The fourth batch of 2 Minute Moodles is finally cooked and ready for anyone on the Moodle Tutorials (2 Minute Moodles) page. It covers the basic set up and use of choice, quizzes, assignments and polls in Moodle. These are simply the main and often most used evaluation tools in Moodle, explained step by step for the and the not-so tech savvy.
But Moodle would not be Moodle if these were the only evaluation tools. There are many other options available either as standard features (lesson, workshop) or added modules, activities, blocks or plugins. Check the Moodle database of these goodies, there is bound to be something to please you there.
After an amazingly insight-rich, highly enjoyable and very well-received online forum across four senior classes at our school on the theme ‘What would you improve at our school?” this week, I simply had to put in a big plug for forums in Moodle. I write this as a combination of teaching and tech tips and strategies for using forums in Moodle. Most of all, I write this with my students, their voice and their learning in mind.
Like many teachers, I often run class discussion. A problem or a question is presented with individuals invited to call out with answers. Sometimes students are in groups for all or part of the discussion with more than one topic to discuss.
What I have ideally wanted is for each student to contribute in some way to either the group or class discussion. In reality, I often get a few regular contributors to call out with some quality answers, a few attention seekers with not such high quality answers and the rest of the class likely to switch off.
Before starting to work as a part-time technology integrator at our school this year, the principal asked me to come up with one ‘thing’, one key strategy for staff and students to ICT to improve their teaching and learning. After seeing the flexibility, robustness and ‘organic’ nature of Moodle the choice was pretty simple to make.
The video, shown here in two separate clips, is not so much about the technical features of Moodle but about people using it. I am forever indebted to our wonderful network administrator Russell Clarke, my colleagues from Moodle champions to Moodle beginners, and the students, who have taken to it so well (well, a healthy majority of them at least). Without them, none of the things shown in the clip would happen.
The focus of the first clip (9:58 min) is on the ways different, mostly standard features of Moodle have been used by various teachers and students at our school. If you can’t see this video (Part 1) please click here.
The second clip (5:43 min) shows the positive and in some cases very significant changes the establishment of Moodle has brought to our school in terms of using ICT to improve our core business – teaching and learning while modelling, establishing and maintaining healthy human relationships. If you can’t see the clip (Part 2) please click here.
I end this post with an anecdote from a teacher at our school. Over the last couple of weeks of holidays, my colleague Kim Bebbington built a fantastic course on Australian History, now shared by four other Year 8 classes. The course includes an assignment, due in week 3 of the upcoming term.
Deliberately or not, Kim left the course open to students to enrol and look at as he was building it. Imagine his (pleasant) surprise when he received a fully completed assignment (due in week 3) by one of the students in his class two days before the start of term.
But as wonderful and useful as Moodle has been, it is the people who are making the difference. It is not the technology itself – it is what we do with it.
If you are a ‘moodling’ teacher yourself, looking into it, or a person responsible for getting (particularly) teachers up to speed with Moodle and ICT in general I would love to hear from you – there is much to share and learn from each other.
The third batch of 2 Minute Moodles is all about communication tools in Moodle. These lie at the heart of Moodle’s design and philosophy and are pretty easy to set up and use. Personally, these communication tools have allowed me to check on students’ progress and understanding, ask and answer questions (often a very awkward task with teenagers in any other way), troubleshoot, advise, keep in touch, stimulate original thinking … and the list could go on.
I remain convinced that these tools are not a substitute for the human face-to-face interaction with and among the students at our school, but they have certainly made the interaction much easier, more personal and meaningful. I hope you find them useful too.
To save some real estate on the screen I have foregone the ‘Download video’ option, but you can do so via Teacher Tube where this material is published. I will probably put these on YouTube as well in the coming future (it’s a dare from my class …). Here is the third batch of ‘2 Minute Moodles’.
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.
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) VLCplayer (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) for best quality and functionality.
After an amazingly insight-rich, highly enjoyable and very well-received online forum across four senior classes at our school on the theme ‘What would you improve at our school?” this week, I simply had to put in a big plug for forums in Moodle. I write this as a combination of teaching and tech tips and strategies for using forums in Moodle. Most of all, I write this with my students, their voice and their learning in mind.