Moodlerific.org » Modules

Moodle Nanogong Assignment

melissa — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:15:18 +0000

I found this great blog post and screencast from Mary Cooch on her Moodle Blog explaining a new Nanogong assignment.

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.

Moodle Activity Module: Focuspad

melissa — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:08:09 +0000

I was recently (well actually quite awhile ago but I’ve been so busy) asked by Ryan Chadwick to take a look at a recently developed Moodle Activity Module called Focuspad by Mintranet.

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.

Focuspad is similar to blogs and assignments that are already in Moodle but differ in a few key ways that make it a cleaner solution for a lot of tasks.

Unlike blogs, Focuspad posts can be graded.
*Unlike assignments, Focuspad allows you to submit multiple items.

Focuspad also has these features:

Word limits on posts.
Time limits on posts.
Autosave of documents every 5 minutes.
Templates on posts so that you can guide students writing.
Notes area so that you can encourage students to plan their work before diving in.
A streamlined marking process. Run through the posts smoothly as you mark them.
Pause posts. For some students with special needs it is not uncommon for them to be allowed to pause their assessments. Focuspad allows for this.
An editor designed to maximise focus and minimise distractions.

*I think the standard assignment activity, “Advanced uploading of files”, does allow this

What can you do with Focuspad?

Basic Blogs – but in a more localised, managed manner.
Essay based assignments and assessments.
Learning Logs/ Journals
25 word or less style competitions (works great in conjunction with a specially set grading scale).
Allow for a fun component in student election campaigns.
Guided learning on how to write essays or reports (by use of templates).
Open creative writing (let the students form their own targets).
Fill in the blanks, use a template to provide the framework for a story and let the students expand on it.

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.

Best Moodle Modules & Plugins : Part 2

melissa — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:19:29 +0000

I recently wrote a blog post listing some of the best Moodle modules & plugins. After reading a chapter in the book, Moodle Administration, about 3rd party add-ons and hearing your own suggestions I decided to write a little more on the topic.

List of “popular add-ons” from the book, Moodle Administration (minus the ones mentioned in my earlier post):

Accessibility Options (block)
Active Users (block)
Certificate (activity module)
Feedback (activity module)
Flash (activity module)
Jmol (filter)
Marking (block)
MRBS (block)
MySQL Admin (other)

Recommendations from users:

Source: maberdour (Twitter)

Activity Module: Face-to-face

Description: Face-to-face activities are used to keep track of in-person (e.g. classroom) trainings which require advance booking.Each activity is offered in one or more identical sessions. These sessions can be given over multiple days.

Reminder messages are sent to users and their managers a few days before the session is scheduled to start. Confirmation messages are sent when users sign-up for a session or cancel.

This module may be of interest to administrators looking for a way to provide event management support for blended learning environments.

Activity Module: Feedback

Description: The Feedback module allows users to create and conduct surveys to collect feedback. The Feedback module is planned to be included in Moodle 2.0. As a result, the link to the Download latest version has been removed.

Documentation

Discussion

Source: Awyatt (Twitter / web site)

Activity Module: Attendance

Description: Module and block for not automatically marks attendance. Distributing as package of module and block. Main part is module, block is optional.

Documentation

Discussion

Activity Module: Course Menu

Description: A tree based expanding menu block with option to include links to the Gradebook, Calendar, Blog Menu and Messages blocks.

Interesting & Others:

(via @moodleman) Accessibility Block (modified)

Block: Administration Alert

Description: This block alerts the administration about things that can be wrong in Moodle site. (read more)

I quickly tested this block out on a past development site. It gives administrators alerts in a block about various information on the Moodle site. I do not have this block installed on our current production server for our site but I plan to install it soon.

Documentation

Discussion

Block: Trouble ticket

Description: The trouble ticket block was developed to provide Moodle users with a simple way to notify Moodle site administrators of a problem with the site or a specific module or block. The trouble ticket block allows Teachers to add multiple types of trouble tickets to a page as either a link or a button. Each Trouble ticket can be configured with a specific email to send the notification to as well as a custom response to the user.

I have not tested this block out, but it’s one that is on my list to try. Instead of sending emails, this seems like a good system to allow users who are having issues contact the correct person.

Discussion

Other Module & Plug-in information:

Cool tip! Visit: http://download.moodle.org/stats.php – See the top 50 plug-ins downloaded in the last 60 days (scroll down to the “plug-ins” section).

Cool tip! Note that there is a “rating system” for add-ons. On each individual add-on page there is a rating. But be aware that just because that rating is high (or low) does not mean it is good (or bad) necessarily. To determine whether or not an add-on is trustworthy check for ratings, documentation, support and discussions about the add-on.

As you can tell, I have not personally used each and every listed add-on. Some I’ve tested, some I’ve researched and some have been recommend from others. I plan to install and test drive a lot of the previously mentioned add-ons on my own development site. Later on I will write about my experiences in doing so.

If you have any experience with certain Moodle add-ons (positive or negative) please comment below.

Related Links:

Best Moodle modules & plugins (my first post about modules & plugins)
Moodle Administration book (Some of the above information and suggestions were taken from this great book!)
Contributed modules and plugins forum (Forum)
Installing contributed modules or plugins (Documentation)
Development:Guidelines for contributed code (Documentation)
Modules and Plugins Database – an improved rating system? (Discussion thread)

Best Moodle modules & plugins

melissa — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:27:39 +0000

Moodle has many approved Modules & Plugins, but what are the best and most useful ones to try out? Depending on the type of Moodle site you run and how your users use Moodle can determine what is considered a useful module or plugin.

This blog post is just a working list on the best Moodle modules and plugins for a large K-12 school district which is used for student use at home, staff development and as a personal portal to store and show resources via a projector during the school day in the classroom.

Activity Module: Book

Description: “This module makes it easy to create multi-page resources with a book-like format.”

Rationale: The Book module is great for displaying all types of content. Yes, you are able to display content using the “compose a web page” resource but in the Book module you have a navigation menu where you can navigate to another page with content. You are able to create an outline with sub categories acting as a chapter-book going in order or just an outline of topics.

Why I love this module so much is because the courses that I create have a lot of content in them. I hate putting too much text in the middle column of my course and using the “compose a web page” is a bit hard when I have too much content. With the Book module, it is much easier to organize the content and it creates a more user-friendly way to navigate without having one resource with tons of content on the same page making the user scroll forever.

Here is a simple example of using the Book module for Frequently Asked Questions.

Documentation
Discussion

Activity Module: Questionnaire

Description: “The Questionnaire module allows users to complete online feedback style forms using a variety of user input methods. It allows you to create your own questions, unlike the Survey module which has presets to choose from, and it allows for more advanced questionnaires than the simpler and easier Feedback module.”

Rationale: No one uses the standard survey module in our district (actually I think we have it disabled). It’s not that they don’t have a need for a survey it’s just because the presets it comes with are not what they want. This module allows users to create their own kinds of surveys. You are able to customize the survey however you want.

Being the admin of our Moodle site I obviously have very different kinds of courses in Moodle. Mine are mostly help pages and giving information – with not much interaction. I can’t say that I have used the Questionnaire module a bunch, however I can see the uses of it for a classroom teacher and I have seen many praises about it online.

Documentation
Discussion

Course Format: Collapsed Topics

Description: “A new topic based format that attempts to solve the issue of the ‘Scroll of Death’ when a course has so many topics. All topics except zero have a toggle that displays that topic. One or more topics can be displayed at any given time.”

Rationale: Tired of scrolling…and scrolling….and scrolling… in your course? Are your students? This may be your solution! This course format collapses each section in your course and allows your viewers to click on an individual section header to open up that section. This saves you a lot of scrolling time. It’s pretty slick and creates an easy to view course. A drawback *could* be that your viewers can not see what they are looking for right away – they have to click to view things.

Discussion

Block: HTML Block (standard block)

Description: A HTML block is a standard block used to add text or images on a site or course page. The title bar can be left blank.

Rationale: You may be wondering why I included a standard Moodle block. The reason I included this block as a “best” is because of the possibilities and flexibility of this block. If you are not very familiar with HTML and/or CSS this may not be of a lot of use to you. If you are, there are a lot of potential possibilities. This block can be used to insert text, links, images and any other multimedia. You can be creative and link to external, internal or anchor links. I think using the HTML block allows you to be creative and treat your Moodle course as a regular web site. If you are looking for a certain kind of block chances are you can somehow manipulate the HTML block to do what you want.

The HTML block is not only useful on your course homepage – it can also be a tool for you on your My Moodle page (if enabled). If you have certain sites you always visit you can create links in the HTML block and use your My Moodle page as a portal.

Documentation

Module: Database (standard activity)

Description: “The Database module activity allows the teacher and/or students to build, display and search a bank of record entries about any conceivable topic.”

Rationale: Another standard module! When we first rolled out Moodle in our district we did not have this activity enabled. I think mostly because we were not very familiar with it. After awhile, I enabled it and played around with it some. I immediately saw the great potential this activity had. I tried out some of the Database presets and found some great ways to use this activity. I don’t think many teachers are using this activity but it will definitely be something we show our staff when they get better with Moodle. This may be an “advanced” feature we show teachers in the future.

Documentation
Discussion
Creative uses
Database for Databases

Block: Quickmail

Description: “The quickmail block adds a link to a tool that has a checkbox list of all students in the course, and a mail composition text area. You can check the students you like, and email those and only those. This enhances the existing communications systems of messaging (one user) and subscribed forums (all subscribers) by allowing teachers to select a specific subset of students.”

Rational: This is a block that was recommended to me by @carolinekmoore and I have seen get a positive response while doing research online. We do not have this module installed on our site and it would not really make sense for us to do so because our students currently do not have emails. However, we are in the process of getting student emails (Google Apps) and enabling them in Moodle.

Once we get student emails up and running this will definitely be a module for us to look into. This module seems like such an easy and convenient way to communicate with students. Hopefully we will be able to use this next year!

Documentation

Other modules

Resource Type: Lightbox Gallery Resource – This is one I really want to take a look at this summer!
Block: Birthday Block – Teachers may enjoy this block.
Activity Module: OU blog – Our district is pushing a separate blog option (WPMU) but if you’re looking for a better blog option (with more options and comments) than the current blog in Moodle this is a great option.
Activity Module: Dimdim Web Meeting Activity – I have not tried this out but if you use Dim Dim it looks to be great!
Other: Moodle-GoogleApps Integration – Awesome plugin for Moodle sites who use Google Apps. We tried getting this to work on our site, unfortunately we could not get it working.

Depending on the type of Moodle site you run there will be a difference in what modules and plugins are the “best”. Some of the previously listed modules and plugins we currently use and some I plan to take a look at in the future. I know there are many I have missed, so please reply with your favorites. Also, if there are any other links to lists of “the best” Moodle modules please leave a comment.