The second lot of 2 Minute Moodles is finally done. This one deals mostly with how to add things like files, folders, weblinks, webpages etc. to a course, navigate around the site and how to keep an eye on things.

This is my first formal dip into the sharing world of Web 2.0 and I have to admit I got very pleasantly surprised to see that within a couple of weeks of publishing the first lot of 2 Minute Moodles on Teacher Tube, I have had close to 900 views. I can just imagine a reaction of a student with their project getting hundreds of ‘hits’, comments and perhaps good ratings from around the world.

On that note, I recently recorded the class work on globalisation in my Career & Enterprise class, made a rough edit of it and posted it on our school Moodle (to see the clip, click here). It is often very hard work to get a word or other academic ‘output’ or insight out of many of these guys in the video but now … they want me to post the video not on some “poxy TeacherTube” but on YouTube (“the real one that everyone watches” as they would say). The enthusiasm has gone up several levels and, yes you guessed it – they want to do more of it while clearly learning and owning it too.

Just another example how technology CAN make a real difference.

OK, now the 2 Minute Moodles…

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Hello

As a local Moodle admin and afficionado of this hugely popular LMS, I get asked a number of “how to” questions about Moodle every day. By providing these short and informative (I hope?) tutorials, I thought I might spare some people the hours I have spent in trying to work it all out on my own. Having said that, the ‘click and swear’ method of learning to use a particular piece of ICT remains a personal favourite.

While not all of these short ’screencast’ tutorials live up to the title and can be a bit longer than two minutes, I simply could not resist the pun of ‘2 Minute Moodles’.

The tutorials try not to assume too much previous knowledge and are presented for the pragmatical and not necessarily tech-savy users (Moodle purists please excuse).

You can view the tutorials by either:

- clicking the words “watch video” (full screen view recommended) OR

- downloading and possibly saving the entire .flv file, then watching it through an appropriate player. I recommend the outstanding (and free) VLC player (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) for best quality and functionality.

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