Topp 10 Myter om Moodle

The top 10 list started life in a post by Josie Fraser, as part of the 2005-6 HUGToB campaign.

Note: Denne artikkelen er under oversettelse/bearbeidelse. Vi håper du vil være med å bidra til felles gode for alle Moodle-brukere i Norge. Siden er oppbygd som en Wiki og det er bare å bidra.

Med en gang Moodle blir stabil må vi betale lisens for den. Hvis den var bra hadde vi allerede måttet betale for den

Martin Dougiamas har skrevet at Moodle alltid kommer til å være fri og under GPL. Hvis det ikke var tilfelle ville Moodlesamfunnet bare tatt den siste GPL-kildekoden og fortsatt uviklingen defra. En av årsakene til at Moodle er så bra er at det er åopen kildekode, slik at verdens forente pedagogiske samfunn kan bidra til å gjøre den enda bedre.

Det er ikke noen vits i å se eller tenke på Moodle hvis du ikke har en fulltidsansatt PHP-utvikler som jobber hos deg. Du trenger i allefall teknisk support for å kjøre den

There are plenty of institutions running Moodle as is, without any php developers in sight. You don't need to know any programming if you just want to run an out of the box, feature rich Moodle site.

That said, PHP is actually a fairly easy language to pick up, and the Moodle code is well documented, so if you did want to help with development, it's a fairly gentle learning curve.

It is also fair to say you need a certain amount of technical know-how to run any program on the web securely. But this has more to do with getting a web-server, SQL database and scripting language up and integrated than a Moodle instance itself. If you can run your own webserver, you should be OK to run Moodle on it.

You don't actually have to run Moodle in house though - there are well respected Moodle Partners who'll run Moodle for you, some of the more enlightened Local Authorities and Regional Broadband Consortia (in the UK) will provide Moodle hosting, and Moodle will work on plenty of commercially hosted webspaces too.

Moodle vil ikke være kompatibelt med de andre systemene våre/programvaren vår

Moodle will run on FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. It's compatible with a huge range of databases through ADODB integration. There's a whole host of authentication and enrollment mechanisms, including LDAP. Moodle will allow teachers to integrate content in a range of different formats, including SCORM, Flash, MP3s and RSS feeds. On the Roadmap for future releases is a Web API which will allow easy integration with other web-based applications.

Finally, remember that this is open source software, with a well documented data and file structure. If Moodle's not compatible with a particular application at the moment, then you can pay a developer to code up that integration, or develop it in-house.

Moodle har ikke den kommersielle erfaringen vi er ute etter

Check out the partners. Moodle is currently used by some big name corporate clients for in-house CPD.

Du kan ikke bare installere og bruke Moodle - den grunnleggende Moodleversjonen er ikke så avansert

Have a look at the feature list, all of which comes as standard. Additional themes, blocks and activities are easy to integrate and the vast majority are free, open source code too. It is true that is basically easy to install all those features out of the box as a standalone desktop or on a web server.

Det finnes ingen dokumentasjon, opplæring eller teknisk support tilgjengelig - du må klare deg selv

There's excellent (and expanding) documentation online, provided by the user and developer community. The Open University's Jason Cole has written an excellent introduction to Moodle for teachers, available as a proper book from O'Reilly. In addition William Rice has written a Moodle book Moodle E-Learning Course Development available from Packt Publishing.

Most users find the Moodle interface intuitive and this helps reduce the training requirements. It's possible for institutions to run in-house training and many have successfully adopted this approach. Some Moodle Partners moodle.com also specialize in training.

High quality, timely technical support is available from the user and developer community in the Using Moodle course on moodle.org. Some LAs and RBCs (Local Authorities and Regional Broadband Consortia in the UK) support Moodle in their areas. Commercial support contracts are available from authorized Moodle Partners moodle.com.

Den totale kostnaden av å eie er faktisk høyere for Moodle er faktisk høyere enn for en tilsvarende komersiell plattform

Stop and think for a moment. With both Moodle and commercial platforms, you'll still need to pay for hosting, support, training and content, one way or another: with Moodle, more of these costs can be brought in-house, because the code's open source and Moodle's great at providing the tools teachers need to write online activities themselves, but that doesn't mean you have to.

The difference is that with Moodle, there are no licence fees to pay. None. The money you do spend can go back into making the software better, or remain within the educational community for the common good. None of it needs to go to meet shareholder dividends or pay back the venture capitalists. Furthermore, you're not exposed to the risks of commercial suppliers unilaterally increasing their licence fees, or going out of business.

It's therefore not that surprising that when the UK government agency Becta examined the Total Cost of Ownership of open-source software on desktops in UK schools, they found significant savings compared to commercial alternatives. The savings on support costs were particularly impressive. It's likely that these savings would have been greater still had they examined web-based applications like Moodle.

Moodle er ikke bra nok for en så stor institusjon som jeg har

So, that would be one larger than the UK's Open University, with 180,000 students, yes? The OU has announced that they're moving to Moodle as their institutional VLE, and there are plenty of other large institutions officially using Moodle, and a good number of others where sections are.

Moodle er simpelten ikke laget for å håndtere min spesifikke gruppe elever/studenter eller kunder

Moodle's being used successfully from elementary education, including early years provision, up to higher education, in all subject areas including art, languages, the humanities and mathematics. It's also established itself in the world of life-long learning, teachers' CPD, corporate and government training environments.

Vi har så mange ansatte som bruker ***********, så det er ikke verdt bryet med å skifte til Moodle

The switch may not be that much of a hassle, as Moodle will happily import content in a wide range of standard formats, including SCORM, Blackboard and WebCT questions. There are an increasing number of Further and Higher Education institutions that are making the move.

Pedagogically, there's much to be gained from moving to a VLE which puts social, collaborative learning at the centre, and acknowledges the vital role that learners have to play, as well as providing teachers with the tools that they need to build effective on-line learning communities, rather than just presenting resources and activities.

From a financial perspective, the costs involved in switching to Moodle should be quickly recouped through savings in licence fees.