Navigate 2.1.3 – Commercial versus Open Virtual Classrooms Quest

The main difference between the commercial and open classroom has to deal with both convenience and cost.  Essentially without the cost, some of the convenience is sacrificed, whereas the inverse is also true.  However after almost 10 years of teaching online, I have noticed that with open sourced software, I can do about 95% of what I could do with the Commercial programs.  There are some elements of a purchased Adobe platform (i.e. ease of conversion to Word), but for the most part open source can be used effectively with some imagination and the understanding that some of the bells and whistles will not be used.