Team MicroWeb

Moodle: An Online Teacher?s Dream We have run into some challenges as more and more universities and high schools move to e-learning and more parents start home schooling. First, cost. The traditional e-learning platforms are expensive. Secondly, usability. Other platforms I have used have been cumbersome, awkward, and quite frankly confusing for many of my students (and I teach graduate school). Additionally, many people who are currently teaching either are resistant to embracing online learning, or have used the other platforms and gotten frustrated. Moodle is a ?What You See Is What You Get?WYSIWYG) sort of program?It is intuitive, point and click. Last year, I started developing an online master?s program for the University of Florida?s Department of Counselor Education. After wrangling with other popular online teachin scholarships for single moms g programs, we came across Moodle. It was a dream come true (especially for my Department Chair because it was free). For those of you old enough to remember, going from WebCT/Blackboard to Moodle was like going from using DOS (remember the black screen where you had to type cd/ all the time) to Windows. I was thrilled! Moodle is GPL (General Public License). That means you can download it for free?forever. Within each lesson you can link to specific websites (like Online, Full Text Children?s Textbooks), .pdfs or Word documents. This lets your students/children go exactly where you want them to go. You have a built-in grade-book and can add auto-scored quizzes (set them up by filling in a pre-designed form), writing assignments, forum posts, wikis (i.e. wikipedia.com) etc. I have yet to find something you cannot do with Moodle.