Easy Podcasting in Moodle

Here's a great post courtesy of my Google Reader.  The author uses Gabcast (a free podcasting tool that you can use to create podcasts with your telephone) and them embeds them into her Moodle classroom.  

If anyone has another easy way to podcast in Moodle, share it with us!

10+ Ideas: What to do with a Moodle classroom

At any presentation about Moodle the most common question people are thinking is "what can I do with Moodle in my classroom?"  It's not always an easy question to answer seeing that schools often have different restrictions on the types of activities their students are permitted to engage in and that teachers are at all different levels of technical savvy-ness and ability.  Here are a few links that help to inform your answer when teachers ask "what can I do with Moodle in my classroom?"

1. The first comes from Patrick Malley's blog about Moodle where he discusses 5 "game changing activities using Moodle": asynchronous discussions, tough quizzes for practice and mastery, peer review using the Workshop, writing your own text book using the wiki, use other means in Moodle to promote community/school events right in the classroom.
   
2. Use the classroom as a course materials repository and cut down on paper! (display directories of PPTs, text documents, PDFs and anything else you don't want to print/hand out)
   
3. Create a student drop box for assignments over vacation (use the upload a single file to collect student work--eliminate the "dog ate homework" excuse!)
   
4. Set up an automatically calculated pre-test for students to gauge their understanding of material
   
5. Post materials for parents and encourage their participation as well
   
6. Segment groups by using group enrollment keys (do this for number 5 to segment parents as well) as shown by the infamous (and invaluable) Moodleman
7. Use a discussion forum to post mp3s or short video clips that students have created (they embed automatically so that students can view/listen and respond with comments 
8. Use the glossary to create a collection of student profiles.
9. Use offline assignments in addition to Moodle-based assignments to have a free online grade book
10. And finally, use Moodle to build a staff development center, where teachers can come to discuss, learn, post videos and get hands-on experience with Moodle.  I think this is one of the best ways to make some headway with Moodle integration at your school.

Scales and the Moodle Gradebook

From the Moodleblog.org, a series of posts highlights how to use the grade book, the use of scales in the grade book for Moodle 1.8 (this is relatively the same for 1.9*, the biggest difference being the layout and the lack of it's availability on the main page course administration block), and managing students, assignments and points.

You'll find this useful if you want to change scales in Moodle to represent standards, GPA scales, or any other non-standard Moodle scale.  Standard Moodle scales currently include "Satisfactory" and "Separate and Connected Ways of Knowing".  Click here for the post and to check out the helpful video.  

Check out other great topics from Moodleblog.org.

*Note that GlobalClassroom currently runs 1.9 for our platform.  You can find/edit the scales by first accessing the grade book and then clicking the drop down to edit -> scales.  

Linking to a file or website vs. creating a hyperlink to the file

As always in Moodle there is more than one way to effectively embed a resource into your course.  If you've uploaded a media file into your course, you may have already noticed that a hyperlink (using the "insert web link" button) may cause your media file to automatically appear in your label or web page whether or not you wanted it to.  This is because our network is configured to auto-embed those files (swf, mov, wmv and mp3 specifically).  

If you didn't want this to occur, you can always "link to a file or web site" in order to have the file appear on it's own page, though the formatting may not be better.  

Here's an example to illustrate the difference between using a hyperlink and "link to a file or web site".  If I create a hyperlink in a label (after text is highlighted) I can choose browse and pick a file that I've already uploaded to my classroom. Once chosen, the mp3 will display on whatever description or label you created the hyperlink in

with Moodle's automatic player.  The picture right is an example of the resource added as a label in an weekly topic (available to students on the main page of the course). 

Now, this is slightly different that if you were to choose to add this as a traditional resource using the "link to file or web site", though the process is much the same.  Start on your main course page and choose "link to file or web site".  On the next page, add a title and description (optional) and then navigate to the file in your course settings (or on the WWW).  In this case though, instead of clicking on the file you want, click "Choose" as shown in the image below.

After you've chosen the right file, finish creating the resource and click "save".  This is what the final product will look like:

Note that the player is much larger.  Both ways work fine and both are handy for providing audio presentation, lecture recordings, podcasts or songs to your students to listen to at home, but it will depend on your experience and preference for other types of files.  Let us know which way you prefer for video files.  If you're interested in seeing this first hand here's a link to the course.  The audio files used are provided by librivox.org, a free audio book website.  

Classroom title Wordle

Below is a Wordle of all of the courses that have been created on GlobalClassroom's Moodle (around 1500 total, 300+ which are part of our course repository and catalogs).  As you can see there is a great variety of courses that have been created, encompassing nearly ever grade level and subject area.  

We even have several courses that were created in languages other than English (Greek and Russian).  

We're very happy to provide this service at no cost to our current users, it's a great foundation for where we plan to take GlobalClassroom in the coming years.

Great article about Moodle adoption - FL, USA

This is an article from the St. Petersburg Times in FL which highlights one school's successful implementation of Moodle into the foreign language curriculum.  A great resource for anyone trying to provide research and anecdotal evidence of the successful use of Moodle in schools.  

Additionally is says a lot about how the school is coping with policies that often are viewed as contradictory to the use of Moodle: bans on blogging, chat, messaging, journals, etc.  

Enjoy the read!

http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/article964604.ece

And thanks to the Michigan Moodle Users forum where I snagged this great piece.

Working a Custom Google Search into your Moodle

This tip comes via Laurie Korte (a Moodle Guru).  Google is the world's leading search engine and is hands-down the go to search tool for students doing research.  However, that's not to say that unleashing students to research is always the best use of class research time.  If you've ever thought, "why can't I give them a search box that only gives results for certain sites?" then this post is for you!  Below we'll guide you through the process to create your own search engine and then we'll show you how to embed it into your GlobalClassroom or Moodle classroom.

The service is provided freely through Google Accounts (so if you use Google Docs, Gmail or iGoogle you can simply click this link to get started (otherwise you'll need to register).  Once you're good to go, fill out the relevant fields for your search and choose whether or not you want all of the web to be included in results (but preference given to your sites' results) or just your sites.

Next paste any of the sites you want to provide your students as the base.  For example, I made a test Moogle search (a search engine powered by Google to provide the best Moodle info) and used the following sites:

• http://moodle.org
• http://docs.moodle.org
• http://theglobalclassroom.blogspot.com

As teachers you can choose to have your results show without Ads so be sure to check that box.  Finally, click next and give your search a try!

Now, to get it to show in your classroom we're going to use our embedding skills (which consist of copying and pasting).  Click finish and go directly to the custom search "control panel"

The control panel gives you all sorts of customizations and nifty tricks for collaborating, upgrading and making your custom search better.  Check them out when you have time (I especially like the fact that you can change the link, text and results color for your personal search engine).  Play around with the settings and when you're done, look for the link to "code"

Go to your Moodle classroom and add a label, web page or html block.  On the editing page, toggle your text editor to the plain text view using the <> button and paste your code.  Save your changes and voila!  You should see something like I've done below:

Thanks for the awesome tip, Laurie!

Try out my Moodle search:

Changing your Language in Moodle

A few users have contacted me about how to change their language settings in Moodle.  This is one of the individual changes you can control in order to affect your general Moodle experience.  You should note that any user created content won't be automatically translated, just the generic Moodle tags/text/lingo will be changed to match your language of choice.  If you'd like to experience Moodle in one of the languages we have enabled, or if you find that Moodle has thrown you a curve ball and you can't understand the language applied to your account here's how to change it:

1. After logging in, click on your profile picture to access your profile settings.  

2.  Look for the "Preferred Language" drop down, if it's in a different language it's always located just above your profile description text box

3.  Choose your language

4.  Click update.  

Languages on the GlobalClassroom Moodle

One of the cool things about Moodle is being able to have multiple languages installed so that users can see Moodle's default text translated automatically into their language of choice.  This can be a site, course or user specific setting, which makes if very flexible.  For example, your French course could force all users to see the block titles and weeks en francais automatically (while the students could still see their other courses in English).  

On GlobalClassroom we've enabled what we think are the most common languages, here's a list of the languages available to you:

• German
• English
• English (US)
• Spanish (Spain)
• Spanish (Mexico)
• Russian
• French
• Italian
• Polish
• Chinese
• Bosnian
• Filipino

Besides these that we've enabled there are dozen's of languages provided to Moodle installations, here's a link to Moodle's full language library: http://download.moodle.org/lang16/

If there is a specific language pack you'd like installed please let us know and we'll try our best to accomodate your suggestion.

Free course round up

There are a growing number of courses offered through GlobalClassroom where you can go to learn Moodle, connect or get course construction ideas.  

Here they are all in one place, enjoy!

1. Just on the "Free course network" there are quite a few: Scratch, Moodle Magic (by Laurie Korte), a Course Template, Moodle Training Videos, Digital Photography, Power Publishing with GIMP, Inscape and Scribus, Public Health Videos for the Classroom, Moodle as a Web Page and Internet Safety.
2. Building Courses in Moodle - highlighting the various resources, activities and blocks that can be used in your classroom
3. Teaching and Learning in Moodle - to learn how to access grades, assignments and basic Moodle functions
4. Global Classroom Administrator Training - learn how to manage your school's online network
5. Moodle Practice Quiz - 25 questions to test your Moodle knowledge
6. Collaboration Communication Center (Cube) - in the Global Collaboration eCampus there is a course where you can go to connect to teachers from around the country for collaboration ideas/opportunities (lead by Laurie Korte)

Try one out today to see what Moodle can do (note that each course is different, but all are made in Moodle!).

Being Mr. Thibault - Getting a more formal name within Moodle

For any teachers that self registered*, you can easily change your name to reflect a more formal "Ms.", "Mrs." or "Mr." in your classroom.  To do this all you need to do is change your first name.  On the GlobalClassroom network all users are referred to as First Name Last Name, so the first name is all you'll want to change.   

When at your home page, logged into GlobalClassroom, simply click on your name below your profile picture (there's also a little pencil icon).  

On the edit profile page, simply change your first name to the title you want to have, i.e. "Mr.", "Mrs." or even "Jedi Master":

Finally, click "update profile" at the bottom of the page.  Voila, now in all of your courses students will see your posts and comments as "Jedi Master Thibault" (or whatever you choose your display name to be!).  

*note, if your account was created in bulk upload by an administrator, you cannot edit your name (but we can do it for you, just contact support@globalclassroom.us for assistance).  

Cut the Clutter (then continue Moodling)

One of the things I don't like about Moodle is how complicated looks when you first start to use it.  Here's a screenshot of a course I just created on GlobalClassroom to demonstrate:

Note how there are three columns and six blocks available already (and I haven't even started adding resources!).  

Here's a simply way to simplify; whenever I create new courses I always ditch the blocks and topic areas I know I don't need.  I always keep the Administration Block (where I can turn editing on, add students, restore, etc.) but everything else might just be clutter.  

By default all courses created are given the following blocks, I've included descriptions so you can decide if you want to keep them, hide them or delete them (note that if you delete them you can always add them back with the block drop down menu).

1. People - also known as the participants block, this is a link directly to your class roster (if you want to cut down on IMing during class, this block is probably the source of much frustration)
2. Search Forums - gives you and your students a quick way to search the forums in your course (if you don't have any posts in your forums it's probably save to hide).
3. Administration Block - this is the brain of your course.  You'll come here to access grades, assign students to the course or to turn editing on or change the course dates/title.  Students cannot see this block ever -- so it's probably safe to leave it as is.
4. My Courses - this block lists all of the courses a student or teacher is in.  It's dynamic so each users sees information that only pertains to them.  
5. Latest News - this pulls information only from the News Forum which is default in all Moodle classrooms created.  If you're not using the News Forum, it's safe to say this is not as useful and is safe to delete.
6. Upcoming Events - this highlights any assignments or activities that are scheduled for the coming days.
7. Recent Activity - a log of all of the changes and activity that has happened in the course.  Whether it's students submitting information or new forum posts the information is listed here.  

Out of all of those blocks, the one I use the most is the Administration Block.  If I were to delete

 all of the other blocks your course looks a lot simpler and all I've done is delete the stuff I don't need.  See the image.

What is Moodle?

Here's a link to a 3 page article from the English Teaching Professional, an educational trade magazine, that focuses on explaining Moodle in simple terms.  I thought it was a great short article that demonstrates the abilities of Moodle in concrete terms new Moodlers.  In the words of the article:

Moodle’s biggest draw is that it allows you to organise a wide variety of resources and activities in one place along with learner tracking and individual learning pathways.

Here's a link to the full article hosted on the author's website.