“Failure of Constructivism” Keynote by Dr. Richard Clark Slides now available
One of the most popular posts here lately has been a recap of the MootusTX10 keynote by Dr. Richard Clark down in Austin (August 2nd) [MootUSTX10 Dr Clark's "Failure of Constructivism" Keynote Recap]. It was a very, very good keynote (interesting throughout with great anecdotes and quick wit). The slides are now available (thanks to Moodlerooms, @moodlerooms).
Truth be told, the correct title of the presentation (which was not listed in the printed schedule as such) is actually “Research and Best Practice for the Design and Delivery of Virtual Instruction”. The presentation is available online at this link: http://goo.gl/CNEt.
Perhaps one of the most controversial pieces covered in the recap were the 12 Principles (Students learn better when…) which is on page 6 of the document. The 12 principles are:
- Coherence: Eliminate extraneous visuals and sound
- Signaling: Highlight essential information
- Redundancy: avoid text & narration
- Visual Contiguity: Text next to graphic it describes
- Time Contiguity: Simultaneous words and pictures
- Pacing: Learner pacing better than system pacing
- Pre-train: Advance learning of conceptual information
- Modality: Graphics + Narration not text + animation
- Multimedia: Narration+ Pictures – not narration alone
- Personalization: Conversational style – not formal
- Voice: Human voice better than machine voice
- Self Explanation: Ask learners to explain why
Unfortunately we have learned that it is not likely that a recording of the keynote will be released (due to poor audio quality).
New Theme – Isometric by Mary Evans
There’s a new theme out for Moodle 1.9x available from Moodle.org’s theme database: http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=26&rid=4098
The theme is called Isometric and is quite striking:
At my request Mary also formatted the theme to be seen with a logo:
B-e-a-utiful. For more themes visit the Moodle.org theme database or follow @Moodlethemes on Twitter.
Opinion – Just Thinking… (what if Moodle bought #Blackboard?)
This is a guest post that originally was posted as a comment to MoodleNews’ coverage of the Motley Fool article concerning Blackboard and it’s acquisitions history/future (http://www.moodlenews.com/2010/blackboard-and-moodle-acquisition/).
The following is cross-posted at http://pmasson.wordpress.com and is written by Patrick Masson. Enjoy!
The developers of MoodleTouch talk about their new #iPad app
Ali Ozgur was nice enough to lend us a few minutes and answer some questions about their new iPad app (due out in September):
Why the push into Mobile learning?
We consider mobile learning a very serious field which requires expertise in both application and user experience levels. Moodle is a fantastic LMS and we feel obliged to contribute to mobile aspects of Moodle which makes it stand out among the competitors like Blackboard and Sakai.
How do you differentiate Mobile develop for learning management?
Actively developing line of business applications in a local university, we are very close to students and we try to probe what they actually want from a mobile LMS application. Students want to be able to “touch” Moodle right on their mobile devices, they do not want a “Moodle page” full of information with no interaction.
Tell us a little about MoodleTouch for the iPad…how did you go about the design?
We redesigned mTouch for iPad from scratch. We did not choose the easy way, resize existing views and treat iPad as if it is a larger iPhone or iPod Touch and push every aspect of mTouch into a SplitView. We use tabs, multi windowing, fancy animations, modal views and pop-over windows which are all new concepts for iPad. We also plan to include some new usability features like bookmarking, saving content on the device for offline viewing and multiple copy/paste buffer.
One of the coolest things I’ve noticed about your app is that there’s nothing to install on the server as is necessary with your leading competitor, mBook. That’s a huge benefit of using your app.
Yes that is exactly true.
We offer the “better functionality” for the “same price” and still require no server side installation or tweaking.
FLASH: MoodleTouch’s #iPad App screen shots are OUT
As the mBook images appeared this morning, so too have images of the MoodleTouch (mTouch) iPad App. Check them out at http://moodletouch.com. Looks like both mBook and mTouch for iPad will provide users with novel and unique displays for Moodle-based learning.
Kudos to both development teams!
Exclusive images of the first Moodle #iPad App: mBook
If you find this interesting, check out the new screenshots of MoodleTouch for iPad
[link]
From the makers of mPage (as alluded to last week) here are the first ever pictures of an iPad App for Moodle.
Note that there is a handy navigation sidebar on each of the pages (allowing a much better ease of use than on smaller handhelds);
Forum view;
A deeper look at the forum;
We have no information on price yet, but the “freemium” version of the mPage app is a good omen for this also being a low cost app. With MoodleTouch pressing for a September release of their iPad app. this could end up being a foot race to release.
mPage: http://mpage.hk/
Module: Helpdesk Block
There’s a slick new module out that might help you get a handle on bugs and issues with your Moodle site (by tapping the inherent QA skills all users possess). The module is called “Help Desk” and it provides a simple bug and ticket submission and tracker tool for the Moodle administrator team.
Help desk at Moodle.org: http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=4086 (the module was contributed by Jonathan Doane)
After uploading and unzipping the block to my Moodle site, it was a snap to setup. One thing you may opt to do immediately is to change the role permissions (if you have administrative rights for your Moodle site) to allow all authenticated users to submit tickets (otherwise the help desk block will only be available to Admins by default). Set “Help Desk Asker” to “Allow” for authenticated users and all users will then be able to submit new tickets.
Even if you’re just using it as a bug and ticket tracker for Administrators the help desk has easy tools to help you assign technical issues to different members of your staff (and to track their progress).
Here’s a view of a submitted ticket and the various tracking and assignment options:
Download the block at http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=4086
Opinion – #Blackboard’s Moodle acquisition hopes?
[You] have to wonder if the company isn’t getting ready for some grand, expensive gesture. Main rival Moodle would be too expensive and might raise eyebrows in the government’s antitrust offices, but privately held Desire2Learn or Pearson division eCollege could be tasty tack-on targets.
That’s all grand but Blackboard’s stock fell because of a cloudy outlook. [from the Motley Fool investment blog: http://goo.gl/wh7u]
This is a quote from an article I read Wednesday when it was originally posted by Motley Fool. Though I thought it was intriguing, I didn’t necessarily find it noteworthy at the time. Now it’s been syndicated a few times and the more I think about it the more interesting the scenario seems.
Blackboard, despite it’s acquisitions this year, it’s large market cap and hugely profitable licensing/SaaS model, seems that it might have trouble meeting it’s forecasts. But they have a formidable line of credit and cash reserves (which usually means acquisition; this comes even after the Wimba/Elluminate buy-ups).
It’s interesting for 2 reasons I think:
- First is that analysts are now giving Moodle it’s much deserved credit as Blackboard’s main rival. It’s growing popularity and the several large-scale migrations from Bb to Moodle by colleges/universities recently have been a boon to Moodle’s growth momentum (not to mention the impending release of Moodle 2.0)
- What’s more interesting though is the thought that Moodle could be purchased by Blackboard (though purportedly it’s “too expensive”). Rest assured that Moodle.org lays it out plainly about the Moodle code base in it’s documentation,
The copyrights to Moodle software can never be “sold” like they can for proprietary software. All our code is completely open source. The copyrights belong to hundreds of authors and they would ALL need to agree to any change in the license. Even if that happened, it would only apply to future code – all existing versions would remain under the existing GPL license and our large and very capable community of developers would simply fork from there and continue using and developing the GPL version [link].
Now, for Bb, perhaps no price is too high. But the state of Moodle (open source, GPL, community supported) is wholly derived from the experience and support of it’s userbase over the years. Not to mention the fact that a good many teachers and administrators must feel great that the success of their LMS isn’t tied (in any way, shape or form) to the price of a stock.
I don’t think I am going too far out on a limb to say, if the price of Moodle is too high for Blackboard now, then Blackboard has already lost the LMS battle.
Related links:
mPage Mobile App update: mBook for #iPad is coming (and a video)
We got an exclusive update from mPage about their development progress. They’ve just released mPage 1.1 for iOS (which is a free limited edition, meaning that there are additional fees for full additional functionality¹) to the iTunes app store and the changes are both substantial and pretty cool. The features below are view only, but if you’re just interested in keeping tabs on the course then the free LE version might suffice:
- mPage’s forum view
- displays all discussions in unlimited depth levels,
- shows counters to trace unread message,
- has a built-in search engine,
- supports 4 basic types of Moodle forums.
- A new “Inbox” block is added FREE to the Site Blocks page after logging in. The “Inbox” contains News and forums from all enrolled courses.
- mPage also supports the followings:
- most course formats;
- better calendar events editing interface;
- displaying a media player icon for multimedia links on internal web page;
- all standard Moodle user roles and permissions (i.e. Administrator, Course creators, Editing and Non-editing teachers, Students and Guests);
- Site news and Main Menu;
- supporting 5 languages (English, French, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese).
Check out the app listing at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mpage/id369809342?mt=8#. They’re also releasing a new iPad app called mBook which will not be just a magnification of the mPage app, but a total redesign of how the iPad will render Moodle. Could be a game changer for Moodle on iPad (as it will be the first released app).
If you’re interested in seeing mPage 1.1 in action, check out the mPage site (http://mpage.hk) which has this great video demonstration: http://mpage.hk/mod/resource/view.php?id=119
As an additional bonus, they’re also working on mPage for Android which I’ve very excited about.
¹mPage will soon offer an InApp purchase tool which will unlock the full forum functionality for $.99 and other free downloadable functionalities. Future releases of mPage will provide additional paid downloads (check out http://mpage.hk/mod/resource/view.php?id=110 for a full roadmap).
Sick day
I’m in bed with a case of the flu. Sorry no posts today.
For Moodle information and resources check out our most popular posts or search the archives.
Best,
Joe
