Real Life Moodle - Using forums for peer evaluation

The following is a real-world example of the use of Moodle in a 6th grade classroom.  In this French class in IL, Julie Meierdirks created a forum for students groups to upload videos about Quebec City so that the class can participate in a peer evaluation exercise.  

Though the original assignment was completed using Keynote (Apple's presentation application), the final steps of the assignment, once the projects were produced, were completed within the Moodle classroom using a Standard Forum for General Use.  Once the projects were uploaded, students begin viewing them and commenting on other student projects.  The end result is an assignment that continued to engage students through collaborative technology and Moodle.

Below are the steps outlining how Madame Meierdirks accomplished the entire project.

1. First, she provided the students a scenario using a Web Page resource in the Moodle classroom which outlined the project: to produce a "multimedia ad campaign to showcase all that Québec has to offer for children of all ages".  
2. Next, she also provided a breakdown of the various stages of the projects so that students knew what to expect when and could be prepared for deadlines when working in their groups. 
3. She then created the peer evaluation Forum to be used by students to upload their projects, making sure that the attachment maximum was greater than the size file students would be producing.  As a precaution, Madame Meierdirks worked with a technology integration specialist to test the use of the forum and to optimize the final projects for viewing online (making sure that the final versions of the projects could be uploaded to Moodle and viewed without issue).  If you plan to do your own version of this, I highly recommend testing the upload feature on Forums to ensure that the quality and viewing area are as good as you want them to be.
4. Finally, students were shown how to access the Forum and they were prompted to a) upload their own projects and b) comment and rate the other student projects available.  

Here are a few reasons why this setup works well:  Students can upload their files from any location (as long as there is web access).  Additionally, students can view files attached to discussion forums right in the discussion window (see image which shows a test post).  This is caused by Moodle's media filter feature which is enabled on the GlobalClassroom site.  The media filter applies to the following file extensions and can be enabled on any Moodle site, pending the approval of your site administrator: wmv, mov, swf, and mp3 among others. 

At GlobalClassroom we employ this in our Podcasting course for teachers.  They create podcasts as mp3s outside of Moodle, but easily upload them to a Moodle forum in the class so that other students (and even the teacher) can listen, comment and rate.  I think it's a great use of the basic Moodle features and an easy assignment type to introduce into any level classroom.  

A special thanks to Julie Meierdirks and Laurie Korte for sharing their experience.