Developed by an extremely active open source community, Moodle is a sophisticated course management system that's ideal for creating dynamic online learning communities and for supplementing face-to-face learning. Used in more than 115 countries and supporting over 60 languages, Moodle can scale from a single-teacher site to a 40,000- student university. Teachers who use Moodle have access to an array of powerful tools such as assignments, forums, journals, quizzes, surveys, chat rooms, and workshops. Using Moodle is a comprehensive, hands-on guide that explains how the system works, with plenty of examples and best practices for its many features and plug-in modules. Authored by a member of the Moodle community, this authoritative book also exposes little-known but powerful hacks for more technically savvy users. For anyone who is using-or thinking of using-this CMS, Using Moodle is required reading.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 12 Ratings

Very basic, adds nothing that's not in the manual - 2006-08-01
Reviewer Rating:
I was very disappointed with this book and will be returning it.

If you have spent a few minutes playing with Moodle and read even a little of the online manual, this book adds nothing new. The system is easy to figure out, as most items are pretty self-explanatory and each option has a handy pop-up help screen that explains anything that you don't understand. The online documentation is very good.

I was hoping this book would explain how to do more advanced things in Moodle - how the many available add-on modules work and what they contribute to a finished system, tips and tricks to add videos and flash files to your courses, best practices for course development, advanced customizing, etc. But there was none of that in the book - only the same information that is already included free with Moodle. Save your money!

As good as it gets - 2006-07-02
Reviewer Rating:
Executive Summary: Good, well written overview, buy if you can afford it, a good book by the standards of how to publishing but not critical as a lot of stuff is on Moodle's site.
................

Moodle has about 50% of the education market now and there are a lot of people working on it and a ton of information available through moodle's site. Mooodle 1.6, which I am using, has yet to stablizie properly and there are all kinds of bugs needing to be tackled. These vary depending on what level of Apache you use and what your level of admin access is. So, though it is more focused than a lot of other books, your milage will obviously vary depending on your logistics.

Moodle itself is easy enough to use and it helps to be familiar with it before reading through the book. Like most of the other books in this range, I just skim it as I more or less know how to use the admin panel; the book concentrates on front end classroom stuff, not on setting up Moodle and as all classes vary and teachers uses different methodologies or none, it is hard to write a definitive book on a pliable tool. The book is written in very clear and cogent Engish and this is not always the case with how to geek books, so that is a big plus.

Also, there are a few interesting teaching insights in the book, more than most others I have read and they are valuable. It gives for example, novel ways to use Wikis. But you would probably hit on these yourself after a while.

There are different ways of using the functions (different levels of access for teacher only, groups of students and teacher, or everyine doing the class). There are also different ways of teaching; I prefer a more informal approach and beleive in giving the students a lot of rope. This means I will use some functions and ignore others.

I have skipped the set quizes/ exams section for examole as it seems like a lot of useless work unless you have hundreds in your class. But again YMMV. I give it 5 stars as it is a well written book that is more focused than some others I have reviewed here.

Not Indepth Enough! - 2006-06-27
Reviewer Rating:
The book is OK as a read, but isn't very strong when it comes to actually using Moodle. I was expecting much deeper information than is found in this book. I'm still going to have to spend hours just trying things out on Moodle before I can do anything of real use. It appears that Moodle can be a very powerful tool, but the book seems to focus primarily on entry level knowledge. Too bad.

Why pay $35? - 2008-07-08
Reviewer Rating:
The second edition of this book can be downloaded in .pdf version for free.
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Using_Moodle_book

Instigate the Moodle LMS Revolution - 2008-07-02
Reviewer Rating:
I picked up this book before a flight to a conference, knowing a lot about WebCT (at the time) and virtually nothing about Moodle. I was skeptical about Moodle, but by the end of the flight I had burned through Cole's easy-to-understand book and was salivating to get my hands on a Moodle course to begin developing. Cole has a way of showing a tool with an example and getting the reader excited about trying it.

My only complaint is the production value seems a little weak. I'd like some color images and better proofreading and technical editing of the text.

Otherwise, Using Moodle is a great way to bridge the gap from the stodgy, limiting corporate LMS to the customizable possibilities of the open source LMS.

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