Martin Dougiamas: Moodle CMS
November 8th, 2005 | by Tim Wilson |Moodle is the biggest open source course management system in the world. It competes head-to-head with Blackboard on features and crushes the commercial competition on price. I’ve posted about the use of Moodle in my school district in the past, and anyone who’s read any of those posts knows that I’m a huge fan. I thought it would be cool to go to the source and ask Martin Dougiamas, Moodle founder and project leader, a bit more about the project. I think you’ll enjoy this podcast very much!
I continue to be impressed by Skype. Martin’s in Perth, Western Australia, and our conversation from (literally) halfway around the world sounds like we’re sitting in the same room. Is Skype worth $1.6 billion? eBay thinks so. Premature or not, VoIP is going to be huge.
Download: STP-MartinDougiamas (13.1 MB, 28:20)
Tags: moodle, Open source
14 Responses to “Martin Dougiamas: Moodle CMS”
By John Pederson on Nov 8, 2005 | Reply
Thanks Tim! I’m really looking forward to this one!
By Meredith on Nov 10, 2005 | Reply
Tim — I love this! I’m wondering if it might be helpful to chapterize it.
By Tim Wilson on Nov 10, 2005 | Reply
Meredith, great to hear from you! I’ve resisted going to the enhanced podcasts because it would necessitate a move away from MP3. I could provide two separate feeds, but I just don’t have time to take on the extra hassle. I *really* wish that Apple or someone else could figure out a way to do enhanced MP3 podcasts. Maybe someone has and I just haven’t heard about it. –Tim
By Bob Irving on Nov 10, 2005 | Reply
Awesome interview! It’s great to hear The Man himself talking about the Moodle. I love his open source approach to education, and Moodle is a perfect example of that. I’m passing this link around to colleagues.
By Mark Stevens on Nov 10, 2005 | Reply
Great job Tim! Very well done indeed. Thank you so much for putting this together.
By Jason Askegreen on Nov 16, 2005 | Reply
Great interview, but I wished you would have asked what they plan to do about Podcasts. I would love for our teachers to record lessons and save to their course page in Moodle. The RSS feed would then allow students to get the updated lessons automatically in iTunes; very convenient for our split-homeschool program where students study from home three days a week.
I’ve been watching the forums, and there is some discussion about this but no real easy answers of how to make it work. It would be nice to have it as an activity or resource item.
Any thoughts?
By Tim Wilson on Nov 16, 2005 | Reply
Jason, great idea about the podcasting. Perhaps it could be as simple as having an option on a forum to enable attachments in the RSS feed. Moodle does create RSS 2.0 feeds so it would certainly be possible. I’d post it in the forums and see if you can get a groundswell going.
-Tim
By Dan McCreary on Dec 2, 2005 | Reply
Thanks for doing this! Great job. I hope that one day we can all use LMS systems that talk together and freely exchange learning content. I hope that Moogle publishes their metadata specifications in some type of machine-readable format like OWL to aid in vocabulary-based transformation. Here is my start at some K-12 education structures: http://education.state.mn.us/datadictionary
Keep up the great work Tim!
By Tim Wilson on Dec 4, 2005 | Reply
Dan, great to hear from you. Check out http://moodle.org/doc/?file=future.html to get a look at what’s coming up with future version of Moodle. Are you going to be at TIES? It would be great to chat. Where can I find a good primer on OWL? -Tim
By Cristina on Dec 28, 2006 | Reply
This is great - it is just what I needed to hear - the idea behind how and why Moodle evolved
this is great - I’m studying for my MA in Open, Online and Distance Education with the Open University http://www.open.ac.uk
this podcast has been great for me to listen to when considering bringing Moodle into where I work ´The Chartered Institute of Marketing’
Thank you!
By Lyn (Vals group) on Jan 3, 2007 | Reply
Hi Cristina fancy meeting you here!
I agree this podcast is great, the content is quite exciting and very useful for our study too - it is well timed for H808 2006
(fellow student in MA in Open and Distance Education - Open University).
By sheila vine (H808) Karelena's Group on Jan 7, 2007 | Reply
Hi this is excellent for our course. I use Moodle a lot and find it very approachable.
Sheila
By Helen on Dec 12, 2007 | Reply
Excellent interview. Great to go to the source. I particularly liked the image that Martin used re: the cups filling up. That is how it is!
I think moodle is a great source of learning and can say having been involved in the Msc.in Education and training management e-learning strand at Dublin City University. Any plans to interview again in 2008?
Helen