moodlefairy’s posterous

Mary Cooch on Why you should write for Packt.

Everyone thinks they have a “book inside them”, and what was so good about working for Packt was that they encouraged me, not just to write “my “ book, but to develop  and fine-tune it to make it readable and marketable in a way I would never have thought of myself. So not only did Packt bring out the book inside me;  they actually helped me  write a better version. I was, therefore, more than happy to talk about the process of writing for Packt in a recent interview for them which you can read here: Mary Cooch interview with Packt

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Adding an activity module to Moodle

Here are some instructions on how you can add an extra activity module to your Moodle. I finally downloaded the Quizport module, the successor to the HotPot module by Gordon Bateson. I have uploaded it to the moodlefairy moodle and intend to have a play/practice well in time for Moodle 2.0 S,o as I was installing it, I made some instructions which should fit any activity module(and indeed blocks too, if you use the "blocks" folder instead of the "mod" folder).

 
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What can Moodle do for you?

A video showing what Moodle does for us ... covers some of the standard resources and activities.

 
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Creating a Decision Making exercise using Moodle's Lesson Module

I made this tutorial showing how to make a role-play/decision making exercise with the Moodle Lesson Module. It takes you step by step through a very basic lesson - I don't know the "correct" way to make a Lesson - but this way is simple and it works :)

 
You can download (for the time being) the zipped course containing this lesson here http://www.moodlefairy.co.uk/file.php/1/DMElessonexample.zip (It's made in Moodle 1.9.3)
 
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Embed and Enlarge a movie in Moodle

Made this to help someone the other day- how to embed a wmv file into Moodle and then increase its size:

Tweeting at Meetings: Multi-tasking or Distracting?

When I was at university in the late 1970s, we had no iphones or laptops, and the best way of summarising lectures was to use a pen and notepad. If we were a tiny bit subversive, we might pass a note around to someone on another row but other than that there was no communication. This week, at the UK Moodle Moot ar Loughborough university, I was reminded of how different the scenario is now. No sooner had the presentations begun than people were on their laptops, tweeting the highlights, providing a précis to the world of the salient points made by the speaker. I did it myself, at each of the sessions I attended, and had it done to me when I spoke on "Making Moodle Fun for KS3". Instead of seeing eyes focused on me - or even on my projected presentation - fellow Moodlers were tapping away busily - and at first it seemed like extreme bad manners until I realised that -well - times have changed. Tweeting meetings is a service gratefully received by those who cannot be present in person. For my part, as I was physically present in one session, I was pleased to read what was going on in the ones I had to miss (an unfortunate feature of having so many useful but concurrent events - you can't be in 5 places at once!) I imagine for those who could not come to the Moot at all i,t would have made valuable reading. But it did occur to me: just how much of the talk can you actually take in if you are busy tweeting it ? Is this just the modern day version of old fashioned paper and pen note taking - in which case, you wouldn't miss much more than I would have done 30 years ago. However, there is another aspect that was absent from my student days: the fact that, alongside twitter, if you have your laptop out, it is so easy just to open another tab - and another - and another - and -while you are listening to the lecture with two ears, tweeting it on one tab, you could also be checking your email in another, marking online with another.... just how much of the speaker's vital information are you going to absorb then? And of course, should the presentation take a slightly less engrossing turn, there is nothing to stop you going on ebay or checking out holidays .... I confess that, during one session ( I will not say which one) I listened, tweeted, responded to my emails and updated our school Moodle front page. Does that mean I have become a practised and efficient multi-tasker? Have we all acquired that skill? Or does it mean I wasn't paying proper attention and would lose marks if you tested me after the event? Have we educated adults also developed this short attention span we accuse our students of - such that we have to swap from one task to another to another because it would be just too demanding for us to sit and listen, doing nothing else for an hour? I don't know the answer. I certainly believe I'm not the only one who behaves in this manner though!
 
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Moodle Fairy goes to the Moodle Moot UK 2009 - a Meeting of Many Moodlers

This was my first Moodle Moot - I  had attended the 2007 one virtually and had been disappointed there wasn’t one in 2008. It began for me rather inauspiciously as I arrived late on campus Monday night, in the dark, couldn’t find my room, couldn’t swipe my card when I did find it,  and then failed miserably to find anywhere to eat or anyone to talk to.

The following morning, Loughborough University looked considerably  friendlier in the sunshine;  I tagged along with the beautifully named Jago to locate the breakfast block where I finally recognised some familiar faces - Drew Buddie and the larger than life, equally big-hearted Julian Ridden, who commented there seems to be a whole Moodle family on twitter now - he and myself, with @moodledan @moodlegirl @moodleguy, to name but three. Martin Dougiamas gave the Keynote speech to start the proceedings, highlighting the progress of Moodle since its inception, giving us a taster of Moodle 2.0 and describing the ten steps he sees in a teacher’s progress in using Moodle.

After that we “broke out” into various sessions - mine on “Making Moodle Fun for Key Stage 3″ was one of the first, which meant I could then relax for the rest of the day. Thanks to Irene Krechowiecka for moral support and  thanks also  to Miles Berry and Russell Dyas (from the legendary Edugeek) who tweeted my talk which revolved around ways to engage younger children with Moodle and Open Web/Web 2.0 applications. I based it on the four C’s - Captivate/Create/Collaborate and - of course Chocolate and hope to make it available on the conference site eventually. We ended with some games including a  Moodle-based sword fighting game from Andrew Field’s Content Generator products. And I only mentioned my book once!

The problem from then on was which session to attend when there were always at least two, sometimes three, I would have liked to watch. Ian Lynch of the Learning Machine/INGOTS presented on Teaching Children to Become Community Members and I then indulged myself by going to Julian Ridden’s Theming Workshop  - a very clearly presented, step by step guide to making a Moodle theme. Over lunch I finally met in person  both  fellow teacher and moodle fan KristianStill,  and also developer Dan Poltawski, the Force behind the CLEO Moodles. I  talked language teaching with the original moodler himself Martin Dougiamas, talked books with two other Packt authors,  Ian Wild  and Alex Buchner from Synergy and was very flattered by nice compliments from John Mannion and Antonella Veccia. Thanks to Howard Miller of Glasgow University and E-Learn Design for showing me the way to  the food and drink, Tuesday night was considerably more successful than the previous evening!

Wednesday morning was a delight with the charmingly enthusiastic Martin Langhoff explaining how Moodle links in with the One Laptop Per Child initiative.   My next choice was a fascinating insight into Second Life and Moodle - via SLOODLE, presented by Daniel Livingstone - but- I’m still unsure…. Moodleman Julian Ridden gave a whistlestop tour of Moodle plugins, several of which I have tried and wholeheartedly recommend  but  a couple, dimdim and the podcasting module I have not, and am now inspired to test out on one of my Moodles or on Julian’s own free moodle playpen.

I hadn’t know what to expect this being my first Moot -  it exceeded my expectations in terms of ambiance, networking and inspirational ideas. The  organisation of it all by Sean Keogh of Pteppic was flawless - and it is entirely understandable he would like  finally to pass it on to someone else next year! If I had to make one comment it would be that there should be more for schools - high schools - primary schools - regular secondary schools. This is a sector increasingly using Moodle - all the more so as, in the UK, they turn away from their LEA/BSF imposed commercial VLE and go with Moodle. I was pleased to receive several compliments about the relevance of my presentation to “real” teachers  - let’s hope than in #mmuk10 we at the so-called “chalk face” will be there in force!

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A Marvellous Moodle Lady

As my life currently involves living and breathing Moodle, let alone working with it ,it seemed only apt that my chosen admired "woman in technology" is a fellow Moodler, though far more experienced and technologically expert than I. I have never met her - perhaps never shall as we live on opposite sides of the Atlantic - and ironically it was several months before I actually realised she was female -the name A. Wyatt not giving much away as to gender. Although her avatars do reflect a woman's taste! So I did some googling -as you do- and found out the A stood for Alicia - and that she is a Computer Science specialist with the laudable vaunt of having made the move out of business into education. So not just technology but education! I quote from an article I found online : “I have a strong service ethic,” she said. “I wanted to serve. I couldn’t see myself spending my life focused on generating profit.”Dr. Wyatt’s service has been to help students use technology to further their education. Moodle lends itself to both those aspects perfectly and I can well understand why she is as passionate about Moodle as I am. On Ada Lovelace day, I salute Dr A Wyatt.

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Moodle for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds

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Student bloggers

Where? And more importantly, why?
Tried the built-in Moodle blog attached to the profile - simple and basic but perhaps too basic and as it's attached to the profile it's not private to one course
Currently looking at the blogging facility within Mahara, which offers the ability to create several blogs for different viewers again within a safe environment
And now posterous! The feature that caught my attention student-wise is that you can make it private just to those you wish to see it, like youtube videos for instance. This would work well for young students whose blogs you didn't want visible to the world.
 
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