Dave Nagel reports that Google Apps Education Edition is coming to Moodle. Moodlerooms, a Moodle partner, is launching a new enhancement to the open source LMS in collaboration with search giant Google to provide access to the application suite using a single sign-on. Through the integration, users loaded into Moodle will be automatically loaded into Google Apps Education Edition, providing users with Web-based e-mail, document authoring, spreadsheets, presentations and sites, all integrated with their online learning platform. From a teacher’s perspective, this provides an easy way to assign students to collaborative tasks without having to worry about the students having different operating systems or incompatible software or being unable to access an online system. From an IT staffer or CIO’s perspective, this provides an integration tested with large-scale data loads.
It’s not for free, but (Anne: see comments) It’s something that might come in handy for schools with small budgets, as it should simplify administration. School teachers will love it, as it’s great for kids who don’t always have their own email account yet. I’m not sure it makes sense for adults. Let’s see whether the Big Ones in adult ed (Open University…) adopt it.
2 Responses
Hi Anne.
Just wanted to clear something up for you — the code and documentation for the Google/Moodle integration is, in fact, available for free download on our development site: http://development.moodlerooms.com.
Those who are currently self-hosting their Moodle site and know how to apply changes to their code can configure the integration on their own (as long as they have a Google Apps Education Edition account, which is free as well). However, Moodlerooms does offer support to help those who either do not want to or know how to do these things on their own. That is where any possible costs would come in, though pricing has yet to be determined because we haven’t added it as a regular offering yet.
For any more information about the integration or how Moodlerooms can help expand or support Moodle, visit our Web site: http://www.moodlerooms.com.
~Jessie
Thank you very much, Jessie 🙂