Moodle Questions

[gibbo_ap]

a few questions about moodle;

(easier ask people who know when i know nothing about it than spending hours trawling through moodle site and docs)

is there a link in to sims?
if yes does it allow reading / writing to/from sims?
what good points are there about moodle
what bad point are there with moodle?
is there an online area for kids?

thanks

[secretlife]

Goodness me - big questions-where to start? I could write a book on it all (oh yeah - forgot - I did)

is there a link in to sims?
if yes does it allow reading / writing to/from sims?
well not built in, no, but there are ways out there to link from SIMS to varying degrees according to what you are after - and info on these forums here if you do a search (easier and more info than on moodle.org)

what good points are there about moodle
it is Open source and therefore highly customisable - it was designed for teachers by people with an educational, not a commercial background and therefore lends itself better to school use - it has a huge online community (nay, evangelical following) so you are always likely to get free help.
what bad point are there with moodle?
Although it is "free" to install, you do need someone who knows what they are doing so you don't make errors in security, user permissions etc. It isn't difficult to be an admin of Moodle but you do need to do it right Some people say the themes are not particularly attractive contrasted with the fancy commercial VLEs - though I would say there are plenty of themes around to choose from if you don't like the defaults. It doesn't automatically provide a personal e-portfolio for pupils or easy parental access or reporting or any of those other government targets we are meant to meet - but it does provide for workarounds to achieve them.

is there an online area for kids
yes - you can set one up in a variety of ways according to what space you want them to have.

thanks
you're welcome.

[rpenhale]

We are very new to Moodle, but thanks to Ian Tasker of SchoolsICT.com have a read only link from SIMS which creates courses and assigns all the correct staff and students to the relevant classes when they first logon, and if class membership changes this is updated accordingly as well.