Moodleは日々発達している開発進行中のシステムです。開発は現在もプロジェクトリーダーであるMartin Dougiamasによって開始されました:
数年の間、私は何とかMoodleに取り組んできました。Moodleの取り組みは、私がカーティン工科大学にウェブマスター及びWebCTのシステム管理者として勤務していた頃に始まりました。私は、WebCTで少なからずフラストレーションを感じましたし、痒さで掻き毟りたいような思いに駆られました。他の方法があるのではないかと(いいえ、Blackboardではありません :-)
私はまた学校や小規模の施設(いくつかは大規模!)でインターネットを効率良く利用したいと考えている人々を知っていました。彼らはテクノロジーと教育学の迷路の中でどこからスタートすれば良いのか分かりませんでした。彼らの教育スキルをオンライン環境に活かすことが出来て、無料で利用可能な代わりのシステムがあればと、私は常に思っていました。
My strong beliefs in the unrealised possibilities of Internet-based education led me to complete a Masters and then a PhD in Education, combining my former career in Computer Science with newly constructed knowledge about the nature of learning and collaboration. In particular, I am particularly influenced by the epistemology of social constructionism - which not only treats learning as a social activity, but focusses attention on the learning that occurs while actively constructing artifacts (such as texts) for others to see or use.
It is crucial to me that this software be easy to use - in fact it should be as intuitive as possible.
I'm committed to continuing my work on Moodle and on keeping it Open and Free. I have a deeply-held belief in the importance of unrestricted education and empowered teaching, and Moodle is the main way I can contribute to the realisation of these ideals.
A number of early prototypes were produced and discarded before he released version 1.0 upon a largely unsuspecting world on August 20, 2002. This version was targeted towards smaller, more intimate classes at University level, and was the subject of research case studies that closely analysed the nature of collaboration and reflection that occurred among these small groups of adult participants.
Since then there has been steady series of new releases adding new features, better scalability and improved performance.
As Moodle has spread and the community has grown, more input is being drawn from a wider variety of people in different teaching situations. For example, Moodle is now used not only in Universities, but in high schools, primary schools, non-profit organisations, private companies, by independent teachers and even homeschooling parents. A growing number of people from around the world are contributing to Moodle in different ways - for more details see the Credits page.
An important feature of the Moodle project is the moodle.org web site, which provides a central point for information, discussion and collaboration among Moodle users, who include system administrators, teachers, researchers, instructional designers and of course, developers. Like Moodle, this site is always evolving to suit the needs of the community, and like Moodle it will always be Free.
In 2003, the company moodle.com was launched to provide additional commercial support for those who need it, as well as managed hosting, consulting and other services.
For more about our future plans for Moodle, see the Future roadmap.
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