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LSU Eunice builds their own Moodle Mobile App for #iOS

Joseph Thibault — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:30:48 +0000

There’s a new trend for Moodling higher education institutions: enable mobile access to your Moodle either through a unique mobile URL or native app. LSU Eunice is one of the most recent to do so (we covered CSUMB earlier) providing students with to access their Moodle site using a unique URL: http://mycourses.lsue.edu. According to the site,

myMobile extends campus services to students anywhere they might be. As part of the suite of mobile services provided at LSU Eunice, access to myCourses provides students with on-the-go access to online coursework.

http://www.lsue.edu/site.php?pageID=281

Looks good.

Check out a few of the screenshots:

4 Intro Moodle Videos from @ciscoinstitute

Joseph Thibault — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:00:46 +0000

Here’s a collection of short videos highlighting a few easy Moodle tricks, including the file upload process from @ciscoinstitute. You can also check out their Moodle at http://ciscoinstitute.net/.

Direct video links:

Video: Goomoodleikiog 4 Students by @leighmurrell & @HeidiBeez

Joseph Thibault — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:00:06 +0000

I’m a fan of the original Goomoodleikiog video by Leigh Murrell (@leighmurrell) and Heidi Beezley (@heidibeez), but this follow up video explaining the technologies to students is just too good not to share.

Here’s a link to their website: http://goomoodleikiog.com

And to the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uE0dzbVMaQ

O-M-G.

Poll: @catspyjamasnz asks ‘How many Moodle Tools do you use in your average course?’

Joseph Thibault — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:00:11 +0000

Just helping to spread the word of this poll by Joyce Seitzinger (aka @catspyjamasnz)

Moodle by another name

Joseph Thibault — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:30:02 +0000

Last week we asked the twitterverse what other names they had adopted for their Moodle (it’s a great name/acronym, but lots of schools call it by something entirely different). The most popular? iLearn. Here’s a sampling (including the landing pages) of the various euphemisms for Moodle sites around the world:

Stream is what they call their Moodle at Massey University in New Zealand: https://secure.mymassey.com
Citybit: http://citybit.southampton-city.ac.uk/
Here’s one of my favorites: Rickypedia [http://rickypedia.org/moodle/]
@Soon2bMrsLander said, “Our Moodle is called Learnzone
@kentvillard let mentioned that they attempted to brand their Moodle as Learn@UPEI, but Moodle was too hard to shake
@deglearn let us know that their Moodle instance at Hochschule Deggendorf University is called iLearn
Interestingly, Cal State University of Monterey Bay also calls their Moodle iLearn, http://archive.ilearn.csumb.edu/
LearningSpace - this is what they call their Moodle at Urban Design London: http://www.urbandesignlondon.com/learningspace/

Does your Moodle go by another name? Are their benefits or downsides in branding it uniquely? Let us know in the comments.

#Angel to Moodle course converter (ConversionThingy 2) released #lms #Blackboard

Joseph Thibault — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:00:24 +0000

This resource was recently submitted to Moodlenews and is worthy of a share. Please note that we have not tested this (but if someone does have access to Angel and wants to let us know the process, perhaps with a video, it would be welcome).

Angel Learning Management System was acquired by Blackboard in May 2009 for approximately 95 million USD [link].

http://www.conversionthingy.net

ConversionThingy 2 is a program that reads ANGEL 7.3 and 7.4 course archives and converts their course content into native objects in Moodle 1.98 backup files. The conversion brings in as much as it can reasonably translate from the one LMS to the other: most of the items ordinarily located under the ANGEL Lessons tab get shifted, including folders, pages, url links, files, discussion forums, dropboxes, assessments, and WIKIs. Also included in the conversion are gradebook categories and assignments (along with their content linkages and weights), grade scales (mapping number/letter grades), chat rooms, team ids (and descriptions), and question banks…

Converted materials turn up…as native Moodle objects that can be further manipulated, configured, and edited as though they had been created in Moodle [link]

According to Dr. Peter Friesen who submitted the resource,

After countless cups of coffee and many many late nights, I’m pleased to let you know that “ConversionThingy 2″ – a tool for migrating ANGEL 7.3 and 7.4 files to Moodle – is now available. Documentation, license info, and the program itself are all to be found at http://www.conversionthingy.net.

In the world of course conversion this seems to be a great step in providing easy transition from one LMS to another. If you’re a current Angel user looking to migrate, give it a test and let us know how it fares.

Introduction to Moodle Video Collection (8 videos)

Joseph Thibault — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:30:20 +0000

Here’s another video playlist from sbudd from Embedr.com: http://embedr.com/playlist/introduction-to-moodle. This list includes

Moodle’s flagship introduction video, http://vimeo.com/3867499
Tomaz Lasic’s “How Moodle Can change a School” (part 1 and 2), http://vimeo.com/4964277
Goomoodleikiog, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOKJk-7K9gY
Using Moodle in the Classroom, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9XfwBzt1mY
Moodle Explained with Lego http://vimeo.com/4955838
and others.

It’s a great collection of the best intro to Moodle videos (note that a few of the videos were linked to no-longer functional sites, but you should find active links above).

@digidoug shows how to restore last year’s Moodle course backup

Joseph Thibault — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:00:03 +0000

Doug, (@digidoug) the author “Reflections on Distributed Learning” (http://distlearn.wordpress.com/), published a quick post that highlights the process of restoring a previous term or year’s Moodle backup file.

Here’s a link to the great post: http://distlearn.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/restoring-last-years-moodle-backup/

Doug also created a handy video to show the process: http://screencast.com/t/M2FiOWQ3ZTU

This process goes well with the backup files you can get through MoodleShare (as highlighted in today’s earlier post): http://www.moodlenews.com/2010/new-at-moodleshare-11-more-courses/

New at @Moodleshare: 11 more courses

Joseph Thibault — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:00:10 +0000

Jon Fila at Moodleshare.com has been posting new courses on almost a daily basis. Over the last two weeks alone almost 20 new titles/short course modules have been added at http://courses.moodleshare.com.

Titles include:

Art history
Moodling: Using Online Courseware for Ubiquitous Learning
Sloodle Demo course
Creative Writing Online
Writing a Children’s Book
Knowledge of College
Elementary School Orchestra
and More!

Download them all to restore to your Moodle at http://courses.moodleshare.com.

12+ Moodle Screencasts and Tutorials

Joseph Thibault — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:33:14 +0000

Moodle In Schools, NZ has a great list of screencasts to help you learn and manage Moodle. No registration is required:

http://www.moodleinschools.org.nz/screencasts.

Videos include:

Introduction to Moodle
Embedding
Mashups
feedback surveys
Glossary
Microsoft Office Add-on for Moodle
and more!