Moodle as powerful teaching tool

Let me show you my teaching tool, Moodle. Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities.

I named my Moodle  "Online Classroom". It was used as a powerful teaching tool to provide my students some exercises and assignments related to teaching contents as well as a communication tool for my students to contact me for some advice.

I have tried so far a few functions available in the "Moodle" , assignment, practice, exercise and workshop. I also use "chatroom" and "poll" sometime and they showed me some interesting results.

More than writing skill required in Moodle, I assign my students to submit their audio clips using Audacity.

My students are trained to use Audacity well before an audio assignment begins. Moodle allows my students to submit their MP3 files by using "upload" function. I could practice my students' pronunciation as well as their required abilities in the contents.

Any difficulty in checking the assignment?

It's not a difficult job for me to check all my students' audio assignments. I downloaded all the files into my iPod and I played it any time I did some other activities. It worked well for me. I could find out how far my students improve their skills while I was driving home or having lunch or dinner.

However, I found that the contents created on Moodle was so plain and they could not motivate my students to take their time clicking them around. Therefore, I created some html files and linked them all to the Moodle. The classroom looked more lively and my students paid more time studying the html files before doing their assignments in the Moodle.