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74 lines
4.4 KiB
HTML
74 lines
4.4 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
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<html>
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<head>
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<title>Moodle Docs: Background</title>
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="../theme/standard/styles.php" type="TEXT/CSS">
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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
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</head>
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<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
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<h2>Background</h2>
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<p>Moodle is an active and evolving work in progress. Development was started
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by <a href="http://moodle.org/user/view.php?id=1&course=1" target="_top">Martin
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Dougiamas</a> who continues to lead the project:</p>
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<blockquote>
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<p><em>I've been working on it, in some way or other, for several years. It
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started in the 90's when I was webmaster at <a target=_top href="http://www.curtin.edu.au/">Curtin
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University of Technology</a> and a system administrator of their WebCT installation.
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I encountered many frustrations with the WebCT beast and developed an itch
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that needed scratching - there had to be a better way (no, not Blackboard
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:-)</em></p>
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<p><em>I also know a lot of people in schools and smaller institutions (and
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some big ones!) who want to make better use of the Internet but don't know
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where to start in the maze of technologies and pedagogies that are out there.
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I've always hoped there would be a Free alternative that such people could
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use to help them move their teaching skills into the online environment. </em></p>
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<p><em>My strong beliefs in the unrealised possibilities of Internet-based education
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led me to complete a Masters and then a PhD in Education, combining my former
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career in Computer Science with newly constructed knowledge about the nature
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of learning and collaboration. In particular, I am particularly influenced
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by the epistemology of social constructionism - which not only treats learning
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as a social activity, but focusses attention on the learning that occurs while
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actively constructing artifacts (such as texts) for others to see or use.
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</em></p>
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<p><em>It is crucial to me that this software be easy to use - in fact it should
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be as intuitive as possible. </em></p>
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<p><em>I'm committed to continuing my work on Moodle and on keeping it Open
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and Free. I have a deeply-held belief in the importance of unrestricted education
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and empowered teaching, and Moodle is the main way I can contribute to the
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realisation of these ideals.</em></p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>A number of early prototypes were produced and discarded before he released
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version 1.0 upon a largely unsuspecting world on August 20, 2002. This version
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was targeted towards smaller, more intimate classes at University level, and
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was the subject of research case studies that closely analysed the nature of
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collaboration and reflection that occurred among these small groups of adult
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participants.
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<p>Since then there has been steady series of new releases adding new features,
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better scalability and improved performance.
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<p>As Moodle has spread and the community has grown, more input is being drawn
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from a wider variety of people in different teaching situations. For example,
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Moodle is now used not only in Universities, but in high schools, primary schools,
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non-profit organisations, private companies, by independent teachers and even
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homeschooling parents. A growing number of people from around the world are
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contributing to Moodle in different ways - for more details see the <a href="?file=credits.html">Credits</a>
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page.
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<p>An important feature of the Moodle project is the <a href="http://moodle.org" target="_top">moodle.org</a>
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web site, which provides a central point for information, discussion and collaboration
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among Moodle users, who include system administrators, teachers, researchers,
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instructional designers and of course, developers. Like Moodle, this site is
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always evolving to suit the needs of the community, and like Moodle it will
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always be Free.
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<p>In 2003, the company <a href="http://moodle.com/" target="_top">moodle.com</a>
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was launched to provide additional commercial support for those need it, as
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well as managed hosting, consulting and other services.
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<p>For more about our future plans for Moodle, see the <a href="?file=future.html">Future</a>
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roadmap.</p>
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<p align="CENTER"><font size="1"><a href="." target="_top">Moodle Documentation</a></font></p>
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<p align="CENTER"><font size="1">Version: $Id$</font></p>
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</body>
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</html>
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