When I began reading this book I was expecting to learn a bunch of “real-life” classroom applicable examples of using specific Moodle features. While it did list many of those examples, it really focused on learning theory and creating a positive learning experience and community. The book mentioned many educational psychologists and philosophies of teaching and learning. Each time the authors explained a feature or gave an example of classroom use of a Moodle feature they also reminded the reader to make sure the activity was tied with the course outcomes and the learning objectives.

I thought the discussion about learning styles and effective teaching practices was interesting as my education has been in technology and not k-12 education. One thing I liked about the book is that for each feature example the authors gave a variety of ways to accomplish the same thing, giving the reader an option if they prefer one way or the other. Another thing that the authors provided were tips or recommendations on using each feature. For example, effectively running a chat and chat etiquette, taking the fear out of assessments, how to create and maintain exciting and engaging forums, etc. I guess you can call it “best practices” of the Moodle features.

As I mentioned before there were some awesome ideas on using Moodle features – without going into detail here are a few:

• Using the Chat module with a guest speaker
• A self-assessment practice quiz using the Lesson module
• Creating a flash card activity with the Lesson module
• Guided note-taking with the Wiki module
• Using the Glossary module for student submitted quiz questions

One note to mention is if you’re expecting to come away with created activities as you follow this book you should have some basic Moodle experience.  This book does not go into step-by-step, detailed instructions for most of the modules. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to know Moodle already in my opinion. This book did a good job of convincing the user that Moodle can create a learning community that is easily adaptable to different learning styles and offers some great teaching strategies to accomplish this.

Drawbacks

As with all of the other Packt Publishing Moodle books I’ve read I wish the screenshot images were in color. Another thing I noticed is a difference in our district’s Moodle (v 1.9.7) settings page for some modules and the screenshot images in the book (I believe the Choice activity looked a *bit* different). I was also made aware that the Gradebook is out of date. As always, take into consideration the frequent updates.

Wrap Up

In the end, I enjoyed the book and learned the most about having an “effective” course and what that even means. As I mentioned earlier, I am a techy person not a teacher, so I am at a point where I need to understand more about theory and teaching and learning strategies. This book had me nodding a lot and just “made sense” (if that makes sense!). It put things in perspective as each and every activity was tied with the course outcomes and made me aware of some of the things that are needed to create an effective learning community such as student confidence, fear of assessment, feeling comfortable with their peers, etc. And don’t get me wrong I am talking about the “theory” stuff becasue that is what interested in but there are many cool ideas and tips to using the modules. I only listed a few above. Visit Packt Publishing for more details on the contents of Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques.

Similar to the “upload a single file” type where students can browse and send you their work for marking , the nanogong assignment presents them with a little sound recorder into which they can record themselves , play back to check and then send to you. read more

I just wanted to post a quick link to her post and screecast. This looks like a great module that I know the teachers in our district would use! I hope to test this out soon and possibly add it to our Moodle site if I get some time for it. Thanks Mary!

Read the full post and watch the screencast explaining how to install and use it.

Related Links
Mary Cooch
Moodle Blog
Follow Moodlefairy on Twitter

Focuspad is a Moodle module/activity aimed at encouraging and supporting creative writing. Pieces of writing are saved as posts and managed through the library. read more

Here is some “about” information for this Moodle activity taken from the ‘find out more‘ page on the module’s official site.

What can you do with Focuspad?

Review

I played around with Focuspad as a student as well as a teacher. At first glance it looked very elegant and smooth but it seemed a little confusing as to what everything was meant for and did. For example, I didn’t know if this was public or only the teacher saw it, I was unsure if clicking “done” meant I could not edit it again and I was just unsure of how the whole thing operated. It took me only a few minutes to get the hang of it and now it seems pretty darn easy! It is a one time cost of $99.95 (for every Focuspad sold $5 will be donated to Moodle). You are able to put it on as many installations in your organizations and you have access to any upgrades.

There are two elements to Focuspad: the library and the editor. The library is open source and the editor used is what you have to pay for. The general idea of Focuspad is a Moodle activity where students can write (within Moodle – no uploads of Word files) an essay, fill in blanks from a template, fill out a learning log, etc. and hand it into the teacher. It is a very slick and attractive activity. It works very much like Microsoft Word and it’s really cool because the students see the entire piece of paper and layout. It’s not like Moodle’s WYSIWYG editor, where you see a small box with some buttons in the middle section of a page.

What I liked:

A student can make their post public or private. This is a great option to allow a teacher to make an assignment for their eyes only when students should not be able to see other student’s work, but you can also choose to make it public to share their work and findings with their classmates.

The ability to edit multiple times within Moodle (if that setting is set) is a real convenient feature in my opinion. A student can start an assignment and finish it later or add on to it later like a journal.

The ability for teachers to create templates. This is a pretty awesome thing to be able to do. If there are guidelines or a certain format the teacher wants students to use they can create a template. The only drawback or issue I see is I was able to edit the template, so students could accidentally (or on purpose) edit the template. There may be a lock on this but I did not see it.

Everything is done within Moodle!!! This is the best part of the module. Kids do not have to have a word processing program or worry about uploading files. No worries about versions of Microsoft Word or viewing PowerPoints.

In Conclusion

I think this Moodle Activity Module is a very smooth, easy to use and useful feature. It sort of combines the blog, the journal and the advanced uploading of assignments into one. The fact that a student can work on an assignment, stop, come back the next day and finish it and then hand it in – all within Moodle is great. Moodle does have an “online assignment” but it does not compare to Focuspad. I think teacher’s would love this activity. I haven’t seen any other comments or reviews on Focuspad but I would be interested to see other reviews. In conclusion, after playing around with this Moodle activity I see it as a very useful tool that is more enhanced and robust than any standard writing assignment activity. I will be interested to see what upgrades they have to this activity and any other resources they come up with. Before actually purchasing and installing this feature I would have to test it out and see if there are any bugs but it is something to definitely take a look at.

Related Links:
Find out more
Moodle Focuspad Playground
Download/Buy Focuspad
Discussion about Focuspad
Focuspad on Moodle.org Modules and Plugins
Mintranet
Mintranet Blog

Great news for My Moodle users: Mike Churchward is planning major improvements in Moodle 2.0 (MDL-19124). Please join..  read more

Sweet! I love the My Moodle feature and I think it has much potential! Take a look at Lewis Carr’s My Moodle development.

This site has been around for awhile and is maintained by Julian Ridden (follow him on Twitter!). Whether you’re looking for a new look or a way to spice up the functionality of your Moodle site, The Moodle Playpen is a great place to get ideas for your own Moodle site. One of my favorite demos is the Accordion Course Format layout! Check out The Moodle Playpen for more ideas!

Links:
The Moodleman Blog
The Moodle Playpen
The Moodle Playpen – 2.0 Alpha
Using Moodle: Accordion Discussion

The only problem, on our district Moodle site, is that we force our users to use My Moodle. When they log in they do not ever see the front page, they only see the front page when they are not logged in. Therefore, putting any important information there or spending a lot of time working on that may not be worth it if not many users see it.

Google Apps Education Edition is coming to an open source learning management system near you. 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. [read more]

This really excites me! Our district has been looking into student email possibilities and a way for students to collaborate. Google Apps Education Edition seems to be a top choice for secondary students. This would be an awesome integration for us! In the article, I think this is the most important reason why I like the idea of a Moodle/Google App integration:

“This greatly simplifies the task of implementing a collaborative suite, as well as enables institutions to leverage the work they’ve already done integrating their platforms with their other systems. 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 and built on industry standard SAML 2.0 and OAuth protocols for secure single sign on and information transfer.” [read more]

Easy integration, fewer logins and “places” to go seem to be very important for teachers. If our district does decide to go with Google Apps this is something really look into.

Source: http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/02/20/google-collaborates-on-moodle-integration.aspx

Have you any ideas for new features you’d like included in Moodle? If so, please see our documentation New feature ideas for information on the process of how ideas can be turned into reality.

Now is a particularly good time to come up with ideas for new features, as we’re hoping to take part in Google Summer of Code 2009, so we need lots of great ideas for student projects. Please see the discussion Wanted: New feature ideas for GSOC projects in the general developer forum for more details.

Source: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=116731

This can be changed by the user when they edit their profile. However, I have found out that many users do not know how to change this, that it can be changed or they forgot to change it. I’ve gotten several questions from teachers wondering why they are getting these strange e-mails from Moodle telling them that Sue Johnson has posted in a Forum in the Moodle Training course they were in months ago!

Now, we tell our staff in the training to change this setting in their profile but I think it would be much easier to make this feature an “opt-in” instead of an “opt-out”. There has been a lot of discussion about this issue and Martin Dougiamas explains that it basically encourages interaction. In my opinion, having this feature be an “opt-in” situation works best for our district. Teachers get enough e-mail and it will more than likely just annoy or frustrate them if they don’t know why they’re getting all of the e-mails or how to stop them from coming in. If a user wants to really follow a Forum they will take the time to click that option when they post.

Another problem with Subscribing to a Forum is that sometimes I want to follow just a post in a Forum, not the entire Forum! I think there should be a “Subscribe to Thread” option, like many of the Forums on the web.

Anyways, while searching the web and the Moodle.org Forums I found an answer to setting the Auto-subscribe setting default to be “No: don’t automatically me to forums” for new users and a way to change that setting for users already in the system:

If you have access to your database through phpmyadmin, then just do the following.

1. Select the mdl_user table
2. Click on the pencil (to edit) beside autosubscribe
3. Change the default value from 1 to 0

The above will change the default value for all new accounts.

1. Select the mdl_user table
2. At the top, click on SQL
3. Erase what is in the query field and enter the following:

UPDATE mdl_user SET autosubscribe = 0

4. Press “Go”

This will change all existing accounts to “No: don’t automatically subscribe me to forums”.

Note: It’s always a good idea to back up your database before doing anything like this. Use at you own risk

Source: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=94386

I do not have the rights to phpmyadmin for our Moodle site but I was able tell our network person how to do this and it was done. It seemed to have worked but as we continue trainings some teachers are still getting the “Yes” option. I am currently waiting to try it again with our network person to check out the problem. Although, I am having problems with it working 100% all of my research has pointed to the above solution. Any information about this issue would be greatly appreciated! I may be missing another setting I need to cahnge. Any opinions or information on this?

Alfresco Software Inc., the leader in open source enterprise content management (ECM), today announced an OEM partnership with Remote-Learner.net, the provider of open source solutions for online learning management, record keeping and learning object storage to corporate, academic and governmental clients. The partnership will deliver solutions to allow learning organizations using Moodle’s open source course management system (CMS) to access Alfresco’s robust open source ECM repository to support content development and reuse. – read more

I take a great interest in this integration because our school district is looking into Alfresco as a possibility for document management. I have no experience with Alfresco but I have heard good things about it. There is a free version and an Enterprise version you can pay for. Learn more at Alfresco.com.

Remote-Learner is a Moodle Partner that hosts Moodle sites and is “a learning company providing technology services”.

Moodle 2.0 is impressing me more and more each day. I feel like there are many improvements (some free, some may be “paid-for” services) in file management and repositories. Glancing at the admin plug-ins section I can already see that they have made it easier for Moodle to integrate with a variety of sites and other software like Alfresco, Box.net, Flickr, Picasa, WebDAV, Wikimedia and YouTube.

Read more:

Alfresco Press Release -Alfresco and Remote-Learner.net Partner to Deliver Moodle eLearning Integration

Moodleman blog post -  Alfresco tie-in in Moodle 2.0

Moodle Docs – Repository API