i see tea

TeachMeet Moodle presentation

Many thanks to the legendary Leon Cych (@eyebeams) without whom this would not be a video. PS there was no camel so it goes on longer than the usual 7 minutes.

The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.

Using technology in the classroom, using it for learning, is an endeavour that engages some teachers. Others do not find it particularly enlightening – they don’t get bitten.

I remember training a music teacher in the ways of Moodle over two years ago. Since then he has not used it for anything other than revision lists and other three line whip orders from above.

Two weeks ago he came to me with a dilemma. The new Music GCSE requires pupils to identify different sections of 12 pieces of music, most of them classical. A recent internal assessment revealed that his class of non-classical musicians were struggling with the basic identification: e.g. they had to listen to 10 second bursts of a Mozart Symphony and place in a certain section of the whole symphony (e.g. exposition subject 1). Not easy for an unfamiliar ear. So, he asked me what we could do to help them. His solution had been to write a booklet and put the music files on a CD.

This is how we rolled:

1. Split the audio into the ‘identification’ items using audacity.
2. Upload the audio files into a folder in a GCSE Music Moodle course.
3. Build multiple-choice quiz questions with the choices being each of the identification categories for that symphony.
4. Access the audio file URL. Course files >> right click audio file >> properties >> highlight >> copy.
5. Paste the URL into the question HTML box
6. Edit the HTML code to make the URL text white so it will not display
7. Edit the feedback text and set which answer is correct
8. Save question

This gave us a multiple choice question with the audio automatically embedded as a mini MP3 player and the seven answers underneath with radio buttons next to each possible answer.

The teacher then was able to create new questions:

1. Open (edit) the existing question
2. Edit the title
3. Change the link to the next audio file
4. Amend which answer was correct
5. Amend the feedback accordingly
6. Click ‘save as new question’.

He did this with no further support from me.

The result of all this was a Moodle course whereby he could easily create quizzes for the pupils to do every week, and repeat and repeat. Moodle keeps an eye on progress and even tells you which question each pupil got wrong. There is a progress bar (3^rd party block) so pupils can see if they have not done something. There is a quiz block that displays who is doing best on the quizzes. The teacher has also displayed the directories to the audio file folders enabling pupils to go and listen to the pieces without doing the quiz. Equally he created directories for the presentation files he had used with them in class.

The reason this was such a win for me is because the teacher already had the ICT skills to do this stuff. I showed him how to do everything once and he picked it up. His motivation was a genuine desire to help his pupils learn. We couldn’t come up with any other potent solutions.

The last thought that springs to mind is about Moodle itself. Could any other VLE do this? The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind. When a teacher needs something and technology provides the solution… hey presto!

Next up he wanted to be able to use music notation as the answers to multiple-choice questions. I showed to print screen, edit in a graphics application and upload to Moodle in a table. We were not able to display the text next to the radio buttons so we created a table with each image labelled. The pupil would then choose the correct label from the answers displayed.

One thing leads to another…

‘How many years can a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?

How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?

How many times can a man turn his head pretending he just doesn’t see?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind

The answer is blowing in the wind.’

Bob Dylan Blowin’ in the Wind 1963

e-safety

I started writing a Moodle course for e-safety this week.

I am authorised to deliver the CEOP materials but the course will be taught by another teacher as well so I cannot use these in the course. Instead I have gone for (lesson 1):

teach-ict.com e-safety quiz games

a social networking flash video

a Moodle quiz to identify who has accounts on various social networks

A Moodle assignment with a comprehension exercise on a cyber-bullying article from the BBC

I am now wondering where to go next. It is such a big field. The ThinkUKnow and CEOP reporting buttons are there, which we will have a look at, but what activities are best for the pupils to learn all about e-safety. I would rather it was less about the teacher and more about the pupil doing. Any ideas or resources?

42/365 My students get their own space in school moodle

40/365 Moodle front pages I like

I’m including these screenshots as part of my 365 photos. Yes, I know they are not photos but my iPhone shots of screens are rubbish…

Over the last few days I have been looking at a few front end Moodle features and thinking about what I would like for our school Moodle.

I have used some screenshots of sites made by @KristianStill, @GideonWilliams, @woodrowbound, @Andyfield and @LewisCarr. All great Moodlers.

Hamble College

Here I really like the Moodle Dock Kristian has been developing with @MoodleDan. The icons act as a wave as the mouse rolls over them selecting each area of the Moodle site as you click on them. Fun. Interactive. Saves screen space. Kristian will be sharing the code for the Moodle Dock on KristianStill.co.uk when it is ready.

I also really like the big profile pic at the top.

The menus are hover-over drop down as well, providing quick access to where you want to get to.

Moodle bar (at the bottom) developed by @LewisCarr gives quick access to Moodle features. Nice tool that stays on the screen but I would like to develop this a bit. Maybe links to key areas of the site or current hot topic you want to direct pupils towards? We don’t use the blogging tools on Moodle which are there (three icons) but links to calendar, search courses, MyMoodle page and the profile page are handy.

Perins

Big icons centre stage make this an appealling front end. Again focussed on the user getting to their destination quickly via the hover-over drop downs menus at the top or searching for something new.

Moodle Bar developed by @LewisCarr is here as well. You can see the message feature working here. If you use Moodle messages then this would be useful. But if Moodle messages double auto post to email account as well then you end up handling messages twice which is of course a waste of everybody’s time. If they don’t auto-post then you only see them when you log in to Moodle which isn’t so good for a school community. However, pupils tend not to use school email as part of their workflow, i.e. you cannot reliably email them and expect them to read the message. This is a big concern for all Moodle auto-posting from forums and the like. Maybe just a matter of training the pupils but I don’t see this working well until pupil mail is delivered (IMAPed) to smartphones and WiFi devices.

Neale-Wade

Big icons for subjects displayed here. Maybe too big? Requires a good scroll to see all of what is available. But does make for an easy-on-the-eye interface with key current links at the top.

Really like the ‘MAIN MENU’ block with the icons in.

Also really like the RSS feed of school news bottom right.

A lot of screen estate is taken up with the header – about a third on my monitor?

Lewis Carr MyMoodle Development

Moodle has a feature called MyMoodle that displays the ‘My Courses’ list for each user when they have logged in. This is an under-developed feature of Moodle and I don’t think any improvements are planned for Moodle2.0. Here Lewis is trying to develop the MyMoodle nito something useful to a user. I think this might have mileage, if not as what a user sees when they first log in, then as a clickable option on the front page.

All of these are interesting Moodle designs with different merits. My favourite things are:

1. Big profile pic on Hamble - pupils may feel a little more involved and facebook familiar.
2. The icon block with links to all services on Neale-Wade – make this a sticky block to appear in every (?) course and it become an embedded convenience for every Moodle user.
3. MoodleBar – I really like the idea of having something constantly on the screen that is unintrusive but helpful. I’d like to do this with an hot-topic link to get people to vote on the latest issue or similar.
4. Moodle Dock from Hamble – I like this approach because, in my experience, people like icons. If the width is fixed though, I might change how it is used. For example, Perins approach to six big icons that help you search/navigate and find what you’re looking for.
5. Lastly, the drop-down menus. I’ve used these before but had to abandon them because they didn’t work on all pages (course editing pages) but I think it’s time for a come back. Also, on the header, I think trimming the height by about a third off what we use now would be sensible.

As for the MyMoodle customisation, I can only hope that Lewis finds a desire to be driven into that altruistic open source coding project.

Your thoughts are welcome. Would love to hear about other examples with features you like.

22/365 Google Forms in a Moodle web page