Navigate 3.2.1 Tools for Deciding on an LMS Quest

Wow, after looking carefully at the top twenty, I feel that I may have underestimated Moodle.  I know that my college used it for our learning system, however it was fairly new (as I am fairly old) and we had many issues so there are improvements to it that I did not know about.  It is apparently the best for education and is constantly updating the program to allow for more functions and users.

First of all, especially in public education, it is free!  Many schools are slicing budgets while trying to maintain digital capabilities and this system offers much in the way of an online tool that meets the requirements of many K12 and higher educational systems.  At one point, our school was looking into it because Blackboard was purchasing Angel and the price was going to be more than we could afford for our LMS.  (We did love Angel).  At the time, there was a lackluster grading system and some of the support was not what we were hoping for.  After a team looked into it, we decided to look elsewhere and decided on a system called ITSLearning that is more of a personalized learning system than a learning management system.  We are in our first year and there have been many kinks, so I will withhold judgment for now and talk about some of the best on the list from our assignment.

 .  The significance of Moodle is that the production of peer-reviewed, collaborative programs will be much more useful and efficient than programs that are concerned with making money or marketing.  One major benefit of open source is that it is accessible to everyone and improvements or changes are always made available to the user community and this also allows the user to set the security in a personalized manner. This type of software can be adjusted to meet specific user requirements. The changes that open source has manifested on the K-12 educational system because the open source software is free(or almost free) and has allowed schools to access much more educational software.  A few familiar examples of open-source operating systems are Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers, Audacity, an audio editor and mixer, and Linux, an operating system used by our Department of Defense, and in many university research centers. At this time, there is no iPad, iPhone app that uses Moodle.  The thing about Moodle is that it will always be free because it is open source. The school ITS or some other technology leader will need to be the manager of the Moodle program to act as host.  This is definitely the one that would work best for an online K-12 because you can have the entire virtual environment.
Another type of online educational application that is free is Edmodo, which is more of a social learning network popular in the United States. Edmodo has iPad, iPhone apps
 Edmodo is a bit like Facebook and easier for teachers to learn to use.  It also has some great apps that can be downloaded (some for a price).  Edmodo started out free for our school, but then they wanted to charge for the system use, so we dropped it.  I really liked it, but I used it more with a face-to-face class and did not use it as for my virtual class. Basically, Edmodo is a great program where teachers can post and students can post.  

Reference

Creative Commons. (2010). K-12 Open Technologies. Retrieved November 16, 1012, from Consortium for School Networking (CoSN): http://www.cosn.org/initiatives/k12opentechnologies/opentechnologieshome/tabid/5446/default.aspx