I am attending a session on Moodle. I think that we made the right decision in choosing this program as our content delivery system for the eLearning Campus. I am posting the lecture notes that I have taken this morning.
Use Your Noodle – Learn Noodle
Michelle Moore
Elementary education / middle years
Masters Degrees – online course
Instructional Technology Teacher
Director of Training for Remote-Learning.org
Jonathon Moore – technical assistance
Moodle needs Apache on the server. Linux is recommended, Windows next, Mac server not recommended
Moodle v.1.8 is the newest version – v.1.9 coming next year (parent roles)
Most people seem to want to use it for online professional development.
Moodle Hosting sites
www.ninehub.com/moodle
www.asteio.org
Fantastico
Remote-Learner.net –Bryan Williams
Michelle will let other people onto her server, just send an email request.
Server support – Moodle Partners offer support
Moodle – Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment
-meander along learning things along the way
Community supporting Moodle at Moodle.org
Michelle's PowerPoint Presentation can be found online
Students can build their own course.
What is Moodle?
Online class delivery system
Based on an interactive, constructivist learning
Theory - instructional design
Designed to facilitate communication
Allows you to engage the students better than Blackboard / WebCT
CMS – Course Management System
Martin Dougiamas – PHD project
Based on Social Constructionist Pedagogy
Moodle is Open Source – free –pay for server, pay to train people
You can brand you Moodle site – might look like SHSD website
Moodle can be modified.
Community of developers
http://Moodle.remote-learner.net
Front Page of Moodle
Show categories or courses, students will only see the courses they are enrolled in.
Can setup as:
No authentication
Email based authentication
Administrator can add users and content
L Dap databases – Power School – share information
Set up profile Advanced settings
Let everyone see email address (teacher) Students may not want to share email address. If student doesn’t have school email, hide, bogus email or inappropriate email
Disable email if you are using bogus emails. Enable if email is real.
Pretty html – pictures and enhancements
Forum Posts – follow via email – If student makes a post, ½ hours later receive email notifying you, could mean a lot of emails. Start with No digest then move to complete digest, Subjects – subject line only, have to be descriptive
Forum Auto subscribe – change – Yes, Michelle changes this to No, don’t automatically subscribe, allows for more conscious decisions.
Mac – Firefox, also for Windows
Ajax and Javascript is coming – drag and drop
Screen Reader available for those students who have screen read to them.
Administrator can set default country
Preferred Language – English – not US
Description – All about you, can include pictures…anything. Good introduction for students. Gear first part for parents and then things students would find interesting.
Add your picture to you description, crops from the middle out so use a small head shot of yourself – helps students connect – take their picture, use own picture for first term then they can change it.
Optional Info – Skype, webpage URL,
You can add information to the profile – admin
Update
Exploring Moodle Modules
Remote-learner.net
Top course topic
Enroll in the course – see Administration block
Sample modules
Moodle.org – place to download Moodle – Menu block
To show you the things that Moodle can do
Blocks
Content – Topics format – You don’t have to show students all of the topics depends how you organize your course
Top Five features from a teacher’s perspective that students will use:
Assignment Module
- Used to assign tasks
- Online (type in short paragraph or comment into text box) or offline – added in, student able to refer back to rubric, ongoing record (turnitin.com, plagiarism tool)
- Allows electronic submissions
- Due dates added to course calendar
- V1.8 Advanced Uploading of Files –allows teacher to return multiple files to student – useful for rubrics – upload response files –can delete own files – can add notes to what they submit – button, submit for marking
- Advanced uploading of files – Michelle would use this rather than upload assignment – suggested that you give them an assignment to practice this – edit box for notes – button for send for marking – teacher sees number of assignments to grade – teacher view, look at last date modified to see most recent- you can grade the assignment, revert to draft, make notes on it, use rubric to evaluate / feedback, find a response file and upload or make comment in text editor, quick grading option can be turned on or off, all students show up in list so with quick grading you can give them a zero if they don’t hand it in. When you set up assignments, you can set up groups (classes)
***great for student-lead conferences, student can add their best work and comment on why they choose it***
Choice
- Informal survey tool
- Create questions and provide choices for participants
- Results can be posted with identities or anonymously
- Ex: order pizza for lunch , what do you want
- Break into groups by topic, they can’t see who they will be with, content important
- Putting adults into committees
- Put up a question, read chapter 3, answer one question, we will look at it tomorrow, you will know if the students understands.
- Ordering T-Shirts
- Generation YES – students working on web pages, good web design, each student was in charge of teaching one chapter to the class, Set up a choice, limit to 2, state which chapter you want to work on, can make changes but there is deadline and where ever you are then is where you will be
Forum
Examples:
First time have everyone to introduce themselves
Book talks – read 2 books over the summer and conduct a discussion
Pick something out of a book – favorite hero – comment. If I could be a hero what special things could you do,
Teachers – to plan an event –can extend meeting with pre-meeting or follow-up
Incorporate other resources – links, pictures
- Provides areas for group discussions
- Can be restricted
- Only teacher can post – announcements (news forum)
- Student can only post once (have to make own post before they can read someone else’s post)
- Posts may only be allowed in a specific time frame
- Posts can be rated – they will be averaged, amount, qualitative, students can rate forum posts – scales, I agree is not a good response, custom scale created by students – good way to start forums
- Allows for interaction
- Gives the responders time to think (more thoughtful) and check facts
- Does require everyone to become engaged, required to enter post and make a comment (one post and two replies) (grading: set forum to satisfactory etc rather than grading – gives you a summary (2 outstanding, 3 satisfactory – Offline assignment that will give them a grade)
- Forum should be open ended; rather than give me the top 5 skills, everyone would have the same list.
- Try to find a way for students to incorporate personal experience or knowledge
Groups could be created from several classes so you can conference with students from other classes
Don’t subscribe to forum post, will become overwhelming in your email, might ask to subscribe initially then they can change the setup.
You could force subscription to the news forum.
More to come in my next post.
