Now, working in a Middle School like I do, I never have a problem with sassing. I am loving what SaaSing is doing for our school. We use Moodle as our Interactive Learning Environment platform. This has allowed us to mandate that all teachers use Moodle for their courses from grade 5-12. We have some grade 1-4 teachers piloting it this year as well since they see the benefits. The adoption of Moodle has impacted everyone connected to our learning community.

• Teachers have courses with a multitude of resources to draw on from year to year. Once a course is built, it can be reset each year and added to include new tools or resources. In fact some teachers leave and new teachers inherit the last teacher’s course full of content which serves as a solid platform to begin their new career.

• Students have aggregation taking place when ever they log in to Moodle. All of their current course are listed and available. Heck we even developed a Durham Academy Mobile iPhone/iPod Touch App so student could get quick access to their courses. It “only” allows them to read text, link to websites, listen to audio, or watch videos.

• Parents have quick access (much like the DA Mobile App) via our QuickLook. Parents use their students PowerSchool Number and have access to all Moodle courses.

With Moodle in place we are now able to build upon this platform in other ways. This is where additional SaaS comes into play. VoiceThread put out a Moodle filter that allows us to embed them into our Moodle courses. This has allowed for teachers and students to easily utilize this technology from wherever they are in the world.
Here is a sample VoiceThread we are working on as part of our CyberSafety and Digital Citizenship course with 5th and 6th grade students. Join in if you would like.

Our next forays are with Mindmeister for online, collaborative mind mapping and Google Docs with Moodle Single Sign on. While this is still a work in progress, I plan to see it through as the benefits to the students will be huge. Checkout MoodleRooms (Log in Required) for some documentation as that is where this picture is from. We will no doubt block Gmail and Chat but leave the rest open.

I see a huge benefit to SaaS as we can eliminate the issues of platforms, software application types, and not having a strong school – home connection. So I say, go ahead and SaaS me!

Technorati Tags: class2.0, education, learning, Moodle, voicethread