Customer Reviews

Using Moodle: Teaching with the Popular Open Source Course Management System (Community Press)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was very disappointed with this book and will be returning it.

If you have spent a few minutes playing with Moodle and read even a little of the online manual, this book adds nothing new. The system is easy to figure out, as most items are pretty self-explanatory and each option has a handy pop-up help screen that explains anything that you don't understand. The online documentation is very good.

I was hoping this book would explain how to do more advanced things in Moodle - how the many available add-on modules work and what they contribute to a finished system, tips and tricks to add videos and flash files to your courses, best practices for course development, advanced customizing, etc. But there was none of that in the book - only the same information that is already included free with Moodle. Save your money!

Executive Summary: Good, well written overview, buy if you can afford it, a good book by the standards of how to publishing but not critical as a lot of stuff is on Moodle's site.
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Moodle has about 50% of the education market now and there are a lot of people working on it and a ton of information available through moodle's site. Mooodle 1.6, which I am using, has yet to stablizie properly and there are all kinds of bugs needing to be tackled. These vary depending on what level of Apache you use and what your level of admin access is. So, though it is more focused than a lot of other books, your milage will obviously vary depending on your logistics.

Moodle itself is easy enough to use and it helps to be familiar with it before reading through the book. Like most of the other books in this range, I just skim it as I more or less know how to use the admin panel; the book concentrates on front end classroom stuff, not on setting up Moodle and as all classes vary and teachers uses different methodologies or none, it is hard to write a definitive book on a pliable tool. The book is written in very clear and cogent Engish and this is not always the case with how to geek books, so that is a big plus.

Also, there are a few interesting teaching insights in the book, more than most others I have read and they are valuable. It gives for example, novel ways to use Wikis. But you would probably hit on these yourself after a while.

There are different ways of using the functions (different levels of access for teacher only, groups of students and teacher, or everyine doing the class). There are also different ways of teaching; I prefer a more informal approach and beleive in giving the students a lot of rope. This means I will use some functions and ignore others.

I have skipped the set quizes/ exams section for examole as it seems like a lot of useless work unless you have hundreds in your class. But again YMMV. I give it 5 stars as it is a well written book that is more focused than some others I have reviewed here.

If you want to operate an online educational course one of the most important choices you will have to make is choosing a good program to manage the course and all of its requirements. Moodle is an open source course management system that can handle anything from a single course through a university system with thousands of students and courses. The Moodle system is a complete system with a student registration and login, calendar, student forums, help system, online quiz system, the ability to upload and download files and assignments, and course content control. This book provides the reader with all the background and detail information they need to install and configure the software as well as and setup your courses. I was able to follow the book and setup a course and test it easily enough. It wasn't perfect the first time through but I did get it working correctly without having to refer to any other source of documentation.

Although installation is traditionally done on an Linux Apache system it will work on most systems that have a webserver, PHP, and SQL database. Using Moodle is highly recommended to anyone interested in learning this software or establishing an online course management system.

It's always fun when you catch wind of something technical that you didn't even know existed. That's the position I'm in with the O'Reilly book Using Moodle - Teaching with the Popular Open Source Course Management System by Jason Cole. This is a very cool software package, and the book covers it very well.

Contents: Introduction; Moodle Basics; Creating and Managing Content; Using Forums, Chats and Dialogues; Quizzes; Workshops; Assignments and Exercises; Journals; Glossaries; Lessons; Wikis; Grades and Scales; Managing Your Class; Surveys and Choices; Putting It All Together; Moodle Administration; Index

I had no idea there was any open source content management systems (CMS) out there, much less ones with a rather quirky and cool name like Moodle. This book is published under the O'Reilly Community Press imprint, which means that people intimately involved in the technology create the documentation that is then put into print and distributed by O'Reilly. It's also licensed under the Creative Commons structure, so it's designed to be used and built on by others. I think O'Reilly should be commended for providing this valuable niche to the technical community. The author has put together some solid documentation on Moodle, supplemented by his warnings and tips based on real world experience. Although you might be able to get a drier version of the documentation online, all it would take is one or two of Cole's warnings to save you more than the cost of the book many times over. Even if you're not necessarily considering Moodle as a CMS, it's worth reading the book to see how elegant an open source software solution can be. It'd be really hard for me to recommend commercial solutions costing tens of thousands of dollars after reading this volume.

This is a well-done book that can open your eyes to what an open source solution can provide, whether it's for a CMS or something else. Worth a read...

The book is OK as a read, but isn't very strong when it comes to actually using Moodle. I was expecting much deeper information than is found in this book. I'm still going to have to spend hours just trying things out on Moodle before I can do anything of real use. It appears that Moodle can be a very powerful tool, but the book seems to focus primarily on entry level knowledge. Too bad.

The second edition of this book can be downloaded in .pdf version for free.
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Using_Moodle_book

I am a new Moodle Course Management System (CMS) user, teacher, and administrator. The book Using Moodle, by Jason Cole, has two main threads, tutorials for setting up content, and teaching/management tips after you are under way. Jason has written the basics in such a way that I was able to get my first prototype course up and running in a couple days. Moodle is well designed and documented, and easy to use -- I have found operation to be pretty much as advertised -- no, better than advertised. I could have created my first course without Jason's book, but it would have taken me longer. Nice work Jason.

Now I am taking my prototype course to the next level. I have been taking my copy of Using Moodle and a yellow highlighter everywhere I go. I think we need a second edition or companion book from Jason, something with more depth -- perhaps additional threads on administration and customization. I would also like to study actual courses in depth -- a kind of Moodle "walk-about".

In Chapters 2 through 13 Jason Cole describes how to use Moodle from installation through creating various types of courses. The easy to follow text with illustrations describe, step by step, how to achieve a working system. Chapter 1 sets the context. Cole writes [Moodle creator] "Martin's background led him to adopt social constructionism as a core theory behind Moodle." And comments "Most [course management systems] have been built around tools, not pedagogy. I would call most commercial CMS Systems tool-centered while Moodle is learning-centered." This captures the reason for Moodle's overwhelming adoption by college and university faculty and K-12 school teachers-Moodle is designed to teach, and does it well. Chapter 15 "Putting It All Together" summarizes course design patterns for introductory survey, skills development, theory/discussion, and capstone courses-a chapter that every education graduate should be able to write. These patterns make the difference between "teaching as we were taught" and "teaching as we should be taught."

A learning system "by educators for educators" continuously being improved by some very-savvy PHP developers. Cole describes their work well and argues that the learning theory underlying the design has made powerful education technology, more than just a "cool" architecture.

I picked up this book before a flight to a conference, knowing a lot about WebCT (at the time) and virtually nothing about Moodle. I was skeptical about Moodle, but by the end of the flight I had burned through Cole's easy-to-understand book and was salivating to get my hands on a Moodle course to begin developing. Cole has a way of showing a tool with an example and getting the reader excited about trying it.

My only complaint is the production value seems a little weak. I'd like some color images and better proofreading and technical editing of the text.

Otherwise, Using Moodle is a great way to bridge the gap from the stodgy, limiting corporate LMS to the customizable possibilities of the open source LMS.

If your looking for the Moodle manual, and you want it bound, here it is. I find that handy, so i like it. I suppose it depends on whether you like reading stuff on line or not. If you like it bound then this is the way to go. That being said, I would have liked some more material on how to extend Moodle, and not just the straight walk through that is here.