[Olpc-open] CMS, Moodle, etc

[Todd Kelsey]

dumb question - at one point WebCT was going after Sakai, I "think", in
court -- I may not have my facts right; at any rate, is anyone familiar with
whether there has been a definitive settlement on this issue? not sure if it
affects Moodle or not. I had some fun with Moodle -- another fun thing is
there are places like opensourcehost that can help get moodle instances
going -- which would help with scalability.

would be fun to have an open content repository that LMSes could tap into
through "checking out" course packages.

On Dec 6, 2007 8:52 AM, gnome <gnome at greenglim.com> wrote:

> This is the first issue on the forum I can address as something other
> than a rank amateur.  :-)
>
> I've used Moodle, WebCT (now Blackboard), Blackboard before they merged,
> and have looked at Sakai.
>
> Moodle seems to me to be the clear winner.  Not so much necessarily on
> technical grounds, although a good case could be made for that, but
> because:
>
> 1) it has by far the highest rate of adoption in schools.  In
> universities, it's a close second and gaining on WebCT/Blackboard fast.
> If OLPC adopted Moodle, they'd be plugged into what is already the
> widest network of educators.
>
> 2) It is open source, and has a truly excellent set of support forums.
> My simple questions have been answered within hours -- the advantage of
> a global community is that someone's always awake ;-) -- and more
> difficult questions take a few days.
>
> 3) Technically, it is full-featured course management software.  In some
> ways, such as uploading some content, it is easier than WebCT.  I have
> yet to find a way in which it is harder to use.  WebCT has some new
> whiz-bang features not available in Moodle, such as the ability to hold
> quizzes in class where the questions are projected onto a screen and the
> students choose one of the multiple choice answers with remote
> clickers.  While this is very nice, it's hardly essential, and is rather
> unlikely to be very useful outside of a fully electronics equipped
> classroom.  (At our college, I think we may have two.)
>
> Sakai looks very interesting, but from what I've heard, there will be an
> institutional fee in the thousands of dollars, and it's not yet widely
> adopted.
>
> Speaking of institutional fees, WebCT charges us $65,000.  That's per
> year.  An individual license is a few hundred ($300?).  Support is
> somewhere in Pennsylvania.  Or something.  Like most commercial tech
> support it's similar to a cardiac defibrillator.  When you need one,
> it's never there, and you hope never to need it in any case.
>
> Cheers,
> quixote.
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>



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