Moodle News

Moodle Moot Hungary: September 8th

Joseph Thibault — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:00:16 +0000

Moodle Moot Hungary was just announced on http://moodlemoot.moodle.de. Though a reportedly smaller Moot, the event is scheduled for September 8th, 2010 at Helmut Schmidt University and is sponsored by Moodle partner, eLeDia.

For more information visit the German Moot site: http://moodlemoot.moodle.de/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=523

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More from #mootusin10 by @theohiobloke: Open Session with Martin

Joseph Thibault — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:00:51 +0000

Here’s another Moot session highlight by John Mansel-Playdell (@theohiobloke/http://mpleydell.nwoca.org/), this one focused on the open session with Martin Dougiamas. John described it as the highlight of his first Moot.

Open session with Martin at Midwest Moodle MOOT

Asked about html5 he said that Moodle is XHTML strict compliant and they still have to support IE6.

Asked about audio recording for Moodle for foreign language teachers.
He indicated that they have put in place code in the file picker for audio recording using a third party cloud based app. This gives a button that would record directly into the new file picker. The third party app went out of business and they are looking for alternatives.

All of the core activity modules to be worked on for 2.1 some have issues that have been waiting years in the tracker to be fixed.

Assignment module to be collapsed into one good assignment module.

Asked about quizzes – lots of improvements to the interface. It started out simple but has become much more complex.

New course settings:
Activity completion e.g. Requiring a certain number of posts in a forum

Activity conditions – restrict availability of activities until a certain condition is met e.g. Activity Y only available when activity X is completed.

Asked if there was going to be the ability to create sub-pages in 2.0 he talked about an add-on course format called flexpage that lets people create multiple sub-pages. (note: not part of 2.0 but cool if used CAREFULLY)

When asked where technology and education were headed with regards to Moodle, Martin pointed to a wide gap between the very loud users from the blogosphere who were well connected and very vocal contrasted with those in developing countries who are just getting connected. The Moodle team is trying to make sure that they consider all the Moodle community as they go forward.

Some Schools in Germany debating the use of computers in schools.

Future use of technology based on mobile devices.

New web services API allows access to the very heart of Moodle.

Roles and permissions are important to him because they free the instructors to open up activities without the fear of them being defaced by “some git” (nice use of an Aussie idiom – look it up on the urban dictionary)

Asked about Integration with other OS projects such as Mahara. Pointed out that a lot of code in ELGG has it’s roots in Moodle. Many open source projects share code. They have been working closely with the folks at Mahara.

Showed off some of the new web services functionality. Web services documentation is part of the system but there are docs available online. Web services give access to the heart of Moodle and as a result there are many extra security settings to reconfigured.

Asked about portable accounts. OpenID is one possibility.

Microsoft has made a Live@edu plug-in.

Asked id Moodle would be good as a file repository for an organization he suggested Alfresco is a good java based file repository. A lot of other commercial ones.
Moodle was not well suited to being a file repository in his opinion.

Session ended at 2pm

Floyd Saner, the organizer thanked the 200+ people for attending the MOOT in Goshen. Martin Dougiamas now heads to the Moodle MOOT Austin in Texas which begins on August 2nd. You can follow it on Twitter by searching for #mootustx10

See you at the TX Moot!

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#TMMoodle session archives and channel (watch ‘em all!)

Joseph Thibault — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:11:37 +0000

Better late than never I suppose: this is the collection of session presentations from the TeachMeetMoodle organized by Dan Humpherson (@moodledan) back on July 3rd (2010):

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tmmoodle

Here’s a great recap of some of the sessions by James Michie (@jamesmichie; including a guide to a few of the recordings on the TMMoodle uStream, http://jamesmichie.com/blog/2010/07/teachmeet-moodle/).

Sounds and looks like a huge success!

Poll – Is Moodle web 2.0?

Joseph Thibault — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:22:55 +0000

This is our first poll at Moodlenews, and it stems from an ongoing discussion here about web 2.o and if Moodle qualifies for that designation [original post, "Intro to Moodle Video by @MrHSIE"].

What makes this conversation particularly difficult is that there are differing viewpoints of what “web 2.0″ actually is.

Two definitions:

Wikitionary – The second generation of the World Wide Web, especially the movement away from static webpages to dynamic and shareable content and social networking. [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Web_2.0] via commenter Darren Murphy
Wikipedia – The term “Web 2.0″ (2004-present) is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web… [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web2.0]

What do you think and why?

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Notes from Martin’s Keynote #mootusin10 from @theohiobloke

Joseph Thibault — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:06:32 +0000

Here are some quick notes taken by John Mansel-Pleydell (@theohiobloke) while he attended the keynote presenation by Martin Dougiamas at the Midwest Moot this morning. Stay up to date with Goshen at #mootusin10.

Moodle MOOT keynote

#mootusin10 is the twitter hash tag.

People use Moodle in ways he did not plan.
50k registered and verified sites.
85 languages

Martin uses a Mac and Keynote!
50k in user community

2.0 is a new platform
Nice new file picker with googledocs flickr Picasa built in.

Can link to external media or download into Moodle
Can embed YouTube flickr directly in any text area.

Can control where incoming messages are routed

Does jabber chat

Can register external blogs and filter by #tags

Workshops built around peer assessment
New interface with a workflow to show what needs to be done to set it up.

New community block
Search for courses online

90% of Moodlers use only 10% of the features of Moodle

Mobile apps – lots of experimenting going on

New web services enables better integration with the real world.

Moodle 3 is years away and a re-design from the ground up.

Backup and restore are what is holding up release.

Theming is different themes need to be rewritten.

Special thanks to John for sending in his synopsis.

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33 Examples of the Book Module providing passive professional development

Joseph Thibault — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:00:40 +0000

AUB (the American University of Beirut) was a big contributor of traffic to our site last week from their very nice Moodle (http://moodle.aub.edu.lb) and I’m glad they were (otherwise I wouldn’t have seen their really great use of the Moodle Book module which provides and easy to access “Guide to Moodle” for faculty).

They’ve created various levels of tutorial resources and documentation that are always available and just a click away.

http://moodle.aub.edu.lb/mod/book/index.php?id=1

Not only are there three progressively advanced general Moodle (I, II, and III) tutorials, but there are also over two dozen tool specific guides such as,

The Office Addin for Moodle
Book module
Quiz
Questionnaire
Forum
Adding activities
Assignments
Attendance
and much, much more

It’s a wealth of resources available, including text and images in an easy to navigate format. Enjoy!

LAE Grader Report plug-in’s official release

Joseph Thibault — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:00:59 +0000

The CLAMP-IT.org LAE Gradebook (just one piece of the 1.9.9 +LAE distribution highlighted earlier this month at Moodlenews) has been released in the Module and Plug-in repository on Moodle .org. You’ll be able to download, see documentation and the various features which have made this mod a winner:

easier manipulation of gradebook on the screen
browser compatibility improvements
easy letter to numeric grade conversions

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Martin Dougiamas Live from the Midwest Moot (9am EST Today) #mootusin10

Joseph Thibault — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:00:49 +0000

Today, Tuesday the 27th of July, Wimba is sponsoring a live webcast of Martin Dougiamas’ keynote address, “Moodle 2.0″, which kicks off the 2010 Midwest Moodle Moot in Goshen.

Information: http://www.goshen.edu/moodle/wimbawebcast.html. Visit the link prior to the session to run Wimba’s setup wizard.

If anyone at the Midwest Moot wants to provide a quick write of of any session send it my way (joseph [dot] thibault [at] gmail [dot] com) and we’ll publish it for the community.

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Ask Mr. Moodle: Can I access Moodle and not be listed in the course participants?

Joseph Thibault — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:00:10 +0000

Here’s a question from a student of the American University of Beirut (check out their Moodle at http://moodle.aub.edu.lb/);

I would like to know if there is a way to be able to access Moodle without being listed in the participants’ page.

Well, yes and no. For the most part, allowing anonymous access is controlled by the editing teacher of the course.

Guest access:

It’s possible to access Moodle without being listed in the participants page if the course and site you’re accessing has allowed guest access. With guest access you can tap into Moodle course resources and view web pages, books, glossaries, etc. with read-only access. However you cannot interact with activities (add content to forums, glossaries, or upload files to assignments). Your course instructor (editing teacher) has a few options for allowing guest access (requiring an enrollment key for example) which are accessible through the course settings.

If guest access is not allowed then there’s really no way not to access a course without getting listed in the participants list.

Shared access:

As an alternative, shared access could be provided as a “test user” account that provides more than one person to login with the same account information. There are limits and dangers to this approach however, especially if this shared user can interact with activities and post to forums (as there is limited accountability).

Limited access to the participants list:

One final note is that hiding or deleting the participants list is can limit how students can get to the participants list (though it is indirectly accessible by clicking on a classmate’s name, say, in a forum, and then clicking the breadcrumbs to enter the participants list).

If you have a way to allow student access to course content without adding them to the participants list, share it in the comments.

UPDATE: Inspector Role

This one is courtesy of Mary Cooch in the comments:

The Inspector role is a bit like this http://docs.moodle.org/en/Inspector_role.

This is the process of creating a new role within a site which users can be assigned to and who do not show in the participants list. Note that a teacher or administrator will need to take several actions to enable/set this up.

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Benefits of K-12 Online Learning using Moodle

Joseph Thibault — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:00:20 +0000

Here’s a presentation less about the in’s and out’s of Moodle but the reasons for adopting and the benefits of implementing LMSs such as Moodle. It was created and shared by Mark Schmoll on his blog. It’s a simple, straight forward presentation [http://markschmoll.blogspot.com/2010/07/moodle.html] which then gives a brief overview of a standard Moodle install.

View the video [5:00 minutes] at this link: http://goo.gl/9a9w

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