The iMoot has been going on for 3 days now and with the exception of a few bumps in the web conferencing it’s been a tremendous success. Props to the iMoot team, great presenters and attendees for their back channel chat during presentations.

Along with separate iMoot session Moodle courses including forums, a collaborative doc has been created for the Moot. Moodlers have been taking notes and sharing about the sessions they’ve attended. We still have a day or two of the iMoot left so feel free to continue taking notes. The great thing about the iMoot is that all sessions are recorded and can be viewed..well forever. The collaborative doc will be available forever as well.

Even if you’re not a attending the iMoot take a look a the public iMoot Doc here. If you are attending please share with others, just take a look at what others have documented or give us your Twitter handle and network with other Moodlers.

Short URL for the Doc: http://goo.gl/aSgco

Again, thanks to the iMoot team and all of the presenters! I’ll post later on my favorite sessions.

Oh, and one last thing – make sure you channel your inner Moodle Rockstar and buy some iMoot merchandise. There are tons of cool items from water bottles (I bought) to pajamas to t-shirt and mugs!

The time has come for the second annual iMoot!

Here are a few items that may help you prepare:

• Simple schedule in PDF format
  • Important Note: The times on the PDF are dynamically set by the timezone in your iMoot profile. Please make sure you set your timezone first to make sure you get the correct times listed on your schedule

• With iMoot due to start in less than 24 hours we have deployed the “Session Navigation” block to help you know what’s on, who is presenting it and to provide you the link to get there. It essentially is an interactive, live updating and dynamic online session schedule that works as every attendees “All Access Pass“. – read more
• You will find this new interactive schedule through both the “iMoot Programme” link on the iMoot homepage as well as via the “Session Navigation” block on the top right of nearly every iMoot page. – read more
• Have any questions, need help? USE THE FORUMS!

I must say the biggest difference so far from last year is the awesome navigation between sessions and the schedule. It’s SO much easier to navigate and to quickly search the sessions and easily go to that session’s course. Way to go iMoot team!

If you haven’t registered for the iMoot yet, REGISTER HERE! Remember to use the Twitter hashtag #iMoot2011 when tweeting about your iMoot experience.

Coming Soon: A Google Doc for collaborative note taking and sharing throughout the iMoot. Will post when it’s created.

Quick notice that the 2011 iMoot sessions have been chosen and announced – here’s the list. If I had been paying attention to @iMootOnline I may have known it was coming : )

There was also a discussion posted giving updates on keynotes, speakers and what’s changing from the 2010 iMoot.

Speakers now locked in

Last week we finally approved our Speaker list and this is now public for all to see. If you did not make the final cut this year, please do not be disheartened. I would urge you to submit a paper again for next year as we would certainly love to hear from all those who want to share their Moodle stories…read more

I’ve posted about iMoots before and as you know I highly recommend attending. One of the perks is that if you want, you are able to watch every single sessions because they are recorded. Something you can’t do at a face-to-face conference. If you haven’t already, register for the 2011 iMoot – it’s less than 1 month away!

Again, check out the  recently announced 2011 iMoot speakers!

Have you always wanted to attend a Moodle Moot but were unable to attend due to cost, time or travel issues?  You now have the opportunity to do so from comfort of your own couch!

The 2011 iMoot is being held April 30th-May 3rd 2011. What is an iMoot?

iMoot is an annual event where the Moodle community of over 32 million users are provided the opportunity to join together on a global scale. This web based event engages a global audience of Moodle practitioners, administrators and decision makers in one event for an online e-conference with a difference!

Basically, it’s a Moodle Conference, online, happening in multiple countries 24/7 for 3 days. I attended last year’s iMoot, which was the first one ever. With tremendous work and effort from the Moodle Community, especially those from the Moodle HQ putting it together, it was a great experience and went extremely well for the first attempt.

Last year Elluminate was used for web conferencing and each session was recorded. All first sessions were live and they were replayed two more times (taped) but the presenter would come back after and you could ask questions in a live chat. This way, you could essentially view all of the sessions you wanted! Another nice thing is that those taped sessions could be viewed for some time after the Moot was over. Oh, and of course this is all happening within a Moodle installation : )

How to register for $50 in 3 minutes right now!

1. Visit the iMoot website
2. Create an account
3. Click on one of the many Register links
4. Pay via Pay Pal
5. That’s it!
6. And when April 30th comes around..sit back, relax, grab a drink and enjoy!

Important pieces of information

• As this is an international conference it should be noted that this date is listed as GMT or General Moodle Time. As the home of Moodle is Perth Australia this means these dates are based on a time difference of +8.
• It looks like the Early Bird rate is $50
• They are still fine tuning the site/technologies but the forums are active

Stay Connected

• Official Twitter Account – @imootonline
• LinkedIn Group
• iMoot 2011 Official Site

Are you like me, who either missed some iMoot 2010 sessions or you attended a session while another one you wanted to go to was going on? Check out the repeat session!

Posted at imoot.org by Julian Ridden:

Has this happened to you over the past 36 hours?

• A great session was on at 3am when you were in your right mind sleeping peacefully
• Two awesome sessions were on at the same time making you choose favourites.
• You were on Twitter and heard cool stuff about a session that you just didn’t think of attending.

If this is you then have we got just the right answer to perk you up again. In your program you may have noticed that all the previously live delivered sessions are now available in “Repeat” mode

Read the full post here!

Below are just some live blogging notes and my stream of thoughts. Not organized at all but I highlighted a few key items I found interesting. Sorry if I noted anything wrong as I was listening and typing.

Panel 1 – moodle.com

Presenters: Martin Dougiamas and others (I can’t remember their names)

Ask questions directly to the moodle HQ team in Perth. What are their development processes? Where does funding come from? Who is the best foosball player?

This was just a Q & A with Martin and others at the Moodle HQ. I noted a few questions. If you haven’t already checked out the replay check it out – if you’re registered!

Question I asked:

briefly exploring an installation of moodle 2.0 dev the navigation (docking) seems a bit different and something to get used to. have you done any user groups to see how “regular” teachers will react and adapt? as an admin i witness a lot of frustration with “change” after they get used to something..

Their Response: One of Tomaz Lasic’s first jobs will be testing/working with this. They rely on people like “me” and the Moodle Tracker to help them out.

My After Thoughts: “Techy” or people like me are different than regular teachers. Regular teachers won’t go on the tracker, they don’t even know what it is. It’s the lower techy users that I’m worried about. I’m worried it will turn them away, make them frustrated. Is there any user groups strictly with teachers who are not that tech savy, users who don’t even know about the Moodle.org!

Question I asked:

will the journal module be in the core and will it be gradeable?

Their Response: The journal module will not be in the Moodle 2.0 core but still available for download if it’s kept up. The online assignment will replace it.

My After Thoughts: Isn’t there a difference between journal and online assignment? I think there are a few differences that a teacher would want in journal that isn’t in online assignment – like repeated journaling – not having a “one and done” assignment – something ongoing. I’ll have to look at this.

Question I asked:

are there major upgrades in blogs? will there be comments on blogs? also will there be an option to make the blogs a course module instead of everyone with shared courses seeing each others – lots of complaints about seeing user blog enteries they don’t care about

Their Response: There are comments on blogs already. RSS external blogs into blogs (like WordPress). They said blogs = forums pretty much. There is a new forum type called blog forum type which looks more like a blog. Sounds interesting!

Question Asked:

In Forums: Is there any way to set a default for all users to not be subscribed to forums automatically? On that note, will Moodle 2.0 have a central place for users to control emails they get from a Moodle site? At the moment there are subscriptions (forums), message settings and settings in the profile.

Their Response: This is available at modules | forum | default you can change that.

My After Thoughts: I either heard wrong and they didn’t mean this or it will be in Moodle 2.0. I’m not sure, but I couldn’t find this in my Moodle 1.9.7 version.

Other Notes:

The Feedback module will NOT be in the Moodle 2.0 core which was planned before. They also talked about how the Questionnaire and Feedback module will somehow work together and merge into something new called “Survey”. This will combine the best features and allow Questionnaires and Feedback to transfer into a “Survey”.

I’m not sure if “Survey” will totally replace both modules and if so I’m not sure when.

B-04: Making Moodle Funky by Bending the Code!

Presenter: Lewis Carr

AWESOME session!

• quick edit – turn editing on – change weeks/topics, short code, more settings on the course homepage instead of having to go into the Course Settings – not on moodle.org plugins/modules – hard coded.
• Sweet Moodle user and course ajax search – very useful for admins – I would use this every day.
• Course Format: no weeks or topic number — “clear format” – modified weekly topics format and told it not to display the numbers
• moodle bar (like on the iMoote site) – will be publicly available soon – go to moodle tracker and his website
• iphone theme – iphone theme in own folder “We detected an iphone theme would you like to switch to iphone theme?
• iphone app/mobile will include all features..like quiz… use it as a “student response system”.. YES
• user agent switch – test in different browsers

Just a quick note to remind everyone to sign up for the first ever Moodle Moot online – iMoot 2010! Read more about it or register here!

For those of you already attending follow iMoot2010 on Twitter and use the Twitter hash tag #imoot2010.

I haven’t done one of these for awhile so I’ll try and gather up all my saved links from the past weeks!

Moodle Monthly – An awesome new site by Joseph Thibault

Moodle Monthly is a collaborative project bringing order to news and information pertaining to the open source project and learning management system called Moodle.

First look at Moodle 2.0: html editor – From Moodle Monthly

Posts from Helen Foster

• New Moodle QA testing site (1-20-10)
• More Moodle twitter accounts (1-22-10)
• YouTube block update (1-26-10)

Moodle Moots coming up!

• Register for the 2010 iMoot! The schedule is now up.
• Midwest Moodle Moot – July 26-28th in Indiana – Martin Dougiamas will be attending and will be the key note speaker!