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It took awhile for me to finish reading “Moodle Course Conversion: Beginner’s Guide” by Ian Wild but definitely not because I did not enjoy it, I have simply been very busy! I recently read and reviewed “Moodle Administration”, which is also from Packt Publishing, and like that book I was impressed with this one as well. I was actually a little more impressed with the Course Conversion book!
One reason why I enjoyed reading this book so much is because it did a good job of covering a lot of topics without overloading your brain. It guided the reader from start to finish – creating a new course to backing that course up and everything in the middle. Of course the book could not explain every single feature in depth but I thought it did a great job of covering the main, important topics.
Another reason why I enjoyed this book is because it put the reader in the teacher role where I am used to being in the administrator role. The author told you his own experiences and it was good to know that he’s been in that teaching position so he knows what it’s like. The book even gives the reader web sites and resources to use within Moodle like Voki, Odeo and Slide.com.
A big reason why I think this book would be so useful for Moodle users is that it shows the reader real classroom applications. It goes through many common tasks that teachers will more than likely run into like working with PowerPoints, taking images from a Word document, how to zip files so you can upload multiple files at once to Moodle, using video in Moodle and more. Instead of focusing only on the “how tos” and explaining the actual Moodle features it showed how to use the features by using real examples such as embedding a YouTube video with “compose a web page” or transforming a project into Moodle assignments.
It would get very boring and probably overwhelm a reader if it were to give you step by step directions on “how to” use a Moodle resource or activity, so by giving the reader an example on when and how a feature could be used is much more engaging and memorable. It may also spark some ideas for the reader or they could even use that very example in their own Moodle course.
To sum it up, I would highly recommend this book for any teacher that is planning to start using Moodle with their class. This book gives you the knowledge and power to create an engaging Moodle course from start to finish by taking you along his own journey of converting his course into Moodle. If a reader were to read this book and follow along by creating their own course I would be confident that it would be a success. Being a Moodle admin/trainer/support I can greatly appreciate this book for showing me the “teacher side” of a Moodle course. What I’m also taking from this book is the knowledge of other resources to use in a Moodle course, some great ideas and information about Moodle feature settings I never knew (wikis, gradebook, scales, lessons). Finally, it has helped me and will continue to help me form and structure our district’s Moodle help page. I have always struggled with how to display and give Moodle help and support to users in an online format because there is just so much information. This book has given me a few ideas on how to structure online Moodle help.
I could go on and on about the specifics in this book and the interesting things I found but I would really recommend buying it so you can read for yourself and refer back to it in the future – I know I will! Now, I must get back to all of the post-its I stuck in the book to try out and explore on my own Moodle site!
Related Links:
With school beginning I thought it would be a good idea to write a post about automatically putting students into groups using individual enrollment keys. This is definitely NOT a new Moodle tip, but it’s such a useful piece of information that teachers love I thought I would share and remind Moodle users to take advantage of it.
First, I want to give credit to Julian Ridden (aka Moodleman) for exposing me to this great tip. I first found out about this through his blog post (including a screencast), “Automatic Assignment of Class Groups“. There are other sources that explain how to accomplish this task (see below in “Related Links”) but I personally found out about it through his video.
Description
Groups are set up with individual enrollment keys before students enroll into the course. Teachers will tell students what enrollment key to use according to what group the teacher wants them in. They enter in the key when enrolling into the course and they are automatically put into a group according to which key they enter.
Why use this?
When students are in groups teachers are able to filter grades, assignments and participation by group. This is especially useful for secondary teachers who have multiple hours (or periods) of the same class. If there were no groups teachers would see all their enrolled students in one long, alphabetized list (which is hard to manage and can get very annoying with hundreds of enrolled students!). With groups, teachers can view each group (or hour or period) separately when viewing grades, assignments and participation. If you only use groups in this way and only this way, the students will not even notice anything. This is something a teacher would (greatly) benefit from.
Another (more advanced) use of groups is using groups within activities. Using groups within activities allows a teacher to create an activity and view their participation by group. It also gives the teacher an option to choose whether or not the groups can or can not see other groups participation. But enough of that, this post is showing you HOW to automatically put students into groups. More information about using groups and taking advantage of them will be listed below under “Related Links”.
Click here for a video screencast I created for our district showing the below process
Notes & Tips
Note: While looking for other links and videos on this process I ran across a recent great post from Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org describing the value of Moodle groups. Check it out!
Related Links:
I have been pretty busy lately, so here are a few recent links to check out. Another quality blog post will be coming shortly : )
Planet Moodle
Other
Here’s a few links to check out
Moodle.org Announcements Planet Moodle Delicious: “Moodle” Moodlerific on TwitterCopyright © 2009 Moodlerific.org
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