Blackboard vs. Moodle
Competition in course-management market grows
Molly Tipton failed at her first try last winter at putting classroom resources and homework assignments online—via a class MySpace page—after parents said they feared their children might get into trouble on the popular social- networking site.
But the 8th grade teacher has had more success this school year, with her second try. Last fall, she started using Moodle, an online course-management system that is stored on the El Paso,Texas, school district’s computer server, with access controlled by student passwords.
Through Moodle, Ms. Tipton now posts reading passages and links to Web sites that are related to her lessons. She also has set up a popular online chat room for her students and posts homework assignments online, a feature that students as well as some parents have embraced. Moodle’s online capabilities, she said, are making her social studies classes a hybrid between traditional and online courses.
