Ideas from an On-line Educator

An excellent quote to set the stage...

"Martin's background in education led him to adopt social constructionism as a core theory behind Moodle. This is revolutionary, as most CMS systems have been built around tool sets, not pedagogy. Most commercial CMS systems are tool-centered, while Moodle is learning-centered. Social constructiionism is based on the idea that people learn best when they are engaged in a social process of constructing knowledge through the act of construction of an artifact for others. That's is a packed sentence, so let's break it down a bit. The term 'social process' indicates that learning is something we do in groups. From this point of view, learning is a process of negotiating meaning in a culture of shared artefact's and symbols. The process of negotiating meaning and utilizing shared artefact's is a process of constructing knowledge. We are not blank slates when we enter the learning process. We need to test new learning against our old beliefs and incorporate them into out existing knowledge structure. Part of the process of testing and negotiating involves creating artefact's and symbols for others to interact with. We create artifacts and in turn negotiate with others to define the meaning of those artefact's in terms of a shared culture of understanding. So how does this relate to Moodle? The first indication is in the interface. While tool-centric CMSs give you a list of tools as the interface, Moodle builds tools into an interface that makes the learning task central. You can organize your model course by week, topic, or social arrangement. Additionally, while other CMS's support a content model that encourages instructors to upload a lot of static content, Moodle focuses on tools for discussion and sharing artifacts. The focus isn't on delivering information; it's on sharing ideas and engaging in the construction of knowledge. Moodle's design philosophy makes this a uniquely teacher-friendly package that represents the first generation of educational tools that are truly useful." ...directly from Using Moodle Cole & Foster O'Reilly 2008