Private Notes 
With Mediabird Study Notes you can have your own personal note-taking database system. This virtual notebook is available to you wherever you go in your Moodle course.

Sharing Your Notes 
You can also share your notes with others who use your Moodle site. Share them with any specified group of people that you choose. You can even be an admin of the group that you create in Mediabird Study Notes. As admin you get to share your notes with, you control who gets access.

What else can it do?
All notes taken using Mediabird Study Notes can be annotated, tagged and shared. This way, problems in understanding course material can be solved quickly and collaboratively. All this functionality brings the learning experience on your Moodle site to a whole new level – provided teachers and students take advantage of its pedagogical value.

C’mon, cut to the chase and show me what it looks like!
Below is a screen example of what it looks like on my Moodle 1.9.15+ production site. It opens as a pop-up window. You can drag it to anywhere on top of your current window.

Created by Fabian Gebert and Frank Wolf of Mediabird.net in Germany back in April 2009, it is in Fabian’s words,

“…an extension to existing LMS. Mediabird is a collaborative online notepad that allows small study groups to collaboratively work on shared notes at any time. 

It is not only possible to extend notes or edit them at the same time but in particular Mediabird allows users to annotate notes and ask questions about them. With that respect, Mediabird combines the ideas of a wiki and of a forum but is not as public as a wiki and relates questions to the notes rather than separating them as done in a forum. 

Let me give you an example: Anne, Catherine and David are working in a study group on Anatomy. The meet on a regular basis, say once a week. Last time, Anne summarized the meeting. Instead of sending it via email, she simply typed it in using Mediabird (copy and paste working as well). David and Catherine now can instantly see what Anne has done. That’s not very exciting so far, but: David and Catherine can now highlight parts of the document and insert questions. All three can then answer these questions or leave them for the next group session. In addition to that, they can extend or edit the notes Anne has taken.

Pedagogical values
To learn the different ways you can use Mediabird Study Notes in the classroom, read here!

For more information and installation instuctions, read here >>

This is a great collection of Moodle resources, videos and tips which might be used by anyone doing a training or learning Moodle on their own.

I especially liked the “Reasons for Use” section which helps to answer the “why Moodle” question that teachers often ask.  Rounding out the embedded videos are also over 30 print/video/how-to tutorials which can be accessed for your Moodle-learning adventures.

Our 3rd tip for putting some Jazz in your Moodle is: do not use Moodle as a document repository.

Perhaps one of the best and most frequent criticisms that students have of Moodle is that it’s just full of documents and homework to be downloaded and printed out.  It’s easiest to setup Moodle by just posting links of Word, PDF and PPT documents that were previously created for a course, and that’s how many courses start.  But the real value of Moodle is replacing some of the traditional classroom activities (group work, independent discovery, chats, study guide creation) with a Moodle-based solution and moving beyond links to resources and a forum.

I’m no expert in Moodle-based pedagogy, but what I can say from experience is that if you try out Moodle’s activities on your own you’ll discover new and really great ways to recreate some quality learning experiences online.

My favorite Moodle activities are (included are quick videos to showcase the setup/use of each activity),

1. Quiz module (whether graded or not, this is a great, efficient way to gauge comprehension and understanding).  A short quiz to recap a topic could provide a lot of information about student comprehension and where to focus next. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjmILn5KGZo
2. Glossary: allow users to add glossary entries as introductions to themselves or to create a class vocab list is a great way to utilize the glossary. Adding a random glossary entry block to the main page of your site is just another way to showcase student contributed work.  I love this module.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JziF3hiArkY
3. Wiki: When I first started using Moodle I thought that the wiki was lacking.  But in terms of simplicity, the Moodle wiki is both easy to use and user-friendly — as long as you take the time to figure it out.  If you’re looking to provide students a way to collaborate on a study guide, this is a great place to do it (even in groups!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Uva-PwgF_4
4. Lesson: A commenter once said that this was perhaps the most under-utilized Moodle activity.  I agree.  While daunting when you’re first introduced to the Lesson settings, once you master the flow it’s a great way to present information, assess, repeat.  Branches add a level of complexity but all in all it’s a great opportunity to use the HTML editor to incorporate audio or video (through embedding or Moodle’s native filters) so that students can “flip through” the lesson at their own pace, engage the content you provide them and meet the criteria for advancing that you set.  I’m not a fan of the PPT import (which I’ve never had success with) but if you’re savvy enough with some HTML you can create some nice looking lesson pages.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xjXelUZguw

What’s your favorite Moodle activity?  Share your usage tips in the comments.

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.

OUWiki is an alternative wiki activity for Moodle which is fully supported and updated by the Open University.  Instead of using the current wiki syntax/markup included in Moodle, the OUWiki uses a text editor for markup.  Note that the new wiki included in Moodle 2.0 is not based on OUWiki [link].

Download/more information: http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1015

Check out this great 3 minute video that shows how to use the OUWiki in production (provided by Hazel Owen at http://ictelt.blogspot.com):

Visit http://sites.google.com/site/goomoodleikiog/ for more information.

Enjoy both:

Goomoodleikiog in video.

My favorite slide is 19.  Mark discusses attributes of the Moodle blog and wiki.  At first glance, I was not a fan of either (full disclosure, I’m still not a huge fan of the Moodle blog at it’s current iteration).  But the wiki has grown to be one of my favorite features of Moodle in general.  It doesn’t do grades, but it does allow for extremely easy group based collaboration and rapid resource development (both huge benefits).

The wiki can be used in all sorts of fashions, but even with beginner Moodlers it’s simple enough to get a hang of.  Here’s a video I created that shows how to utilize a Moodle wiki for M4T (http://www.integrating-technology.com): http://www.screencast.com/t/okEN4PjuzV

Miguel already maintains several really great resources for Moodlers at his site (http://mguhlin.org) that have been highlighted here before (http://www.moodlemonthly.com/2009/miguels-moodle-habitudes/).  This new site will focus on building  a community and allowing for resources to grow–based on the interests and efforts of those editing the wiki and contributing to the email list.

Additionally, the site will host and produce what seems to be a monthly podcast focused on Moodlers from around the world.  Already confirmed are Mary Cooch and Tomaz Lasic.

According to the the wiki:

Wondering why focus on a wiki solution when Moodle has it all? Well, Moodles are, by their design, closed environments. It is hoped that combining the ease of use of a wiki with Moodle resources sharing and an email list, we will all be able to build on this project.

Please don’t hesitate to share your ideas about Moodle use in K-16 educational settings, as well as business, here.

The site already includes helpful resources and a repository of courses, videos, articles and more (site map).

Looking forward to contributing and seeing it grow.

Related:

• Sign up for the Moodle Mayhem group: http://www.mguhlin.org/2010/03/moodle-mayhem-email-group.html
• Visit the wiki: http://bit.ly/moodlemayhem

• Joe Deegan’s Blender Training Solutions – http://joedeegan.blogspot.com/2010/01/moodle-pros-and-cons.html
• Wiki – http://blenderwiki.wikispaces.com/Moodle+Pros+and+Cons

So far the benefits out number the drawbacks including:

• It’s open source
• great community
• customizable
• widely available
• sell content online
• it’s familiar
• it has loads of content available

Drawbacks:

• reporting is difficult
• user management
• takes a little tech savvy-ness
• closed (it’s not open for all users)