[ale] OT: open source teaching software

[Adric Net]

Hi all,

The O'Reilly published book Using Moodle is available under a CC license on the Moodle docs site:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Using_Moodle_book

In my work last year I found that this book in particular was designed for school administrators and instructors and goes step by step to show content creators and those who need to run a course how to use Moodle features. Many of their questions were answered in the book and they keep a couple print outs of the PDF around the office for them. 

There are other good books for extending Moodle or hacking on the code.  Technical issues such as installation and integration issues are fairly well documented on the wiki and discussed in the forums on moodle.org. I wrote some Ruby scripts to tie Moodle into Zencart  as part of that same project and made much good use of the forums and dev docs for that (moocart.org).

hth,
adric

On Apr 5, 2010, at 12:32 PM, Jim Philips wrote:

> Thanks to everyone for their feedback! I'll see what I can make of it all.
> 
> On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Reggie Euser <reggie at busicast.com> wrote:
> I'm a little late to this thread, but second Omar & Jerald's comments.
> 
> You might want to visit http://www.mugatlanta.org (local Moodle user group -
> not a lot of activity, but responsive to inquiries.) If you happen to have a
> web environment running, with Apache or Lighttpd, with a MySQL or PostgreSQL
> database server already up and running, you can set up Moodle in no time -
> follow the cvs install procedure here:
> http://docs.moodle.org/en/CVS_for_Administrators and you should have a
> working Moodle installation in an hour or less.
> 
> Good luck!
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Omar Chanouha" <ofosho at gatech.edu>
> To: "Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!" <ale at ale.org>
> Sent: Monday, April 05, 2010 10:24 AM
> Subject: Re: [ale] OT: open source teaching software
> 
> 
> I was pretty easy to set up, and definitely easy to add new features.
> The issue, as Jerald pointed out, is creating content. That part we
> left in the hands of the program. So we basically gave them a fully
> functional moodle install, but it was left up to them to actually use
> it. There are alot of pre-made content modules, but I am not sure if
> they used any. They are pretty nice people. If you send them an email
> they will probably let you know how things are going. I would assume
> it is not in full use just yet, but I dont know.
> 
> -O
> 
> On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 8:15 AM, Jim Philips <briarpatch.jim at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > What would you say was the level of effort involved in setting it up?
> > And how far into setup did you go? Was there still a lot of work left
> > when you left the project?
> >
> > Those would all be good things to know.
> >
> > On 04/04/2010 09:07 PM, Omar Chanouha wrote:
> >> I was on a team that implemented a moodle install for the after school
> >> program operation peace here in atlanta. It was a one semester
> >> project, and our goal was just to set everything up for them. I am not
> >> sure how they have progressed since.
> >>
> >> Anything specific you have a question about?
> >>
> >> -O
> >>
> >> On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 8:56 PM, Jim Philips<briarpatch.jim at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I know there are people on this list who have experience in working with
> >>> the school system. This big gorilla in course management is Blackboard,
> >>> a
> >>> commercial product. But there are open source alternatives and they look
> >>> pretty good at first glance. Do any of you have experience working with
> >>> Moodle or .LRN? Even better: Has anybody tried to implement one of these
> >>> programs with a school system?
> >>>
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