The December 2004 issue of Linux Journal has an interesting article on connection between technology and pedagogy, and/or vice versa.
"Most LMSes are instructor-oriented and largely concerned with how course content is delivered. Moodle [2] is based on a learner-oriented philosophy called social constructionist pedagogy [3], in which students are involved in constructing their own knowledge. The concepts behind this philosophy of learning are that learners actively construct new knowledge by tinkering, and they learn more by explaining what they have learned to others and by adopting a more subjective stance to the knowledge being created. These ideas run parallel to the way open-source development works, in which the developers also are often the users, everyone is free to tinker with the software and code is constructed, peer-reviewed and refined by the means of an open discussion. This philosophy is the basis for the unusual name of this project. The Moodle Web site explains the origin of the name:The word Moodle was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment ... It's also a verb that describes the process of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leaves to insight and creativity.
"The social construction pedagogy is reflected in the design and choice of Moodle features. For example, one of Moodle's features is every course can have a glossary of terms. The glossary can be set up to allow course participants to add their own terms and definitions. Taking it a step further, Moodle allows comments to be attached to each term, enabling participants to refine and clarify these definitions."
[1] Abjijett Chavan and Shireen Pavri, "Open-Source Learning Management with Moodle," Linux Journal, December 2004. p. 66 - 69.
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