Really Linux has posted a Moodle tutorial that’s supposed to have even newbie Linux users up and running Moodle in 45 minutes: This beginner article by Mark Rais provides step-by-step instructions for installing Moodle, a Learning Management System, on to a Fedora Linux server. It provides everything necessary to setup a full powered intranet web-server that can support course listings, event calendars, student/teacher communication and much more. Best of all, a prototype server can be functional within about 45 minutes. For those not in the know, Moodle is a free alternative to Blackboard or WebCT–nuff said!

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I’m becoming more and more enamored with Moodle the more I dig into it. And the discussion of late on the Moodle blogs forum has been nothing short of amazing, I think. (Here’s the feed address if you want to follow it.) For instance, the idea that we could use Moodle as a platform for eportfolios has been making the rounds of late, and Eastern Kentucky University is doing just that. Here’s a snippet of the conversation:

When trying to envision how to set-up an eportfolio for students from within Moodle, I kept running into problems until I stopped thinking about how to set this up for Moodle “students” and started thinking about setting it up for Moodle “teachers”.

What we will be doing this Fall is creating a Moodle course for each of our students to use to create their eportfolio. We will make each student a “teacher” in his/her own course and will not enroll students…access to the eportfolios will be via guest access and each eportfolio owner can require an enrollment key or not to view their eportfolio. We are in the process of customizing the language files…renaming “course” to “eportfolio”, “Teacher” to “Portfolio Owner”, “Student” to “Portfolio Visitor” etc.

Now I know that may not have much relevance if you’re not a Moodleite (Moodleist? Moodler?), but the semantics just blow me away. It comes close, I think, to this new model of learning that we’re looking at, the idea that as learners, we are all to some extent going to be the teachers of our own courses, take ownership of our own learning within the context of a larger social network that supports us.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love the transparency of all of this early thinking about how we can use these tools in new and interesting ways? Way too much fun.