New #iPad MoodleTouch Video released
Just in from Ali (@aliozgur) and his team at Moodletouch.com:
For more information and videos check out Moodletouch.com: http://goo.gl/qjJw
Moodle Monday: Moving resources between courses by @timdalton
Today I needed to move a whole set of resources from one course to another. Last year we had a ‘Learning to Learn’ course on Moodle that all students followed during tutor time. However, the page grew over the year to a point where there were too many resources so this year we are creating a different course for each year group. So, what I need to do is move all the year 7 resources to a year 7 page, the 8′s to an 8, etc. The ‘import’ feature in course admin can help you do this. This is a nice easy process- you need to be a teacher on the course you are importing to and from and then just follow these steps.
1) Navigate to the course you want the resources to end up on.
2) From the course admin block select ‘import’.
3) Select the course you want to import resources from.
4) Pick the resources/labels/activities you want to import and from the options at the bottom of the page choose if you want to move all the course files and users as well. In general I would imagine you wouldn’t do this.
5) A page will load confirming what you have selected, hit continue and wait. There will be another few continue buttons while Moodle does the work.
And that should be it. You’ll end up back at the course where you started with all the resources you selected now in place.
One thing to watch out for- when migrating resources Moodle places them all in the exact same topic they came from. So, if you import a resource from topic 5 it will be placed on topic 5 on the new course. This applies even if the topic isn’t currently being displayed on the new course. If that’s the case go in to your course settings and display some more on your page and you should find any resource you were expecting to see but don’t.
Happy Friday: my top 5 favorite Moodle sites
I’ve seen a lot of Moodles. I can’t resist a new Moodle link, to see the theme, the apparent activity on the front page and the various courses that are available (even though they might be closed). Checking out a new Moodle always gives me new ideas for posts, and how to design my own Moodle sites or courses.
Overtime I’ve visited a few over and over because they are just so cool. So here are my all time favorite Moodle sites*
*I reserve the right to revise this list at anytime.
Cool intro to Moodle video by mpowerlearning.com
This is a cool 5 minute video that showcases generally the features and abilities that are available to teachers and students using Moodle. It’s about 5 minutes and if you’re trying to describe what Moodle does to someone that doesn’t know, it might provide a good foundation/introduction.
Enjoy:
E-learning and Moodle from Mpower Learning on Vimeo.
According to their site,
MPower is an educational services organization that focuses on building conceptual clarity and strong application skills for students in grades five through college, and above. We provide expedient online tutoring at competitive prices.
Note: though a commercial company, the video does not appear at all “commercial”.
Happy Birthday Moodle (and @Moodler) via @Moodlehelen
It’s 8 years old today, August 19th.
A long and fruitful road. Here’s to many more years!
- Check out Helen Foster’s post for some more details on the history of Moodle, http://helenfoster.wordpress.com/
- Send in your wishes at http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=156255
Opinion – Can Moodle replace social networks in educational settings?
There are a few interesting articles recently, one from Tampa Bay’s local news channel 10 and the other from the Mundelein Review in Illinois: the local school districts are banning or discouraging communication between students and teachers via social networks and instead are leaning on Moodle and school website portals to provide all modes of communication between the community, teachers, parents and students.
Read the articles here: http://www.wtsp.com/news/mostpop/story.aspx?storyid=141641 and http://www.pioneerlocal.com/mundelein/news/2593194,mundelein-communication-081910-s1.article
While the use of social network sites (such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace) in schools is a contentious issue, I’m curious what general opinion about student-teacher communication in schools looks like today (via Moodle or not).
Can and does Moodle provide an adequate communication venue for students, parents and teachers? What Moodle tool works best? What specifically might it be missing?¹
While banning communication through Facebook (or other social networks) may prevent otherwise positive and learning-focused communications, I can see where the school (and it’s legal team) might be coming from.
By strengthening the walled-garden that is their school’s website portal and LMS, its possible for a school to get the best of both worlds (i.e. that is, stem potentially dangerous communications before they happen and promote adequate, informal and formal educational discussions between students, parents and teachers)?
¹ Moodle 2.0 provides a much more robust communication tool for students and teachers (specifically enabling a inbox and message system). I think that it will change how many schools view Moodle in terms of providing an adequate communication channel [http://docs.moodle.org/en/Moodle_2.0_release_notes#Messaging]
14 New Courses from @moodleshare!
Jon Fila, the coordinator and creator of Moodleshare.com (on Twitter at @moodleshare) is also hosting courses that are shared and available for download at http://courses.moodleshare.com. He’s recently posted a few new courses, including
- Web tools for online courses
- Alcohol Unit for health courses
- Heat and Populations units for science
- Introduction to Geometry
- and more!
Downloads of the courses’ backup files are available in each course so that you can restore them to your own Moodle!
http://courses.moodleshare.com/
Video: Uploading Zipped files in Moodle (quick tip)
Here’s a quick video that showcases how to zip up files and upload them to Moodle (a huge time saver for course creators).
- learn the “sent to” zip file process (Windows)
- how to upload
- how to unpack in Moodle
Here’s a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs7P3GOe7DI
You also might enjoy the same video creator’s video covering how to embed video in Moodle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeN98WEX8hc
If you want an even easier way, consider the multiple file upload module (Enhanced File Upload): http://www.moodlenews.com/2010/module-enhanced-file-resource/
Moodle Feasibility Study Survey
At the Moot in Austin we covered a great presentation about the feasibility study conducted by North Carolina Community College’s Open Source Collaborative [link to MN coverage] and now we’ve found a collaborative opportunity to tackle the question of feasibility of Moodle in schools and organizations.
It’s a short survey, but from it we hope that Moodle administrators will help us to answer the important evaluative questions like:
- How much does Moodle cost per student?
- what are the hardware costs for Moodle?
- how many staff members should we have ready to support/administrate Moodle?
MoodleNews is conducting this survey in collaboration with Michael Fisher a graduate student at the Oregon Institute of Technology. All results will be shared publicly once the survey has ended on 8/31 (two weeks).
If you could send the survey link onto any Moodle administrators you know, please do! Here’s the link: http://goo.gl/F3ly
Wanted: Moodle Course Developer for @UoPeople
Moodlenews was contacted by UoPeople (@UoPeople) volunteer coordinator yesterday, the fledgling but growing open educational organization is seeking a Moodle course developer to help them build their College Algebra course as soon as possible. The course starts in September so there’s no time to waste!
Updated 8/18 @ 9:56am EST: Please note that the content is already created. This volunteer will work with the existing content (in Word format) and will upload and adapt it to a fully functional Moodle-based curriculum.
The course is a standard College Algebra Course – based on an open textbook.
There are 8 study units. Each has a Learning Guide (Book-type resource), Reading Assignment (textbook and other link-out), Discussion Question (Q&A Forum), Quiz (about 10 questions) and Assignment (uses the Workshop Activity), with solutions that need to be published as a web page (or other suggestion) and Assessment Rubric that needs to be created.
In addition, there is a Final Exam in the 9th week.
The course developer has created everything in Word. Ideally if we could connect up with someone experienced in building math courses in Moodle that could first advise us on the best approach (to deal with the equations) and then help us implementing (at least for the first few units until we get the hang of it) that would be ideal.
Qualifications:
- Experience creating equations and mathematical expressions in Moodle a plus
- Experience building and editing courses in Moodle required
- Knowledge of Moodle’s activity and resource structure and utility a must
If you are interested in working with the University of the People on this exciting volunteer opportunity please contact volunteer@uopeople.org and put “Moodlenews: Moodle Course Developer” in the subject.
University of the People (UoPeople) is the world’s first online, tuition free University. Founder and President Shai Reshef established UoPeople to provide worldwide higher-education: http://www.uopeople.org/
