Troy Patterson

Educator, Thinker, Consultant

Category: Moodle (Page 6 of 8)

Moodle FlashCards

Moodle FlashCards

March 5, 2016 / / 6 Comments

I work with some truly wonderful people. Chris Kenniburg, Bob Harrison, Amy Gwizdz and Sean Williams are four of those terrific people. Together, they have developed a way to do FlashCards in Moodle.

Why FlashCards? Well, there are several sites that allow for FlashCard creation. However, these all take the user out of Moodle. FlashCards can be a terrific way to study vocabulary and other concepts. Even better, doing so in Moodle means that the students can create the FlashCards. (I’ve noticed that teachers tend to create flash cards for students to study. I believe that this is backward. Let the students create. That is where the learning really happens.)

So, Chris was the lynch pin in this project (he is after all, a particularly helpful moodler). He put together a few disparate pieces of information: a request for FlashCards, a post by the Moodle Fairy (AKA Mary Cooch) on postcards, and a post about CSS tips. Chris started running with the CSS. Unfortunately for us, the CSS “flips” the card on mouse roll over. This is not ideal for kids and flipcards. Fortunately, Chris was able to change the CSS so that the card “flips” on click, not roll over. We also wanted a way to select a random card instead of just moving along in a linear fashion. Enter Sean. Sean whips up some javascript so that we have a Random Card button that, well, displays a random entry instead of a sequentially ordered card. Perfect.

Off to the Tech Coaches for thoughts and feedback. Bob and Amy propose some changes. They provided several tweaks to make things look and work better. One of those suggestions was the addition of “Next” and “Previous” buttons. This allows the students to work through the cards in order.

There are many things about this that I really like. First off, it allows for the students to create the flashcards. I’m really, really big on the students creating the content. Since this is a database activity, the teacher could set it so that the students would have to create some FlashCards before they would see any of the already created ones. The teacher can also approve the FlashCards before the students see them. Since it is a database activity, the FlashCards are visible for the entire class (again, once approved if the teacher wants to review them first). The FlashCards can contain text, images and/or video. Text, images and videos are available for both the front and back sides of the cards.

We still have a few things to work out. We are working on Ratings. We’ve thought about tagging. However, we aren’t sure if tagging would just make things too complex and not really solve anything. Using FlashCards per unit, for example, might be better than creating a large FlashCard set that is tagged with the each unit.

The teacher ends up having significant control over the FlashCards. For example, we’ve removed the Card numbers from the side of the screen. The teacher can easily have those displayed if that is desired. (We removed them for several reasons. First of all, it clutters up the screen. Secondly, a number doesn’t really say what is on the card. Third, in large datasets, this could quickly be over) We certainly understand that the teacher may want those displayed. Thus, it is easy to remove by visiting the CSS template (where there are directions on adding the page (card) numbers back in).

What does this look like?

Here is the front of a card that just contains a picture.

6th Grade LA Part 1: FlashCards 2016-03-04 22-34-40

The buttons say:

  • Previous
  • Flip the Card
  • Random Card

Here is the back of another card:

6th Grade LA Part 1: FlashCards 2016-03-04 22-37-07

The buttons say:

  • Previous
  • Flip the Card
  • Random Card
  • Next Card

Notice that these are adaptive. Since the front card is the last one in list, there is no Next. However, the back card is one that isn’t the first or the last, so there is a Previous and Next available.

Here is an overview of FlashCards from Chris.

If you’d like a copy of the template, just contact me. I’ll share. (It has been submitted to Moodle, but hasn’t been approved yet.)

*UPDATE: See the Moodle Flashcard Update Post for, well, an update.

Here is an example file that you can install.

Reading the Test 2

Reading the Test 2

January 31, 2016 / / 0 Comments

In the last post, I shared an experience of teachers using Moodle to provide an audio version of a common assessment. Well, the results are in. The teachers are happy as the process was more efficient for them than reading the test to each student. They remarked that they were able to test several students at once (about 10). More importantly, they were able to assist students that needed help while the other students were listening to the test.

Of course, this led to a discussion of how we could make this even better. This test was a paper/pencil test with the questions in a fixed order. The answers were also in a fixed order. However, our teachers love the ability of Moodle to shuffle test questions and answers within those questions. So, is it possible to record the test question within the test question itself? Would there be a reason to limit audio to certain students? Or, would it be OK for all of the students to have access to the audio version of the test questions? What about shuffling the answers?

Moodle will allow for an audio version of the question to be included within the question itself. Answers work the same way. Thus, if a teacher wants to read the question and answers, Moodle will provide an avenue for this to happen. This means that teachers could shuffle the answers within the presentation of each question.

Thus, the question would work like this for a student. The student would see the question text and an audio player right under the question text. The answers would similarly have an audio player under the response. The screenshot below shows what this looks like.

Preview question: Can Moodle Read a Question? 2016-01-31 12-12-53 The students can click on the “play” button to hear each item. Since the teacher has recorded the question, it is a familiar voice. This is not speech recognition software at work. These are audio files recorded by the teacher.

The end result is fabulous news. Assessments can leverage the power of Moodle and provide accommodations to those students who need them (or all students). Providing an audio version of the assessment can meet the needs of a wide variety of students. The audio version can help students truly identify what they know. Additionally, some of the national tests are now including audio portions.

However, there are some negatives as well. There is not an audio recorded built in to Moodle. This increases the work flow since the audio is recorded in a different application and then linked. Also, some of the national tests don’t allow any accommodations. Thus, there will be the argument for “preparing” students.

Next up will be working on a system to allow students to read and record questions. I always liked to have the students write test questions. I would use some of the student created questions on the exam. Now, I’d like to think of a way to have the students write and record questions in a way that the teacher could accept the questions for use.

At the end of the day, this is a truly powerful opportunity. The ability to provide students with another means of accessing the questions to prove what they know is really cool. It helps students. It keeps the power of Moodle in place in terms of reporting, restrictions, reuse and more.

Reading the Test

Reading the Test

January 24, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Soon, our students will be taking some common assessments. The common assessment will be a paper/pencil test. (They’ll also be taking state-wide tests too, but that’s another story). Some of our students require special accommodations. One of the accommodations that is fairly frequent is to have the test read to the student. Traditionally, this has meant one of two situations:

  1. a parapro has been assigned to read the test to the student individually or
  2. a teacher (usually a special education teacher) has read the test to an individual or a small group of students.

Neither of these situations in particularly positive. The parapros work really hard. Sometimes though, they can be a little too helpful. Taking a highly trained special education teacher and having that specialists read the test, well, there are probably even better ways that their talents can be used. Either of these takes some of the control out of the classroom teachers hands. Either of those solutions come at a high cost as well.

I was approached with this situation. A teacher had planned on using Screencastify (which is a Chrome extension that allows for users to record video and audio) and recording the test. The plan was to put up a black screen and then read the test. The teacher was asking about how to share the recording.

We are also a Google Apps district, so the teacher knew that the recording could be shared via Google Drive. However, this lead to some problems. Once the link was shared, the teacher would lose control over the file. The file could be copied and disrupted. Not good.

However, Moodle allows for restrictions on users and files. The teacher already had a Moodle course set up. We set up a group for the students who need the test read (test listeners). Then we restricted a Topic (Tests Read) to just the group test listeners. This means that only the students who are part of the group test listeners will even see the Tests Read topic in the course. Within that topic, we created a page for this specific test. The teacher broke the test into sets of 10 questions. Using Audacity, a free audio recording program (but really, anything that could record audio and share the file would work), the test questions were read and recorded. Each set of questions was then uploaded onto that page within Moodle. Further restrictions on the time and date of the topic were instituted.

This allows the teacher to have control over the reading of the questions. The teacher only has to do it once. The reading can be used as many students as the teachers wants. The teacher has total control over which students have access to the files (remember, if the student signs into Moodle, that student MUST be a member of the group or they won’t even see the Topic). Once the students sign in, they can scrub through the test questions as they need to. The playing of the audio is handled directly in Moodle. For the students, it is very user friendly. For the teacher, the necessary control over access is present.

Moodle Glossary
Two examples of the Random Glossary Block.

Moodle Glossary

January 21, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Two examples of the Random Glossary Block.

Two examples of the Random Glossary Block.

Recently, I attended the Michigan Moodle Moot. This is an extremely well run conference. I also had an opportunity to present. My presentation was all about the Moodle Glossary. I find the Glossary to be a powerful tool. It is one of the under utilized activities.

The Glossary allows students to create a resource for the entire class. There are two broadly general types of activities in Moodle, those that are “private” between the student and teacher and those that are available for all the class to see. Assignments are generally private between a student and a teacher. The student completes the assignment and turns it in the teacher. The Glossary is very different in that the work that the students do is viewable by the entire class.

This is one of the great things about the Glossary module. It allows the class to create class resources. The Glossary Module allows the students to create a glossary of terms (pretty obvious). However, it can also be used in many more ways. The students can create a list of “dead words”, complete with synonyms, of words that shouldn’t be used in writing. Many teachers do this with a poster in the classroom. The problem with a poster in the classroom is that students don’t have access to it at home (or in another classroom). By creating a list of dead words as a Glossary, students have access whenever they are connected to the Internet (which is pretty much all the time for many students).

Another potential use of the Glossary module is to have the students pick topics for research, presentations or other in class assignments. Using the Glossary means that the students will be able to see what others have chosen. A teacher could further lock this down by providing the students with a list of potential topics and then having student enter their choice. By not allowing duplicate entries, the first student to type in the topic “wins” that topic. (There are other modules that would allow students to pick from a list as well). With the Glossary module, students could provide feedback to each other about the topic as well.

The Glossary module could also be used for students to write a little bit about themselves to share with the class. This can be a great way for the class to get to know each other. Simply have the student’s enter their name as the concept and then some facts about themselves as the definition. This can also be used in conjunction with two truths and a lie. Comments can be enabled so that other students could guess the lie.

There are a couple of things to know about the Glossary module that make it very powerful.

  • The teacher can set the Random Glossary block to display for the students. This will put a block on the student page that displays, well, a random glossary term.
  • The Glossary module can allow Comments. This makes it very easy for students to provide feedback to each other.
  • The Glossary module can also allow ratings. Students can rate an entry by stars, thus providing more feedback.
  • Glossary entries can either be allowed to be duplicated or not.
  • There are several different types of Glossary entries (including an FAQ styled entry list).
  • The Glossary module can be linked so that new entries automatically are defined throughout the course. This means that when a new entry is created, that word or concept will be identified. Students can then click on the word (phrase, concept) and a pop up will show them the definition.

Here are a few more ideas on using the Glossary:

  • Student List/Introduction
  • Presenter List
  • Teaching Strategies
  • Dictionary
  • Resource Collection
  • About Me
  • Rating Feedback
  • Vocabulary (Random Glossary Block)
  • Recipes
  • Grammar Tips
  • Student Created Definitions/
  • Student Debate Topics (with feedback)
  • Media Elements
  • Math concepts
  • Dead words
  • Restaurant activity (site a restaurant and why someone should go there) Community involvement
  • Ice breakers
    • You might be surprised that…
  • Review for a quiz
  • Students Write quiz questions (export / import into Quiz)- can be private or open
  • Historical Figures
  • Science: Human Anatomy
  • Acronyms
  • Thought of the day
  • Quote of the day
  • Simple Peer Assessment

This is just a quick overview of the Glossary module in Moodle. Hopefully, you will be inspired to check it out and use it in your classroom. If you are interested in more specific instructions on using the Glossary, please let me know.

Moodle Theme

Moodle Theme

October 25, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Although Moodle is extremely powerful, by default, it still looks caught up in the past. Sad, but true. The default lay out is a three column layout that is informative, but not pretty. Moodle leadership has recognized this design issue. As a result, they have reduced the number of default themes down to two (More and Clean). Both of these are responsive (which means that they adjust well to different size screens). They are a great improvement over what was in place just a little while ago. However, when it comes to being beautiful, well, they provide the user a lot of information.

Moodle Standard Theme

Moodle has encouraged the community to develop themes to improve the look of Moodle. This is one of the strengths of an open source community. Many themes are available with different looks. After all, what works and look beautiful to me, may be unworkable and ugly to you.

One truly popular theme is Essential. Here is the blurb from their webpage:

The idea of this theme is to make the site look as little like Moodle as possible. In this specific instance, it would be used on sites where Moodle would potentially serve as a company homepage rather than just a course list.

Cool things to know about the theme.

  • It attempts to load as many as possible icons from a font
  • Most of what you think are “graphics” are actually the Awesome font
  • The slider on the frontpage of the demo site is completely customisable through theme settings
  • I am really trying to push what Bootstrap Grids can do. As such the theme is fully responsive.
  • The footer is all custom Moodle regions. This means blocks can be added. The footer of the demo site is full of HTML blocks in this instance
  • The Theme uses Google web fonts to give it that extra bit of shazam!
  • Social Network icons appear at the top of the page dynamically based on theme settings
  • The entire colour scheme can be modified with theme settings
  • The homepage main area is just a label. The theme will ship with custom classes that you can set for tables and links to modify their formatting. No knowledge of code is needed as you can use the text editor to do this. Documentation will be provided outlining what the additional classes are.

Notice their intent: to make the site look as little like Moodle as possible. That is why many people have installed and used the Essential theme. I’ve used it as well. By default, Essential still uses a three column layout. One of the great features is the ability to reduce a Moodle instance down to two columns. I greatly prefer the two column layout.

Fortunately, I get to work with a really great guy. He has brought into the Moodle community a theme called evolve-D. This theme is based upon a two column layout.

A quick word about the layout. I’m a really, really big believer in a two column layout. I truly believe that it offers the best user experience. It allows the learner to focus on the content first and foremost. I also believe that the two columns need to be arranged with the content column first, and then the information/navigational/administrative block on the right. This lets the brain focus on content. Content should be the focus. Users should be able to get right to work and not have to think about structure or navigation.

The evolve-D theme is a great choice. It provides a customized homepage, a two column layout with blocks on the right, visual separation of Topics, and more. It even supports the Social Wall format – another project led by Chris Kenniburg.

evolve-D

Here you can see the nice visual separation of topics. Notice that the content (though there isn’t much content in this example) is front and center. The student knows exactly where to start. The navigation blocks are on the right and distinctively different. Fundamentally, the student knows where to start and what to do. The blocks on the side shouldn’t need to be used very often. The evolve-D theme focuses the student on the work to be done. The content is the first thing that the student will see. Thus, the focus is in the correct place. Note that all of the colors are customizable as well. The blocks on the right could have a different color scheme. The blocks could be more muted.

However, Chris isn’t satisfied. We’ve had some conversations and he is developing a new theme – Pioneer. This theme is still being developed. Here are the major points:

  • Use any Google Font with simple copy/paste. Pick a font for Headers and one for Body. Also control Font Size for body.
  • Custom Icon Navigation at top of each page for quickly getting around which includes the Custom Moodle Menu, Language Menu, and Course Search box.
  • Course Summary Images from Course Settings are now utilized by the theme Header in each course! Thank you Richard Oelmann. This allows teachers to customize the header image in their course by uploading a photo in Course Settings.
  • Socialwall Course Format Integration and customization. Allows you to control the look and feel of the Socialwall Course Format from the admin panel.
  • Block Titles have special styling brought to Moodle by Mary Evans in which the Block Title appears on the side of the block. This creates visual separation from the rest of the page and is a nice visual cue for the learner.
  • Single Page look and feel
  • Two Columns
  • Right aligned blocks

The Pioneer theme is clean, updated and graphically focused. It still presents the content as the most important feature. One of key features is the ability to add images as a header to the course. Images matter. Making Moodle even more visually appealing ultimately helps the learner engage with the site.

Moodle is still extremely powerful. Chris is helping bring some beauty to that power.

Moodle Moot

August 16, 2015 / / 0 Comments

We recently held a Moodle Moot for work. We’ve structured the Moot as a two day affair. The first day is structured as an overview. We do a ton of instruction. There is a lot in Moodle to talk about. We cover Resources vs Activities. We share examples of a few specific types. We’ve chosen the most popular/used modules. The second is a “hands-on” day.

The first day is overwhelming. We’ve tried to make sure that each of the participants is creating as well as listening on day one. However, it is a lot to absorb. Sometimes things just aren’t running as fast as we’d like. For example, sometimes the network connection slows down. This means that the participants are a screen or two behind. This can lead to confusion. So we cover material to give everyone a really good overview of what Moodle can do.

The second day is completely for implementation. There are four experts in the room who are available to help with any and all questions. All of the participants create resources and/or activities that align to what they are doing in the classroom (or will be in the Fall). The four experts circulate and help guide the participants through choosing and creating.

The Moodle Moot is a powerful experience. We recognize that we are trying to take weeks or months of learning and condense it down to a couple of days. We are fully aware that these two days won’t actually replace the learning that takes place over months; rather, our goal is to provide an intensive experience to hook the participants on what they can do. The good news is that we will be following up with all of the participants throughout the school year.

Everyone who was at day one showed up for day two. That alone is a positive. The feedback was similarly positive. The real proof though comes once the school year starts.

We tried to make the Moodle Moot fun and useful. We had ICE CREAM, because everything is better with ICE CREAM, and some good food. However, the focus of the Moodle Moot was good old fashioned learning.

I’m proud of everyone who showed up and worked hard. I’m proud of the Moodle experts who provided great guidance in implementation. Now, let’s get on with the school year.

Moodle Offers Cloud hosting 

July 16, 2015 / / 0 Comments

I love that Moodle allows users to install and customize the program as needed. I enjoy fiddling with settings and installing the software. I like the feeling of successfully meeting those challenges. Not all teachers do though.  I certainly understand that. 

Moodle now offers free cloud hosting for all teachers. Moodle will take care of the installation and updates. They will provide free use for teacher’s individual classes ( up to 50 users). 

Key features include:

  • Free hosting (supported by advertising)
  • Instant signup via mobile phone
  • ull version of Moodle with minimal limitations
  • Up to 200 MB disk space 
  • Unlimited courses, unlimited database size
  • Integrated with BigBlueButton for free videoconferencing (supports up to 6 users with full video, audio, whiteboarding and presentation capabilities)
  • Ability to personalize and customize a Moodle site
  • Available in more than 100 languages with multilingual capability
  • Full support enabled for the Moodle Mobile app.

This is terrific news for teachers wanting to get started with blended learning but lacking support or the interest in the technology. 

Find out more or sign up for your free account over at the Moodle Cloud site. 

Moodle Thoughts

Moodle Thoughts

May 31, 2015 / / 0 Comments

One of the biggest roadblocks to using Moodle is the overwhelming number of options that are available. While this power is great, it is also a detriment to getting teachers to use Moodle in real ways. Due largely to this situation, Mr. Chris Kenniburg was involved in developing the SocialWall format. This attacks the usability issue by making Moodle by making Moodle function much more like a social networking site. This means that teachers are more familiar with how to use the tools and site. However, it isn’t as pretty as other sites. Pretty counts.

I’ve worked with a variety of web sites. One of things that I think would be easier for teachers, would be if there were a couple of set options that could easily be invoked. Then, instead of being presented with a ton of options, the teacher could fill out just the required fields. This would have several advantages:

  1. It would not be a major rewrite of Moodle or a theme.
  2. The full power of Moodle would still be available.
  3. This would greatly streamline the process of creating new assignments.
  4. The cognitive load would be greatly reduced.
  5. Teachers could be “walked through” the important aspects of creating an assignment without the distractions of possibilities.
  6. A much lower learning experience.

We headed over to the white board to draw up what this would look like. We quickly came up with the following as model:

We needed to have some additional conversations though. Which activities/resources should be link to? After some good conversation, we came up with the following:

  1. Assignment
  2. Forum
  3. Quiz
  4. URL/Link
  5. Page

Why those five? We considered several options, but wanted to make sure that we chose activities/resources that were part of the core and the most popular uses for teachers.

  • Assignment seemed an obvious choice. However, the big difference with presenting the Assignment would be in just providing the Title, Description, and Due date. This will take all of the other defaults. That means that this would be an on-line submission (which is what our installation defaults to – yours may default to File submission), Feedback Comments would be available, the Assignment would be worth 100 points (again, this is our default), and the students could manually mark the assignment as completed. All of these settings could be changed later.
  • Forum also seemed obvious as this is a way to get students to write. Forums allow students to write in real world ways. Again, instead of presenting every option, the teacher would just need to a forum name. Thus, the Forum becomes entering a name and clicking “Save”.
  • Quiz was a lot more discussion. Quizzes are really powerful, but also confusing for teachers. Teachers don’t usually think in terms of creating a test question bank and then pulling those questions into a quiz. Generally, teachers want to just create the questions. This wouldn’t complete automate that process, but it would certainly streamline the process of creating the first part of the quiz. The teacher would just enter a name for the Quiz, and then click on “Save and Display” to go to where they can create Quiz questions. We may see if we can add in additional prompts to write questions in the future. *URL/Link was another easy one. Many teachers start by creating several links to other sites. This would make is so that the teacher just enters the Name and the External URL. That’s it. No other options for distraction.
  • Page fell into the same category as URL/Link. We just felt that teachers could easily incorporate this into their lessons.

So those are the five that we picked. The underlying concept is to streamline the entry to only those fields that are absolutely required. By removing all of the options that are available, the hope is to make using Moodle easier, quicker and more efficient.

This would also leave the current editing options and Add Activities/Resources buttons available. That way, teachers can always go back and adjust things as they need to. When teachers are ready for more control or when they wonder if Moodle can do that, the step is pretty small.

One of the things that I like about this potential development, is that I think that will make entering information faster even if one is comfortable with Moodle. I think that I would use these quick buttons to get things done quickly.

 

Here are some further notes:

Creating a Fillable “Worksheet” in Moodle

May 3, 2015 / / 0 Comments

I was asked to create a fillable “worksheet” in Moodle by a wonderful teacher. I am frequently asked how to do things in Moodle, but I always try to have teachers consider what they want to accomplish rather than how. My intent is to keep the focus on learning and good instructional design instead of just the technology. This is hopefully a short term issue and once educators become comfortable with what the technology can do, they can start to design lessons that move into new educational strategy territory.

I had the teacher create the assignment as usual. Since this is a teacher that is working with students who struggle, graphics and visuals are important. Thus, the teacher created a chart for the students to complete. The chart asks students to identify direct and indirect characterizations from a story. The chart looks like this:

Character’s Trait Evidence or quote from the story Type of Charactization
lazy …not much enthusiasm for steady work direct
__ __ _
__ __ _
__ __ _
__ __ _

Thus, the fillable worksheet has several lines that the student needs to fill in. In this case, the student identifies a trait from a specific character, the evidence that reveals that trait, and whether the author has used direct or indirect characterization.

So how to create this in Moodle? The first question that I asked the teacher was whether this was a graded activity or not. This is important, because I can see two different ways of accomplishing this task. The teacher responded that this was a graded activity. Since this is a graded activity, it is time to break out a quiz. Why a quiz? Well, quiz allows for response templates. The means that we can put all of the directions in the quiz question, including the definitions of Direct Characterization and Indirect Characterization and then add in the chart (this is actually a table) into the Response template section. The students will have chart to fill.

What if no grade was needed?

If no grade was going to be needed, I probably would’ve suggested the Questionnaire Module. This is very easy to set up and would provide overall charting of responses. In fact, since the teacher has a variety of activities in the course, some of them are questionnaires and some are quizzes using the Response template. It all depends on how the question is being used.

Questionnaire:

  • Does the teacher want to do a quick check for understanding?
  • Does the teacher want an overall look at how the class is responding?
  • Does the teacher want to include a wide variety of questions?
  • Is the intent to gather group data?

Quiz:

  • Does the teacher want individual student accountability?
  • Does the teacher want an individual grade?
  • Does the teacher want to include a wide variety of question types?

In the end, we were able to recreate what the teacher wanted. This keeps the development of the course instructionally sound while increasing the skills of the teacher.

Moodle vs Classroom Update

April 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments

The last post pointed out some of the differences between Moodle and Google Classroom. Of course, Google being Google, they updated Google Classroom the next day.

The update addressed a couple of major concerns: multiple teachers and the ability to delay posts (create drafts). These are two very welcome upgrades. It demonstrates one of the advantages of Google’s iteration scheme. A weakness was discovered and addressed. Much joy in Mudville.

On the flip side, note that the teacher that is invited to edit the classroom has all of the same rights as the originating teacher – with the exception that the invited teacher can’t delete the course. In Moodle, a teacher has much more fine grain permissions that can be granted. The originating teacher in Moodle can give the co-teacher the right to just grade but not to change the content of the course OR to have the same rights OR just about anything that the teacher wants. Of course, this means planning and training. This is a great feature in the real world. Teachers who work together sometimes have different ways of accomplishing goals. Sometimes they have different understandings. A teacher knowing for sure that their content is safe and can’t be changed can be very reassuring. Also, this helps prevent accidental changes. I know many co-teachers who are working with two or three lead teachers. Keeping things organized is paramount. Accidental mistakes can happen.

Moodle contains many ways to prepare content ahead of time and schedule the delivery of content, activities and resources. Theoretically, one could schedule an entire year ahead of time (bad pedagogy for a classroom that meets physically though).

Also note that students can move/delete files from the Classroom folder. This breaks the connection between those files and Classroom. Hopefully, Google will resolve this issue soon as well.

The recent updates are a nice snapshot of the advantage and disadvantage of Google Classroom. It is still regularly updated. The updates address needs that users have. However, Google is not coming at this from a true educational perspective. They are still not addressing the underlying issues of pedagogy. They are focused on the S in the SAMR model.

Moodle is also frequently updated (every six months an updated version is released). Moodle also addresses teacher concerns. Moodle is also built on the concepts of good educational practice. However, Moodle is also more complex and needs more of a training commitment.

Neither tool is the right tool. Both have their place. Thankfully, teachers have options.

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