Introducing Moodle into Wellington College
School:
Since early 2006 our school has been using the Microsoft SharePoint Content Managing System with some success. However, finding it to have little interaction or flexibility, a handful of teachers (8-10) started using an offsite hosted Moodle installation in February this year (2009). Having used Moodle for the previous 2 years, I provided most of the training & support to these teachers.
Early in Term Two I organised presentations to the whole staff to show them what the benefits of Moodle were. Each teacher using Moodle showed examples of how they were using it. We followed this with day long PD opportunities for groups of 8-10 teachers during the following weeks. In all 50 staff attended these sessions and, while some are still in the process of developing courses, most are using Moodle with their classes.
Students self-enrol for our site which is really just an interim measure until a full school site is developed for 2010. Current student enrolments stand at 750, all of these engaged in at least one course.
The real story here is the growth in interest from teachers who, once shown its potential, really take to Moodle. They can see the enormous potential that Moodle provides to enable better organisation, collaboration, communication and ease of access to information and resources.
What Wellington College have achieved in the space of a few months is testament to how good Moodle is as a Learning Management System.
I have highlighted several key benefits of Moodle on my blogsite and have also attached a comparison that I did between Moodle and MS SharePoint back in October 2007. Though dated it does highlight a number of the benefits of the Moodle LMS.
Mark Callagher,
eLearning Director,
Wellington College
Blogsite: High School eLearning
Moodle Site: RightClickLearning
Documents:
