Moodle’s mission is to empower educators to improve our world and one of the professions most impacted by the pandemic is that of the educator. Hence says Moodle and the statement stands valid when we see the comprehensive support system they have offered to educators around the world. They proudly declare that Moodle is made for the teachers. The moment we give something to teachers, it goes to the whole universe through the learners assigned to them.
Moodle is a highly robust, secure and integrated system to create personalised learning environments. This is a preferred resource because it is free for all – an Open Source Software. Educators, administrators and learners get a well organised virtual learning set-up which makes their Online Teaching-Learning dynamic, interactive and fruitful. This is designed not just for teaching but for learning as well! That is what makes it trusted worldwide.
When we talk of Virtual Classroom or even the modern concept like Blended Learning and Flipped Classroom, Moodle has a lot to offer in these domains. One thing to be made clear here: Virtual Classroom is an attempt to make an Honest replica of the real classroom. In no case, it intended to replace the teacher because it is the TEACHER only who can create an ideal imitation of his own vision.
Moodle is a Learning Management System which assists the Educators and Administrators in the management of learning through a course- its design, development and delivery followed by an assessment which is conducted online itself. MOODLE is - Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. The feature of being DYNAMIC is the primary attribute that makes it worth trying and then using confidently. Moodle contains a
- a suite of tools that help us build
- learning activities and resources into
- sequenced learning pathways, promoting
- collaborative and
- active learning experiences.
All these features in its definition itself are sufficient to motivate the first time users of Moodle to keep their trust in this resource. Being Open Source does not mean it is risky, rather the Collaboration it commands makes it all the more robust and trustworthy.
Moodle is a Constructive and Collaborative Resource used worldwide as an LMS in education. It offers two segments of utility: Content Sharing/Content Management/Repository or as a Virtual Classroom-As a Comprehensive LMS. It is up to the users if they want to use it only to broadcast their learning content and offer some participatory activities as well. Once they understand that Moodle has much more to offer as a complete resource, they can certainly make it the full-fledged platform for assessment as well.
Moodle is Free! Use it to launch your dynamic courses. With the help of it, you make a SITE (platform) using the Moodle resource/Software which will HOST your Courses. Institutions across the globe use Moodle as their one-stop-solution to LMS. It is installed on their own servers and required customisations are done. When we use it hosted on Gnomio or Moodle Cloud, we do face limitations, but even these free-hosting platforms can be used fruitfully and smartly. Gnomio has said that they need a few weeks to understand how they can move to 3.9 from the currently offered 3.5 version (June 2020).
Moodle 3.9 has been launched and this much-awaited upgrade has brought a few significant features.
So what’s new in Moodle 3.9? (Source - Moodle.org)
The latest release of Moodle comes with a range of improvements across the board. For the full list please read our release notes. Here are some highlights of the key improvements:
- Activity chooser improvements; a new grid layout with multiple tabs, ability to search, the ability to star your most used activities and resources as well as the ability for the admin to set a list of recommended activities and resources.
- Further H5P integration; the ability to use H5P content types as a Moodle activity, with gradebook integration and activity completion, the ability to create H5P content in Moodle from the new content bank, which also allows searching and editing of H5P content types.
- More powerful filtering of course participants; the filter on the participants’ page has been updated to allow combining of multiple filter conditions with logical queries. This project is the result of collaboration; proposed and funded by the Moodle User Association (MUA), and developed by Moodle HQ.
- Course copy interface; courses can now more easily be copied from a single user interface (rather than separate backup and restore steps) for both teachers and admins. This project is the result of collaboration; proposed and funded by the Moodle User Association (MUA), and developed by Moodle Partner Catalyst and Moodle HQ.
- MoodleNet integration; a new plugin has been developed to allow educators to navigate to the forthcoming MoodleNet social network from the activity chooser. When the administrator enables the integration, educators can push content from MoodleNet to their Moodle course. The initial version of MoodleNet is expected soon and I look forward to seeing the platform grow and evolve with your support!
- Improved integration of Safe Exam Browser; Safe Exam Browser, previously an experimental setting, can now be enabled and configured from the Quiz settings. This allows a quiz to be taken in a restricted and secure environment controlled by the teacher. This is a project in collaboration with the Safe Exam Browser consortium, Moodle Partner Catalyst and supported by 8 universities in Switzerland, Austria and Germany.
- Accessibility improvements; a large number of accessibility improvements have been made for the Moodle 3.9 release. These reflect the findings from an external audit of key pages of the Moodle LMS. Where possible these changes were applied across all of Moodle and back-ported. This is part of our ongoing commitment to provide an accessible platform and continuously improve our compliance with WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
Read More about the Features
Technology Changes the Way Teachers Use it!
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