What's YOUR Moodle skill level?

I found a neat Moodle Skill Template on Scribd.com today which outlined various need-to-know Moodle skills (like navigation, creating content, updating content, adding pictures and HTML , etc.) and thought that it was an interesting idea.

It also could be a great resource for school-based technology integration specialists or eSchool administrators to better target professional development and Moodle training. I modified the scale to include/exclude a few details and to make it more applicable to learning Moodle on GlobalClassroom or another standard Moodle install (the template included some modules we do not provide or support). Basically, it's a form that you could copy and take (let me know and I'll share a copy with you through Google Docs - joseph.thibault@gmail.com).

I'm interested to know though, regardless of your role or previous usage, how our GlobalClassroom and blog audience population looks. This will help me target my future posts and build the training that we need. Additionally I'll answer any specific questions asked in a future post or directly by email if you let me know in the easy to fill out form.

Click here if you receive this via email: Moodle Skills Matrix

Related:

• 8 ways to grow your Moodle
• 10 ways to use Moodle (mguhlin.org)
• Moodle tutorials video course
• Constructing a course? Start with your Syllabus

Welcome 100,000th User!

On behalf of Global Classroom, Inc. I'd like to welcome our 100,000th registered user who joined us earlier today (9/24/09)!

We're proud to have made so much headway in the last year, providing the web's leading Moodle community/platform. We've given over 3200 courses to teachers, helped to facilitate courses in nearly every state (and a growing number of countries) and have doubled our daily visitors since the end of school last year.

Thanks for using GlobalClassroom as the foundation of your online classrooms. Great stuff soon to come!

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/tmab2003/

1st Week of Teaching and Learning Online (With MrsDurff) is Free!

Lisa Durff, also known on the web as MrsDuff, recently revised Teaching and Learning Online (the 1st installment of a 3 course series in online course development) and it's waiting for you to check it out.

The entire first week of the course is available as a free trial for you to checkout. If you like what you see, you can easily purchase the course and continue with the content. The next course starts officially on 10/1/09 and the course is offered with Act 48 Credits (certified in PA, course number 20040780).

The first week of the course includes the teacher introduction, a review of online resources, discussions and a week ending reflection assignment. All are available to you in the free trial. Additionally, this course is built to become increasingly collaborative as the weeks progress, urging you to team up with other students to complete assignments and to work as a group to create a database of great resources.

Check out the free trial here, as long as you're registered at GlobalClassroom.us you can click course checkout and enroll at no cost.

Here's a taste of the course, MrsDurff's course introduction video:

Or click here for the link if you're receiving this via email.

If you don't know Lisa Durff, she's one of my favorite web personalities. Lisa co-hosts It's Elementary at EdTechTalk.com, she blogs at http://durffsblog.blogspot.com/, she's presented at the K12 Online Conference (here's her presentation from '07) and she's personally invited me (on several occasions) to chat with educators and online learners world wide).

She's going to rock as an online facilitator.

Don't be Daunted: 8 Steps to Grow your Moodle

A political science professor once said this about Democracy to me: "It's the worst type of government, except for all of the others." One might say the same about Moodle. It gets a lot of guff for being a behemoth of code (over 500,000 lines) and for being a little extra complex (even though the standard install is pretty "bare bones" compared to the customized Moodles around the web).

For all of the criticisms, no other Learning Management System (LMS) or eLearning platform has enjoyed the rapid growth and press that Moodle has, thanks to it's huge user base, great online support forums and community at Moodle.org and it's widespread adoption by hosting companies and enterprise solution providers working to provide is freely to the world (including GlobalClassroom.us).

We're happy to offer it freely to teachers and students worldwide, and we're doing our best to support the community at large (and small). And if you're one of the critical or skeptics, or if you're a teacher just starting out and want to create your course then keep reading...

I ran across a great blog post that talks about the complexity of Moodle and how the author suggested teachers can get past the "Whoa". Check out the Changing Face of Education in Iowa blog (by Evan Abbey) for more information. The original post is a must read, here's a quote:

Moodle is not for the faint of heart. After showing it to teachers, I often hear something along the lines of "Whoa, that is a lot more complicated than a wiki!"

Yes, that's true.

But, you can also do much more with it. Not just in terms of individual tasks, like a discussion board and a database, but also big-picture outlook. You have several different starting points. And best of all, you can start and just get your feet wet, or when you are ready, you can always progress in your use. There are many acceptable levels of use that improve your classroom instruction... you don't have to become fully immersed in it to use it well. (from "Degrees of Moodle Use in the Classroom" by Evan Abbey)

Evan goes onto suggest several (8) steps that a teacher might use Moodle and not be overwhelmed with the advanced features or complex forms and fields required to create all at once. Wade into the Moodle pool by advancing through these steps (note that after each step the basic assignment/resource that might correspond to each is in parenthesis after; I've also linked to past blog posts where you might learn more, if applicable):

1. Repository of documents (link to a file or website/display a directory)
2. Links to all the websites you use in class (link to a file or website/create hyperlinks)
3. a Classroom calendar (utilize the classroom calendar and add events)
4. Digital Assignment Dropbox (upload a single file/advanced uploading of files/online text assignments)
5. Classroom discussion board (forums)
6. Enrichment (differentiate instruction using groups and groupings)
7. Supplement (quizzes/wikis/lessons)
8. Full online course (all of the above and more!)

Click here for the full post at Evan's blog. And discuss and comment on his great contribution there.

Image Attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hiddedevries/ / CC BY 2.0

Did you Know? 4.0

These are internet-famous videos about the rapidly changing information landscape. The newest installment just arrived (fall 09) and is embedded below:

Other versions of Did you Know? are available through the Xplane Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/xplanevisualthinking

Enjoy the thought provoking video!

Free Course - Presidential Address (Pre and Post Activities/Resources)

Yesterday President Obama addressed the nation's students from Arlington, Virginia. The 18 minute speech touched on various themes, including Obama's childhood and school days, his perseverance and his hope that students today will work their hardest so that the US is prepared for the world's future challenges.

I realize that the address was met with some criticism (what in politics is not?); but this momentous occasion (when a president addresses students directly) is a great opportunity to show how activities and resources can easily be worked into online classrooms as eLearning.

The speech (transcript here, video here) is available digitally as OER and all of the activities and resources created by the Department of Education and White House are also available. With the proposed activities and resources available, the live streaming of the address, and it's availability after through Youtube I thought it would constitute a great example of formatting digital content for the classroom: which is why I created a course to showcase how a teacher might have created a pre/post classroom to view, discuss, and reflect upon the Presidential Address to students nationwide.

The course is free and available as long as you've registered at GlobalClassroom.us (registration is free). Sign up, login and check it out. You can even utilize this course with your students (I'm happy to set up groups) so that we have one post-address destination on GC.

Or, download the backup file and restore it as your own.

For more information or to access the course click here.

Find Free Content for your Classroom (via WikiEducator.org)

Found a great clearing house of OER (open education resource) repositories at WikiEducator.org (found by browsing at the Open eLearning Content Observatory Services site, the premier OER site in Europe, Open Educational Resources @ Cathy Anderson's blog and Open Education News).

The page is aptly named as the "Exemplary Collection of Open eLearning Content Repositories" and you can find it here. Check out that page for such resources as the OERCommons, MIT OCW, Math World (which is a Wolfram Research site) and many more.

All told there are 60+ resources that will lead you to content you may freely integrate into your eLearning, digital classrooms or Moodles.

Let us know your favorite finds in the comments.

Related posts:

• Three open education sites for teachers
• OER Galore
• get some OER content