properly, Moodle holds great promise. Moodle, like any technology, can make bad teachers worse, but can be useful in the right hands.

Five years ago, Web designers and teachers who wanted to build a site had to code HTML by hand or use an editor like Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft FrontPage, or Adobe GoLive. You then had to upload files to a server. Few busy teachers had the time to acquire these skills. With the advent of content management systems, Web publishing became easy enough for anyone to pick up quickly.

With a CMS like Moodle, you don't need any Web design skills, all you need is the ability to write and teach your ideas using images, text, or any media on the Internet -- there's no software to buy or install. Just go to any computer, open a Web browser, and make changes to your site.  Moodle also works well for those with old computers, slow Internet connections, and older browsers. All you need is PHP -- an HTML scripting language -- installed on your system, and you're ready to go.

Getting Started

A basic Moodle Web site costs about $100 through to host, though prices are falling as these services gain popularity. A second option is to find a university or school that will let you put your course on their system. Or, you can simply set up your own Web sever, SQL databases, and then install Moodle on your own site. Moodle runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Getting started with Moodle can be challenging. There's no need to struggle alone as help in the form of Moodle.org and Moodle Community Forums is available. Plus, Moodle partners provide hosting, courseware, and other custom services.

If you'd like to dive right in, try creating a course using the Teacher's Hands-on Playground .

To try building your site from scratch:

1. Open a Web browser.
2. Visit demo.opensourcecms.com/moodle .
3. Click "Login" at the top.
4. Enter "admin" for the username and "demo" as the password.  
5. Click "Users," and then, "Add a new user."
6. Fill in the form and click "Save."
7. Add a new user who will be your first mock student.
8. Click "Demo" on the top left-hand side of the page.
9. From the left-hand menu, click "Courses."
10. Add a new category, such as "sports."
11. Click the "Add a new course" button and add a course called "soccer101."
12. Fill in the course information, save changes, and click "continue."
13. Add your username and admin user as "teachers."
14. Click your course name at the top left to go to the home page for that course.
15. Click the button at the top right that says "Turn editing on."
16. Now add content, such as a quiz, Web page, link, forum, or chat.
17. Click "Demo" in the top-left corner to go back to your classroom home page.
18. Click "Users" in the left navigation pane and add a new user called "studentL".
19. Close your browser, log in as a student, and try taking the quiz or using other content as a student.

Personal Experiences with Moodle

I've used Moodle for two semesters now. Though most of my work is closed to the public, I've set up a course on my site, roweclassroom, just for readers of this article. On the site, you'll find a discussion forum, chat, and a quiz. Feel free to poke around and leave feedback. If you want to view a course instead of creating a demo course, this is the place to go.  

The live chat works only when multiple people log on at the same time.  We don't allow students to chat at school, so I changed "chat" to "group talk."

In my classes, students are allotted time to do a group talk, though it's limited to students who are in the classroom at that time. When my class does a group chat exercises online, I grade students' writing and award or subtract points for complete or incomplete sentences. This exercise is part of our school-wide focus to build writing skills. Once students are done chatting, I save the group talk log files and then ask students to revise any incomplete sentences.

Another Moodle feature I've adapted for my own use is the online quizzes. I allow students to take quizzes with open notebooks; Students are encouraged to take notes after their first attempt, and then use those notes on second and final attempts. 

In Moodle, the students can become the teachers. Moodle's glossary best demonstrates this. Students can add terms and personalize their learning by writing things in their own terms and in their own words.  If a term shows up in a glossary, it can be hyperlinked to anywhere that term shows up on the Web site.

I take great caution in my classroom to avoid giving any student an unfair advantage, so I make sure that students who own computers don't get an advantage. I use Moodle only for classroom work; students who have their own computers are free to use my site from home, but I never give anyone an edge for doing so.

To keep track of grades, Moodle has a very basic grade book, but it still lacks key features and speed. Web applications are just too slow when I have to grade more than 100 students or work samples each day. Some Moodle members coded an additional grade book module, but I've chosen to download grades in Microsoft Excel format and then import them into an older grade book program I use called Micro Grade.

Moodle's Popularity

The Moodle Web site boasts 3,000 teachers from school districts and universities all over the world. In my school district, I was the first to use and test Moodle, and when I saw how stable it was, I tried it with students on a limited basis. After four weeks, I was sold, and I could see that all students in my classroom benefited from this tool. Our district has installed Moodle, and in the next year, more teachers will be trying it.   

I won't use Moodle every day for all of my teaching tasks, nor would I recommend it everyone, but it's a time-saving tool for teachers, especially in the United States, where people expect more from schools at the same time they're cutting school funding.

The Downside

Moodle has done for educational Web sites what Yahoo has done for discussion groups. But it's certainly not perfect. When 30 students use Moodle on my ISP, it can get a little slow. And, like all tools, it has a learning curve. Moodle also has competition from other products like Blackboard and WebCT, which are both common in universities. And while Moodle is a bit awkward at times, it's a very stable and productive tool for teachers. That said, I would not use it if the risk of frustration exceeded the benefit to children who really need stability.   

Who knows where Moodle will be in five years? With luck, it will help teachers connect with students, but in the larger scope, perhaps it will somehow organize and network the fragmented and vast knowledge we can all explain in so many different and fascinating ways.