Moodle seems like an open source Blackboard. Patent issues aside, this seems pretty interesting to me. My university was just rolling out Blackboard while I was an undergrad (I’m getting older and older in technology terms), though now I am guessing even tech-savvy high schools have rolled out Blackboard as well.
Well Moodle seems to provide everything Blackboard provided in the past, along with some new stuff (for all I know, Blackboard has these as well). This leads me to envision dynamic classrooms run by students interested in learning something outside of any curriculum. This could enable my desire to learn Thai cooking from actual Thai folks in Thailand today. Or maybe something more obscure, like studying ancient history by collaborating with students that have access to the original works themselves (imagine a Wiki discussion on a reading piece of classic Shakespeare literature).
Even if Blackboard is successful in quashing Moodle and Sakai, this type of concept will surface in other forms. Even hodge-podge sites will start providing this outside of the collaborative educational groupware moniker.
Moodle seems like a complete package, and it looks easy to use and hopefully easy to set up. I have a hankering to get it going on a spare machine at home to see how easy it is to manage. I can also foresee a future environment of collaborative learning that is paid for by paid installations of Moodle. For example, something like the UW Experimental College or my alma mater’s College of General Studies.
