If you’re in the Brisbane area in April, the School MoodleMoot for 2012 is taking place on April 12th through 14th at the Brisbane Girls Gramar School.  According to the event website,

The purpose of the Australian School Moodle Moot 2012 is to provide the attendees with the opportunity to learn from key individuals within the education sector who already fully utilise the LMS, to ignite enthusiasm and realise Moodle’s potential as a tool for online learning and engagement!

Registration for the event is as low as AU$330 (registration information) and includes 4 Moodle tracks, keynote speakers such as Joyce Seitzinger and Martin Dougiamas and more.  The call for presentations is currently open and accepting proposals for the limited spots until the full schedule is announced in mid-February.

Visit the site for more information and to download some nifty Moodle posters: http://school.moodlemoot.com.au/?cat=5.

Hat tip to Julian Ridden (@Moodleman) for the information.  For more Moodle events visit http://www.moodlenews.com/events/.

Not only is registration for the Ireland/UK Moodle Moot, but they also have a limited number of Blogger passes available.  Blogger passes, when awarded, provide the blogger free registration, parking, lunch and more…just for publicizing and covering the event.

Go for free! If you’re a blogger and could make the trip check out http://moodlemoot.ie/blogger-passes/ for more information.  Certain expectations apply.

Register today: While you may not be a blogger the Moot will still have loads of good Moodle training and presentation sessions to learn from.  Registration is €195 for the two-day event (more if you opt for the pre-conference workshop or conference dinner).  To register or for more information visit http://moodlemoot.ie/.

Planning on presenting?  don’t delay, presentation proposals are due 2/3/2012.

This year’s Moot is presented in partnership with Dublin City University.

The Moot is focusing several strands for Moodlers including Implementing & Developing Moodle, Teaching & Learning with Moodle, Academic takeup of Moodle, Student engagement, Moodle 2 and more.  There’s sure to be something for everyone no matter what your familiarity level with Moodle (plus you get to spend a few days in Dublin which is certainly a treat).

Registration opens soon, so don’t delay! http://moodlemoot.ie and be sure to follow @MoodleIreland to stay in the loop about the event.

What: Ireland/UK Moodlemoot 2012
Where: Dublin, Ireland
When: April 2-4, 2012

Interested in more Moodle events in your area (or across the globe)? Check out our events page: http://www.moodlenews.com/events/

Find out more information at http://www.ohiomoot.org and be ready to join MoonBeam (the Moodle Moose, mascot of the Ohio Moot) and his friends.

The call for presentations is now open. Accepted presenters get free registration to the event.  There are three strands to present in, Moodle Admin: “Managing the Backend of Moodle”, Administrators: “Leading with Moodle”, and Trainers and Teachers: “Using Moodle for Learning”.

There are Moodle-related events around the country and world on a regular basis.  Moodle meetups are generally called “Moots” and invite local (and not so local) users, developers, and vendors to come and learn about the next and best in Moodle over the course of a few days.  I was able to attend the US Moot in Austin/Round Rock about a year ago and had a great time learning about large-scale Moodle migrations, the real costs of Moodle, what to expect from Moodle 2.0, how Moodlerooms is building its analytics and how Dell is providing virtual computer labs that are full of pre-loaded software (that students could access from any other computer).

These events are also a great opportunity to chat and mix-it-up with other Moodlers (and even Blackboard users) who share their experiences from the trenches of education technology.

There are a few Moots in the US regularly, locations change frequently but you can rest assured that there’ll be more and you probably can find one within a day’s drive of your location.  Here are a few upcoming Moots to keep an eye on:

• Louisiana Moot (Baton Rouge, Louisiana): TBD Spring 2012, http://www.lctcs.edu/index.cfm?md=pagebuilder&tmp=home&pid=312
• iMoot (global, online): TBD Spring 2012, http://imoot.org
• Moodle Moot Oklahoma (Oklahoma City): TBD June 2012, http://moodle.metrotech.edu/
• Midwest Moot (Goshen, Indiana): TBD July 2012, http://www.learningcontexts.com/midwestmoot/
• US Moot (various locations): TBD July/August 2012, http://www.moot-us.com/
• Ohio Moot (Mansfield, Ohio): TBD Summer 2012, http://www.ohiomoot.org/

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg (check out http://www.moodlenews.com/?s=events for updates on new Moots and virtual conferences).  Inquire around your district and state to see if there are smaller, one day events that you can attend to learn about Moodle as well.  Note that major conferences like ISTE, CUE, PETE&C and other statewide/regional educational technology events also offer open source strands and sessions on Moodle.

A little research can go a long way in improving your Moodle-ability.

If you’re international, the best resource for finding the next Moot near you is at Moodle.org: http://moodle.org/calendar/view.php

Lots of great speakers and resources are available via the WizIQ platform (which also has Moodle integration); and best of all, the event is entirely free!

Check the schedule for lots of cool events: http://tinyurl.com/438r9cm

What have I learned that I can use right away?

One day 1 I went to a panel session where Jennifer Klein from the Open School of Utah presented on “Twitter Time in the Classroom: Integrating Social Media into Education”. She embeds a Twitter widget into an HTML block in her Moodle course. Using Twitter she can make announcements, remind student of upcoming dates and assignments, and give shout-outs to students. Her Twitter widget is setup to search for a specific #hashtag so students can even ask questions that she or other students can answer. This is a useful and fun way to communicate with students and relatively easy to setup in Moodle.

What have I learned that I can apply over the next few months?

My second take-away was from the panel session, Integrating Library Resources into Moodle. The three panelists showed various examples of Moodle/Library integration. Some of the examples were using a sticky block to showcase library resources, selecting Bookshelves of resources, creating video tutorials for Moodle help, and designing a Moodle course to teach students how to use Moodle and/or library resources. In the upcoming months, I want to explore how to integrate my district’s library resources into our Moodle courses.

What do I want to reflect and learn more about?

Finally, David Wiley’s keynote, ”Openness, Analytics & the LMS” was the highlight of the moot! His keynote was engaging and inspiring. He challenged my thinking on openness and how Moodle can best be used. He promoted the use of Moodle to track behavioral data (When did a student login? How long where they logged in? What resources were viewed? Etc.) This valuable data can be analyzed to show time-on-task and to assist students who need help. Teaches can use the data to inform and modify their instruction and ultimately help students achieve. What a powerful combination!

Martin Dougiamas opened the moot with a keynote. Besides being knowledgeable he was very relaxed, easygoing and approachable – plus I love his accent. A few things I took away from his keynote were:

• Roadmap for Moodle – the development process has been mapped out and major releases will come out every 6 months. The roadmap includes features which are being worked on. Moodle 2.2 is expected to come out by the end of the year.
• Mooch – is a community hub or place where courses can be downloaded and shared. No longer will instructors have to recreate the wheel. Also a great way to see how Moodle is being used.
• MoodleMobile – an official mobile app will be released soon for the iPhone and later for Android. I am excited to try this one out! The interface looked very clean and simple to use.

Looking forward to the rest of the sessions to come.

The idea and facilitation of this collaborative doc came from the 2011 iMoot where myself and @smbeaverson thought up the idea, which grew into a 19 page document edited by Moodlers around the world.

Day 1 is already gone and done and we’ve already got some great discussion and note taking going on. Please visit the Doc and sign in with your Name and Twitter handle and start sharing!

Nearly 40 different workshops, keynotes and sessions are scheduled over the 20th-22nd of July.  Many will focus on Moodle 2.0+.

For more information and to take advantage of the extra days for early registration visit: http://midwestmoot.com/.