Category Archives: Moodle

Resources and writings about Moodle

Moodle, Teaching

What is a Zoodle? Moodle at the zoo

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Orangutan

Cool morning, sunny +26 C day and the fantastic Perth Zoo were our playground yesterday for a bunch of our Year 9 classes. The excursion is a centrepiece of the term looking at endangered species of SE Asia and particularly Indonesia.

Sadly, not all students came along for various reasons. We wanted to make the occasion memorable beyond a paper worksheet, give students a chance to show what they got out of the day and, importantly, share the day and its (in)sights with students who stayed back at school. Luckily, Mr Lasic was on hand with his laptop, Bluetooth and Moodle – what a nerd!

We encouraged students to take pictures and clips with their mobile phones and cameras throughout the day (considering of course other zoo visitors and rules on using imaging equipment). At the end of the day, we asked the kids to pair up and take a 30 – 60 sec ‘interview’ of their buddy answering the question: “What have I learnt at the zoo today?”

On the bus driving back to school, students sent me their videos and images from mobile phone via Bluetooth. Within 5 minutes about 15 clips and 30 images effortlessly landed in my inbox. But wait – there’s more… For kids who had taken shots with their digital camera, I have opened a picture gallery (a handy preset in Database activity) for them to upload their shots from home. They have started trickling in since.

A video database will have the kids’ video clips plus a recording of an excellent presentation given to us by the zoo’s education staff – all on Moodle of course.

All of these will be made so students can download them, edit and/or mash them up (the more advanced users will), comment on entries and rate them. I think a blog post on “Why and how should I care about endangered species” for each student should be a pretty sound assessment piece with kids constructing it using their own or their peers’ materials rather than a copy/paste job off zoo’s website.

One student asked me: “If we put zoo stuff on Moodle does that make it a Zoodle?”

Epilogue:

This morning I looked at the draft school policy on mobile phones, Mp3, cameras and other ‘gadgets’ as lots of people like to bundle’em up. It makes me want to look for another job straight away – I’ll spare you the rant.

Moodle, Teaching

Using Moodle Glossary to stop spoonfeeding students

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red spoon

I am getting a little tired of ‘spoon-feeding’ and doing the heavy lifting for my students.

So, in a fine constructivist tradition, here is a little activity I have just pulled off in my Philosophy and Ethics class using Moodle’s Glossary activity to get them thinking.

I got students into groups of three, one is the official scribe. In groups they discuss and come up with a definition/ explanation of their allocated concept. They must use examples to demonstrate their understanding of the concept (eg. ‘reason’, ‘valid argument’, ‘inference’…). The scribe enters the definition into the course glossary I had set up. Apart from text, students can add pictures, graphics, even embed videos to support their explanation using the Glossary’s HTML editor.

Students can edit entries at any time (maybe tonight from home, I remain hopeful 😀. They can comment on entries (“I think your starting premise is probably wrong so your final argument falls apart…” kinda thing). Students can also rate each other’s entries.

The idea is that the students throughout the year add and keep improving definitions of key concepts we use in class in a way that makes sense to them.

The rule is “if you can’t explain it to a friend sitting next to you it does not get published” (no copy/paste from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy here)

Thank you Moodle. Love teaching!

Change, Moodle, Teaching

Top 5 myths about teaching with Moodle

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5 MythsIf you are trying to introduce Moodle to teachers or staff at your school or a similar organisation, you have or you will probably hear at least some, if not all, of the five statements below in some shape of form. I deliberately called these ‘myths’ because they simply do not stack up when compared not only to my own experience and that of my colleagues at our school, but to the experience of literally millions of teachers around the world using Moodle in their daily work.

These five myths deal exclusively with teaching and learning with Moodle. I have distilled these after experiences at our school and reading about experiences of fellow Moodlers over the last year or so. For more myths about the technical aspects of Moodle (Top 10) you can visit the Moodle forums at Moodle.org.

So, here are my top five … with replies.

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Moodle explained with Lego

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/donsolo/2136923757/Like many millions of people around the world, one of my favourite toys as a child was Lego. I spent countless hours engaged in imaginative play with it (I still do, just much, much less these days) and it looks like I have passed the genes. Last week, I played with my son when the similarity between Moodle and Lego struck me. They are not only both tough, light, modular, infinitely open-ended and very popular products worldwide but they also encourage the way of learning I am passionate about practicing and promoting – try, connect, observe, see patterns, share, watch, (re)construct, change and above all immerse yourself in learning and discovery.

This little ‘epiphany’ and the desire to answer frequently answered question ‘What is Moodle?’ with a brief, to-the-point video drove me to spend the last few days playing with digital Lego and creating two clips, answering the question ‘What is Moodle?’ using an analogy with Lego bricks. The idea was not only to show (quickly) what Moodle is but also what it can do and what a popular and useful LMS it is. There are some excellent intro videos out there but here is my take…
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2 Minute Moodles – Evaluation tools in Moodle

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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.

As always, feedback is welcome. Happy moodling!

Moodle, Teaching

Giving all students a voice – Moodle forum

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flyAfter 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.

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Change, Moodle, Professional development, Teaching

How can Moodle change a school

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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.

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2 Minute Moodles – Communication tools in Moodle

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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’.

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2 Minute Moodles – second batch cooked!

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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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‘2 Minute Moodles’ – Basics of Moodle (1.9)

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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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