To Moodle or Not to Moodle?

Since I am learning about Moodle and building a Moodle site for our school district I thought I would explore Moodle sites this week. Moodle was developed as free open-source e-learning software that helps people create online courses for students and adults. So how are other people using Moodle outside of public school or college education?

Here is a short list of some of the interesting sites I found in the United States at: http://moodle.org/sites

• Learn to Speak the French Language Online for Free: http://learnfrench.elanguageschool.net/ This site listed 10 languages that people could learn for free online. So how’s your Dutch?
• Adoption Education Classes: http://www.adoptioneducationclasses.com/classroom/ This site was created for those interested in adoption.
• After Hours Electrical CEUs: http://course.electceu.com/ This site requires payment but think of the advantages to earning a certification and a better paying job while still working.
• Adult Caregiver Training: http://caregivermanagerceus.com/moodle/login/index.php This site is for people who care for others.
• Free Online Games: http://ahshornets.moodle.com/ Hadn’t thought about hosting online games through the Moodle software.
• Pharmacy Training: http://pharmacylessons.com/ Pharmacy technical training and continuing education.
• Aircraft Technical Computerized Service Professionals: http://www.atcspro.com/index.html This is a new site that opened January 2009 for Boeing aircraft training.

And last but not least I couldn't resist including this site:

• After School Hackers: https://www.ashprogram.com/ – OK, I know what you’re thinking and so did I at first, but this is actually a site for school-aged children to learn computer programming. This site is for a specific school district so I wasn’t able to log in as a guest but what a great idea – fun learning for students after school.

There are over 10,000 registered Moodle sites just in the United States so this is just a small sampling of the various ways that people are using Moodle. Realize that most of these sites require a person to log in which means creating a Moodle account. Just because you may already have a Moodle account for a course or school district doesn’t mean you can automatically log into another site. But you can continue to use the same username, email address and password for each Moodle account you create.

We should all be lifelong learners and the Internet along with Moodle is creating many online learning opportunities for people.