Well, conference sessions being what they often are, today’s Canadian MoodleMoot was a productive day for me – not in a bunch of stuff that I can take home and use right away, but an interesting (correct or not) collection of thoughts as to where Moodle might go from here as it comes up on its 2.0 release. I remember first hearing about it in Hawaii in 2003 (not 2002 as I had tweeted) and thinking that this is something that is really going to make waves. And now, six years later, the first waves seem to be building to a crest and the direction it will break will provide one heck of a ride as Moodle seems to be set to become an engine, not just an LMS.
In it’s 1.X itteration, Moodle is already being used in all manner of non education instances and now with 2.0 having web services and the ability to link into data repositories, those non-ed uses might just explode as users will no longer be bound to the interface that is both loved and loathed.
These new ways of using Moodle seem to have been the “back of mind” idea for many people who I chatted with in the halls. If this flexibility comes to pass, Moodle could become the supremely flexible system that can be made to look like anything that one has the money to make it look like. And with the ability to pull in content from all over both internal and external ‘nets it could really be icon of the new ideas in education around openness. But only if it is allowed to be as I fear that many institutions will force it to run as a walled garden.
I have/had more ideas on this, but as my attention is being called elsewhere, I’ll have to post them later. Please feel free to post comments on what I’ve got so far and hopefully by Monday I’ll have got more of this idea out.
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