Moodle curious?

When I first found out the Moodle was a real contender for our new online learning platform a few years ago I thought it would be good to see what it was like. 

My first exploration was edna - which offers free sites for educators as well as the opportunity to reach out to others in online groups - and uses Moodle for its environment. I had to make an application and after a day or two I was given approval to play in my own spot. To be honest I never got very far  - it wasn't intuitve (for a lass grown up on UniSAnet)  and I could never find the time to do the training course (although they offered a few times). 

This 1 minute movie gives an overview of the groups. 

This year I have now done the 2 day training and am able to author. The environment is very flat - all on one page - which is odd.

The stunning thing for me was the online assessment options available - with marks going straight into the system. It will be ultimately make the early assessment of student learning much easier, faster, better. 

I have started my first site (another 6-8 weeks before it will be finished as still preparing content). It is planned to be one that will be the basis for some of the ICUP modules (you can import and export easily out of Moodle). It is  on a tiny development server (slow performance) but it is enough for the experiment. 

There are still many decisions to be made for the new environment which will start going live in 2010 - e.g. will AssignIT stay or will we use the Gradebook in Moodle? What e-portfolio tool will we integrate? If its PebblePad what about the gateways??? What will we call it? (it won't be Moodle). 

But this is in the hands of others.... 

By the way, they are planning a progressive transfer; 5% first, then 30 % by another time etc... All done by the end of 2011 with UniSAnet switched off. 

Diana