Talk:Philosophy

I wonder if various theories of education put forward in the main introduction for Moodle is helpful in terms of giving potential Moodle teachers a way to know the potential of the product. It is not that I disagree with these frameworks for thinking about activities and ways of learning. It is just that Moodle has the potential for a much broader market. Features like essay writing, feedback loops with instructors, quizzes administered and scored, web gradebook, etc. are features that help teacher new to Moodle be better able to transition into the software, but don't necessarily focus on constructionist pedagogy. Once people are using Moodle, Wiki's, Blogs, Forums, Chat Rooms, Workshops and other cool features become available for teachers to start to experiment with. But I suspect that it will be harder to win teachers over to trying the software if it comes across that it is mostly useful only if you subscribe to a particular theory of education as your primary framework as your primary way of thinking about learning. --Gary Anderson 13 October 2005 16:31 (WST)

I agree that the initial emphasis should be on what Moodle can do for the teacher. Let them absorb the philosophy osmotically.

--Mark Draper 2 March 2006 16:53

I think the site well represents the features of the product that are useful, appealing and interesting. The fact that a particular theory is promoted doesnt distract from that. In my case (not a "classically" trained educator, I found it useful to know that this was designed by educators and not software engineers. I agree that if they promoted that aspect of it too much, it could be a detraction, but I really dont hink thats the case.

Jeff Hague

---

I don't appear to have an edit tab for this page. The page refers to social constructivism, yet Martin prefers social constructionism, which makes more explicit the notion of shared construction of an artefact rather than more abstract knowledge. See http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=49793