Free Web 2.0 Moodle Course

The ICT Guy posted what seems to be a great introduction to web2.0 course on his blog and at Moodlecommons.org (check out some of the other courses offered a the commons too!).  The course was tested this last term with teachers at his school and did involve some weekly discussions which could be easily replicated depending on your group's needs.  

The course is well organized and would make for a great professional development exercise with any school's staff (especially if you wanted to introduce them to the Moodle Virtual Learning Environment at the same time!).  

Check out entire course at Moodlecommons.org or check out this cool introduction slide show which I found in the course.

Introduction to web 2.0

View more presentations from Darrel Branson. (tags: web2.0)

Download the entire zipped course from Moodlecommons or from here and restore it to your course to get started (here's a video to help with the restore process).  Thanks ICT Guy!

If you're interested in taking a Web2.0 course for PLUs or Act48 with a facilitator, check out Lisa Fernald's (Vermont educator) Web 2.0 course in our catalog.

[ICT Guy via Moodlerific]

Cool Moodles - elanguageschool.net/

I found a great post online that listed a bunch of Moodle sites that you might use for inspiration.  The author had been searching for example sites to share with his administration and was using Moodle.org's database of registered sites to find them.   

There are 1000s and 1000s of registered Moodles around the world, and there are a bunch of really cool listed on In Touch.  My personal favorite off the list is eLanguageSchool.net which offers free lessons in 10 languages (cool!).  The site is ad supported, but it's completely open to the web, so you (and your students) can click through the site, or you can link to a page from your Moodle classroom for each access.  Check out  the French site here.

Webinar w/ Laurie Korte, Moodle Magic Author (Feb 24 & 25)

This Tuesday and Wednesday (February 24th and 25th) Laurie Korte (Moodle Magician) will be presenting live at the ICE Conference in St. Charles, IL.  In the spirit of all that is web-based, Laurie is graciously streaming her presentations live on the web via Ustream.  The session is 

Moodle Magic: Make It Happen

We are constantly looking for advances that will help others process the essential concepts of our subject matter. This workshop is about helping you leverage the power of online learning to provide those experiences for your learners. Moodle is Magical.

Presenter(s): Laurie Korte, Northbrook Elementary School District 28

Grade Level: Elementary Education, Middle School/Junior High, High School,

Administration

Skill Level: All Levels (Assumes participant has general computer skills)

Target Audience: Technology Coordinators, Pre-Service Teachers, Special Education

Staff, Classroom Teachers

Computer Platform: Not-Platform Specific (content applies to all platforms)

Laurie will be presenting off and on all day both days (8:30 am - 3:30 pm) with a few breaks.  Any interested participants can tune into her Ustream channel which will be broadcasting all day.  

Free Webcam Chat at Ustream

Additionally you can register for free for her Moodle Magic classroom which will be a staging area for the session (you can check out the chat, sample modules and get more information about anything Moodle).  Click here to register for Moodle Magic.  

If you're interested in learning about Moodle, but cannot tune in on Tuesday or Wednesday consider signing up for MoodleMeet: a Ning (social network) dedicated to sharing information and ideas about Moodle.  Click here for more information.

Visit Moodle Meet

Goomoodleikiog (what?!)

Here's a cool video that came across Twitter.  It's made in the style of "in Plain English" and really illustrates the possibilities of wikis, Moodle, Google and blogs (Goomoodleikiog) in classrooms.  

I'm not advocating that any teacher new to technology jumps in to all of these tools as once, but there is order in the chaos of educational technology and these authors seem to have found it.  

Enjoy the video:

If you're interested, follow me on Twitter for more Moodle.

Real Life Moodle - Managing Multiple Classes from One Online Classroom

I find that some of the coolest and most valuable things you can do with Moodle are also some of the simplest.  This is how one teacher in Pittsburgh, Robert Ziegler, cut paper and saved loads of time by making a unified digital drop box.  

So here's the scenario, the teacher has four classes, each with about 30 students which are all taking the same Parametric Solid Model CAD class.  Thus, they all have the same basic structure (timeline and assignments).  He didn't necessarily want to create lots and lots of resources and activities in Moodle, he just wanted to outline the assignments so that students could turn their work in online using the "Advanced uploading of files" assignment.  So instead of getting a stack of 100s of sheets of papers or a hundred emails every time an assignment was due, he'd have a system online that would organize the work and files of each student by assignment, allow for easy grading and feedback and eliminate paper.    

Here's how he accomplished all of that using one single Moodle classroom.  

First, he created the classroom on GlobalClassroom and started creating the assignments.  There was no need to create forums or resources, just the assignments with appropriate titles that were descriptive enough that the students knew what they were supposed to be turning in.  Since the assignments were all going to be CAD files he had allow for multiple files (otherwise the students wouldn't be able to hand in all of their work in one place).

Here's a quick screen shot of what the course looks like using this approach:

Now, what to do about the different class sections?  Robert accomplished this by using the groups feature.  You can create groups using the "Group" link in the administration block of your course.  

Furthermore, you can automatically assign students to groups by putting a password on your groups which acts as an enrollment key (students will automatically be assigned to their group when they sign up depending on the group enrollment key they provide, check out the Moodleman's tutorial on how to do this).  

What this will do it several things, if there is interactivity in the class (like a forum) it can be configured only to let students of group A discuss topics with other students from A (handy).  Additionally, it will make your grade book a lot more tidy.  Finally, it decreases the amount of resources and activities you have to manage (saving your time and energy).  No need to manage four different course instances with the same content, just institute groups!

Pasting from Word - The Cause of Crazy Characters

If you're a student or teacher and are typing all of your text in MS Word and then copying and pasting into a forum, activity or resource, you may have noticed the creation of crazy characters and code in your post after you save.  It might look a little like this: 

Yuck.

Here's the cause.  Microsoft Word is a computer- (not web-) based application that has it's own formatting language.  When you type in Word that formatting is applied to your words, sentences and paragraphs.  When you copy the text you've typed you're also copying the formatting, which is not recognized by Moodle's text boxes.  This causes an extraneous text in the form of unreadable code to be pasted and displayed along side your thoughtful, pasted text.  

It's always smart to have a backup copy of your assignments, resources, homework; I am not saying you shouldn't type your responses using a word processor first (that is, until we're able to offer auto-saving--stay tuned for that).  Instead, here's a quick and easy way to clean up your pasted text.  

1. Save your work in whatever word processor you're using (don't worry about the formatting at all...yet)
2. Open a plain text editor.  On Windows a text document can be created by right clicking on your desktop and clicking "New" --> "Text Document"
3. Open the text document.  Then copy your text and paste it into the Text Document.  
4. Copy the text from the Text Document (which has been cleared of all formatting) and paste it into the applicable text box in Moodle.  
5. Apply formatting (breaks, bullets, font changes) as necessary using Moodle's built in text editor
6. Update your resource, activity, label, assignment.
This process will clear all that garbage text and make your text-based contributions to Moodle much more legible.

Hope that helps!

New Look, New Demo Videos

Check out our new look at Globalclassroom.us and click on any of the demo links to learn more about our classroom, school and business solutions.  

We think you'll enjoy some of the presentations!

Glossary Auto-Linking

Moodle allows for a lot of features to be set and controlled for an entire site.   One set of features lets a site administrator filter modules to allow auto-linking.  This is when a title or entry in/of a Activity or Resource is replicated somewhere else in the course.  Auto-linking will create a link automatically letting you and your students click on the link and go right to the Glossary, Database, Resource or Activity bearing the term as a title/entry.  

As of today, we've enabled Database, Resource, Activity and Glossary Auto-linking.  However, I understand that this can be problematic when you're creating quizzes and other assessments in Moodle and refer to the information.  You might not want students to be able to access the information in the middle of a test, so to turn it off, make sure your settings in the Glossary are set appropriately.  On the edit page of your glossary you can choose yes or no to enable or disable auto-linking (see picture).

 Any comments?  Post them here!

Moodle Jeopardy

If you're interested in testing your knowledge about Moodle, here's a cool site that I found and created an entire Jeopardy board focused on Moodle: Click here to go to the site.

Play by yourself or play with a team and keep track of your score.  If you don't mind please post your high score in the comments section of the blog.

Also, try out JeopardyLabs.com yourself, it's pretty easy to use and it's totally free (no ads either!).

We heart Pennsylvania

Since GlobalClassroom was created we've had a growing role in the State of PA. Some of our major partners (MIU4 and a few of the other Intermediate Units) are located in the state, our largest single district (Pittsburgh Public Schools) is in the southwest corner of the state and we recently posted a staff member in the area to help with training on the GlobalClassroom Moodle network.

This week we have several presentations highlighting Moodle on GlobalClassroom at PETE&C, the largest education technology conference in PA and we're hoping to have an increasing role in bringing a free elearning solution to teachers across the state (there are already 1000s of PA teachers creating classrooms on our Moodle network).

As we increase our professional development offerings in Act 48 and Act 45 we're hopeful that more and more teachers will also come to us to incorporate elearning into their classes using a blended approach. Here's a presentation we recently created to help explain the value GlobalClassroom can bring to PA (or any state).

Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

eLearning Learning

There's a great site available for anyone interested in getting more information about the world of eLearning.  eLearningLearning.com is a resource clearing house of blog posts from around the world focused on 

• elearning authoring tools, 
• wikis, 
• LMS (Moodle and others)
  
• pedagogy
• training
• blended eLearning 
• and much, much more.

I've been exploring the resources these last few days and have found a wealth of resources about Moodle specifically, some great quiz making resources, SCORM, and some other topics of interest to the Moodle community at GlobalClassroom. 

The layout of elearninglearning.com is especially easy to navigate.  I love being able to refine searches by keywords and see what's most recent.  

Overall a great resource that anyone interested in elearning (including blended classroom learning) should check out. 

Updated Orientation to Moodle on GlobalClassroom

Last week I spent a few days re-tooling our "how to teach and learn in Moodle (tutorial)" which focuses on what we think the most critical actions in Moodle are.  You can check out the tutorial, which is available free to all users to learn:

• navigating your home page
• how to edit your profile
• sending and checking messages with the inbox
• using discussion forums
• uploading a file to an assignment
• checking your grades.

Whether your a k12 student taking a course through our system or are a teacher using the system to facilitate your own courses, this is a resource you'll want to check out.  Each presentation is 1-3 minutes and has some clean screen shots to help you visualize.  

Please use the discussion forum to request additional tutorials.

Click here to enroll in the tutorial.

Webinar today 4pm EST

Short notice I know, but today at 4pm EST I'm hosting a webinar in Dimdim focused on Adding Resources.  

Specifically:

• Adding a Web Page
• Adding a Text Page
• Linking to a file or website
• Adding a Label
• Displaying a directory

Here's the link if you want to join:

http://webmeeting.dimdim.com:80/portal/JoinForm.action?confKey=joeythibault

Viewing only select groups in the Grade Book

If it weren't for support questions, I might run out of inspiration for this blog!  

This question came from a teacher who was using their course for course with multiple groups.  There were over 100 students enrolled, cycling in and out of this classroom every day, but there didn't seem to be a way to limit which students were displayed in the Grade Book.  The teacher had already configured the course to separate groups for each period, all roles were assigned, but no luck.  

Here's the solution: The group function in Moodle creates the possibility of managing several periods or classes all from within one classroom.  However, despite setting up a course to support groups by creating them in the Administration Block, there's a setting hidden that needs to be turned on in your course settings.  

When your first setting up your course shell, or when you're ready to start using the groups click the "Settings" link in the Administration Block and then un-hide the advanced options.  Near the bottom you'll find "Group Settings" which allow your course to be set up with groups and utilized as such.

There are three choices, the default "no groups", separate groups (which only lets group members see other group members) and visible groups (which lets groups "see" each other but not interact).  

It's important to note that you can control the group settings at the course level (which is a blanket approach) or for each individual activity.  In this case, by changing the group setting at the course level it will make a necessary change where you can access the grade book for each group separately instead of all at once.

When a course is set up with groups and either the separate or visible groups setting in the course settings, the grade book will allow each group to be viewed separately.  Access the grade book, click to "show groups"

As soon as groups are shown, you'll see a drop down to control which group is now visible in the grade book.