Application And Development Of Moodle System

Moodle is an open source course management system.Moodle was designed by an educator and computer scientist,with "social constructionist" principles in mind.Moodle is an active and evolving work in progress.Development was started by Martin Dougiamas who continues to lead the project.A number of early prototypes were produced and discarded before he released version 1.0 upon a largely unsuspecting world on August 20,2002.This version was targeted towards smaller,more intimate classes at University level,and was the subject of research case studies that closely analysed the nature of collaboration and reflection that occurred among these small groups of adult participants.Since then there has been steady series of new releases adding new features,better scalability and improved performance.As Moodle has spread and the community nas grown,more input is bcing d(?)awn from a wider variety of people in different teaching situations.The main functions of Moodle are:Site management,User management,Course management,Assignment Module,Chat Module,Choice Module,Forum Module,Quiz Module,Resource Module,Survey Module,Workshop Module.The System has the following user roles:student,teacher,administrator,developer.The article introduces the Moodle function of these users separately.Moodle is primarily developed in Linux using Apache,MySQL and PHP(also sometimes known as the LAMP platform),but is also regularly tested with PostgreSQL and on Windows XP,Mac OS X and Netware 6 operating systems.Moodle is designed to upgrade cleanly from any earlier version to any later version.When upgrading a Moodle installation you should follow these steps:Backup important data,Install the new Moodle software, Finishing the upgrade.Moodle can be applied very flexibly.In this article,the role of teacher is taken as example to state how a teacher uses the source of Moodle to carry out effective teaching process.Moodle system is based on module,and you can download or customize module to expand the function of Moodle.Moodle has already resolved mostly information-based learning problem,but some individuation demands will be produced in the application process.These demands only can be satisfied by continuing development and designment. The article analyzes the basic structure of Moodle and feasible format of continuing development and designment.The basic method of development and contribution are also discussed.An instance of block development is introduced at end of the article.