Google App and Moodle a concept

Google Buzz? Does this now make Google Apps a one-stop, all-in-one learning platform?

Absolutely yes!!! In fact whenever I am talking to the staff at my institute about Moodle and some web 2 tools, I can't stop myself from mentioning Google Apps and every time at the end I realise why would we need a LMS? Unitec this year moved all student email to Google, shame the staff will remain with Groupwise. We tried our best to move the whole institute to Google unfortunately some policies got in the way :-(.

Going back to the question I started with, why would you want to use a LMS when you can do all and more with Google Apps.

The mindmap below is still a work in progress. I'll be working on it in the coming days.



One common theme that is consistent through almost all the Google App is ability to create, collaboration and communication. This sits well with teaching that is underpinned by social learning theory. The wide range of tools audio, video, picture, text with both synchronous and asynchronous ability makes it a very enticing learning platform indeed.

The only problem for me at the moment with Google is that tools appear to be spread all over the place. iGoogle made an attempt to bring them together but it needs certain degree of tweaking and widgets for all the tools are not available.

Todays learners are ubiquitous and Google suits them really well. Anytime, any place and anytime.