Home Posts tagged "Moodle"
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Moodle 4 Learning Day 2

Published on July 15, 2010, by in Uncategorized.

Telling your learning story makes you a better learner and a teacher.

It is my hope that within this course you are not only getting the bare bones understanding of how to construct a Moodle course and of Moodle’s capabilities, but also that you are able to tell your learning story to others who may run into similar obstacles. It is important that we tell these stories in order to preserve for our students and for one another that it was not a light bulb that we turned on one day when we decided to use Moodle.

I would like you to think through your experience from yesterday and your experience last night in editing your first Moodle course. I would like you to tell the story of that experience within our backchannel. Remember, the phone number to text is 3037206269 and just make sure you put #4learning in the text somewhere. Or you can login to twitter and post with the same hashtag.

Grade less, create more is what I value in online learning.

It is difficult for me to find many things that I would actually want to stick a grade on and call students to account for their contributions. The reason for this is that I am more interested in the process of creating content and sharing information than I am in affixing a letter to that process.

If we are simply responsible or putting up our assignments online and letting them “grade themselves” we are doing ourselves and our students a disservice. We need to think about what requires a grade and what only requires a check. We need to think about what we are resourcing and what we are collecting. Accountability is not the same as obsessive marking things off of a checklist.

  • In all of the things that you collect, what can you stop grading?
  • What can you let be a learning experience and not an assessment experience?
  • What assignments do you need to keep track of exactly who contributed and which ones can remain anonymous?

Expertise is relative.

Everyone can become an expert on at least one thing in Moodle. While I asked you to become an expert in embed codes, I knew that many of you would struggle with this idea until you saw how it all worked (and perhaps even afterward).

An expert is someone that knows the inside and out of a given idea and may be able to even provide help to others who are looking for an expert in your area. I would like you to claim an area of expertise that you think you might be able to tackle today. This does not mean that you will have to be right each and every time someone comes to you, but it does mean that you will have to sit down with the question asker and figure it out together.

Please use the spreadsheet from yesterday to claim your area of expertise and we will continue to add things that require experts: http://bit.ly/4learningresources

Thanks again for coming on this journey. Let’s dive back in.

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Moodle For Learning Day 1

Published on July 14, 2010, by in Uncategorized.

I have had no formal training in Moodle. Everything that I know has been gathered carefully from all of the amazing questions, projects and problems people have proposed to me. In this way, everything I know how to do has been learned in context and with a true purpose of helping someone else or myself. I propose that this course be constructed in as much the same way as we can possibly make it.

First, let’s establish the learning space a bit:

  1. An Online or Hybrid class meets wherever you can gather enough people together to learn something. Our class’ environment will be in our central moodle classroom, your individual classrooms, in our backchannel, and in our own personal writing/brainstorming space (mine is this blog). The reason why we keep multiple spaces is so that we can learn to accept the one truth of online learning (and especially of Moodle): Everything is the same, even if it looks different. Furthermore, everything is possible, even if you don’t know how right now.
  2. Our central Classroom is right here. I made a short link of it: http://bit.ly/moodle4learning. If you aren’t enrolled, enroll. If you don’t have an account, create one.
  3. Our backchannel for questions, comments, reflections, and general conversation is at http://twitter.com/moodle4learning. If you would like to post, you can do so by texting #4learning and your thoughts to 3037206269 or by simply logging in to twitter and posting with the hashtag of #4learning. We will keep this backchannel so that our course can have a real purpose and real audience outside of our district.
  4. You have two options for the class. You can go along with us a bit and work on the different facets of Moodle at the pace of the group, or you can go through the self-paced portion of the classwork and set up your own classroom. The benefit of hanging around with the rest of us, is that we will form a community to help one another out. The benefit of going at your own pace is that you can go at your own pace, whether that is ridiculously fast or unnervingly slow.
  5. You will get as much out of the environment as you want to. It is not my job to make sure that everyone accomplishes the same things or learns the same materials. It is my responsibility that everyone who attends and completes this course will be able to create a course of their own that they (and the community of learners involved within it) can be proud of.

Second, let’s figure out what an online class is all about.

I happen to believe that online learning is all about three things:

  1. The Content
  2. The Action, learning process, reflection, etc.
  3. The Submit

We need to spend some time brainstorming what is possible within those three things. And we need to keep coming back to this diagram as we start to expand our knowledge of what is possible. Post your own diagram in our Discussion Forum or in the Backchannel (or both).

Third, let’s figure out what problem you are trying to solve.

It isn’t enough to just know how to set up an online course. There is very little satisfaction in knowing how to create a course in Moodle just for the sake of it. There really has to be a basis for what it is that you are trying to do. So, we need to at least craft a problem or question that will be the one we are trying to go after throughout the next two days.

Good example questions are:

  • How can I create an engaging presentation for my students so as to cause them to act and get excited about creating their own?
  • What is the best activity for essay writing revision?
  • How can I upload all of my already created content and have those be interactive enough so that I don’t have to recreate everything?

Please put your question into the Backchannel so that everyone can share in the learning.




Thank you for joining in on this journey. Moodle is the primary tool, but better online courses is outcome we are after.

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Good Tip: Get an e-mail when your students take a quiz in Moodle

Published on February 3, 2010, by in Uncategorized.

I have found it to be really frustrating in keeping up with things if I can’t get e-mail notification when things happen in courses that I am taking or teaching. I really do need something to call me back into the fray every once in a while when something good just happened.

Here is the Moodle doc that tells you exactly how to get e-mail notifications for teachers and students when things have been done in your courses.

The resuting e-mail is awesome. It not only tells you who took it but also gives you a link to review the attempt and give feedback right away. Good stuff.

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Install Moodle on an Oracle Database (in 25 minutes or less)

Published on May 29, 2009, by in Uncategorized.
Oracle Corporation
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While this post may not be for my typical reader, I believe that it has value to the larger online education community, mostly because many of us are faced with making current systems work with what know to be the way forward. The specific system in question is using an Oracle database to work with Moodle. While it has been done before, some of the instructions didn’t ring true for me. I also wanted to be able to provide a step-by-step account of how I have done it and how it can be done.

So, without further ado, here is the Google Doc that gives the step by step account of just how to do it.

And, just to prove that it can be done in 25 minutes or less, I have included a screencast of the entire process that I used to revise the Google Doc and make sure everything works.

I hope it can be of use to you and yours.

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When is a book, not a book?

Published on May 12, 2009, by in Uncategorized.
A graphical despiction of a very simple html d...
Image via Wikipedia

I believe that I have been looking for this capability for a solid year, but I was only able to figure it out today. It can be described most easily as: Converting a folder of html files into a format that can be edited and manipulated by an LMS.

Before today, these were the things that I tried:

  1. Creating an iFrame embed for each important file and reconstructing a navigation for those files
  2. Linking to the files on a webserver and hoping for the best
  3. Importing individual files to Google Docs and then fixing all of the broken images and links. (This allows for editing easily as long as you are signed into your google account, but it is a lot of extra work to create the files)
  4. Researching the heck out of nearly every online hosting solution that integrates with an LMS to no avail.

Today, however, was a different story.

Today I found this.

It is a book module for Moodle, but really it is more than that. It is the single largest time saver I have ever run into. I can select a folder that I have uploaded to the Site Files and it will import all of the HTML, remake the relative links into links within the book itself, and rework all image files to work within the book. It creates a tree structure for the files. It allows you to print the entire book or only one chapter, and you can even export the entire thing as a IMS file (a standard format for elearning resources).

So, now I can go from HTML that has do be downloaded, edited offline, and uploaded again into a single editable (IMS compliant) book that can be enhanced with pretty much anything you can create on a webpage. If you would like to see an example, here is what the first semester of our Algebra Course looks like.

I can think of about a hundred different reasons why this is a good thing for teachers to be able to do with their content, but I will leave you with just one:

Download anything you see on the web as a webpage and add it to your book.

Literally, everything becomes importable.

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Planning to support us…

Published on May 5, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

One of the consistent complaints (and most often heard form of resistance to using open source software) about Moodle is that it lacks any formal support structure. While there is a great community over at Moodle.org, there isn’t anyone that you can call in the middle of the night when you want something to work. So, we have to build that function into any system that we need. In fact, I have been given the task of drawing up an initial draft of how our district would support a school who wants to use Moodle as their LMS.

While I have a lot more thinking to do about this, I would like to share my first draft and solicit any feedback that you would like to provide. Please push me on this as much as you can (I want to make sure that not only is the structure sound but that we are adding to and creating a learning community as much as possible).

Here is the link to the Google Doc in progress.

Here is the diagram of the structure itself:

Thanks for any help you can provide this process. As you may have guessed, you are the PLN that I mention.

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Content: The not so hard part

Published on April 20, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

For the longest time, I really thought that getting content for an elearning platform was the hardest part (or at least the most expensive). Now, though, I really think that getting quality content for an online school is getting easier and easier. Now that I have the option of using all of the moodle and SCORM resources that are available, I think we may be able to focus on the actual teaching part rather than just writing curriculum and having to settle for something that is second rate. Anyway, here is what I am looking at right now:

  1. OpenLearn – Here is a large list of entirely downloadable and importable courses for moodle that are of good quality and are built for asynchronous. They are creative commons liscensed, so let’s share alike.
  2. The Moodle Course Exchange Portal – This is a starting place to get at many courses that have been made in moodle. I feel as though this site is really in the early stages (they are going to start promoting more heavily after Moodle 2.0 comes out), but it does have some good links to quiz questions and scorm components.
  3. The Moodle Commons – This is also a site that is just getting started, but there are some high quality courses there (only about 5)
  4. Moodle Share – Again, not a whole lot going on here, yet. But a resource, nonetheless.
  5. OER Project (from New Zealand) - Really nice courses that are ready to go. Again, only a handful as of right now.

Alright, so it isn’t everything to everyone, but I think that there are a few places to go to start building a good online school. Please let me know if you know of any other repositories that put their content into moodle backup format.

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The cost of not doing anything…

Published on April 18, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

I was in a great meeting this week where we were considering whether
or not to go ahead with a full scale implimentation of the Moodle LMS
for assessment purposes in our district. It was a great meeting not
because of the topic but the way it was being handled.
 
We were talking about the absolute costs of an open source LMS and of
staying with a custom-built assmessment solution. We were really
looking for a venn diagram moment when one of the curriculum and
instruction representatives said something really smart: “There is a
cost to not doing anything as well. It may not be a dollar cost, but
it will cost the teachers the ability to know more about their kids’
knowledge and it will cost the kids some learning opportunities.”
(Paraphrased by me.)
 
Too often we do not think about the cost of doing nothing or of doing
things too slowly. Does appathy in the face of huge choices cost our
kids the best learning years of their lives?
 
So, it got me thinking: What are the costs of doing nothing (or doing
very little) to change school?
 
Share an idea if this makes you think as much as it has made me.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

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New Responsibility

Published on April 12, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

I was thinking about waiting until I got a little further into the
project to start blogging about it, but since I made the choice to
start blogging daily, I have really found that this forum let’s me
think through all of the things that I need to.
 
So the new responsibility is this: I have been put in charge of
administrating multiple moodle installations in our district. The
reason why this new charge I have been given is so strange to me is
that up until 2 months ago, the only “official” moodle installation in
our district was at a high school in parker, which I had little to do
with.
 
 The reason for the shift is nothing short of an economic and
pedagogical perfect storm. Our district had slowly been building the
capacity for more and more teachers to start asking for a way of
teaching and engaging with their students online, and with the failure
of our bond election, the only choice for an LMS was to have someone
who was already working in open source to implement and support a
solution like moodle.
 
The best part is, however, that no one I have talked to thinks that we
are settling for something. From all of the initial conversations, all
stakeholders believe that professional development, online learning,
and blended learning fit well within a vision of moodle that includes
outside assessments and google apps for communication.
 
I guess the only reason for this post is to ask for advice. If you
were asked to design and implement learning environments for an online
school, a professional development program, and a blended model
(online and in centers/schools) using moodle, what would you make sure
to do (or not do)?
 
While I have a definite vision for the way forward, I am not the
smartest person in the room (considering that I have no idea how big
this room is). I want to know more… Always more.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

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Piloting you!

Published on April 3, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

I had a lot of conversation today about pilot initiatives within a
larger institution. it seems as though in each project that I take
part in, there is reason enough to get a small group of (semi)
dedicated people together who will try something out and report back
on their success. Whether that is moodle, gmail, google sites, dimdim,
or ning; it seems as though there is never enough at stake to require
all users to jump on board initially. While this is good in a lot of
ways: less kicking and screaming, learning from mistakes with small
group is better, and less chance of falling flat on your face with
everyone watching. But, it is bad in many as well: no ensuring that
the pilot will go further, no urgency in rolling out to everyone, and
all pilots are basically representations of the person who creates
them.
 
This last point is what I would like to focus this post on. What I am
finding as I do more pilot initiatives is that I am trying to model
the pilot on my own practice and workflow. I am taking what I feel is
valuable and important and I am saying that others should feel the
same way. At the end of the day, I am piloting a larger and more
unwieldy version of me.
 
While it is flattering that others would want to help beta test me, I
am not totally sure how smart it is. I am not a typical user of almost
anything. I want to break things open and push them to do what I
envision, not what they were intended for. While I may have a good eye
for what others may need, I need people who aren’t using tools in such
ways to help design the pilots too.
 
I guess what I am trying to say is that I cannot pilot myself if I
want the pilot to actually do what it is supposed to: test whether or
not something will work for everyone. But, how do I ask those who are
less willing to try new things to become a part of a pilot. How do I
ensure that all voices are heard so that when things do go live, the
backlash from these users isn’t fierce enough to shut it down?
 
Easy question, right?

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

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