Troy Patterson

Educator, Thinker, Consultant

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Updating “Saying Hi”

September 18, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I’ve written before about “Saying Hi” in Moodle. One of the ways for students to say “Hi” is to use the Glossary module. This is an easy and effective way to get students using Moodle. More importantly, it is an easy way for them to write about themselves.

One of the participants of a Moodle training that I led took this concept to the next level. He added having students record a message. Since he works in middle school, the kids just said, literally, “Hello”. The kids had a blast with it. They got create with pronouncing hello in a variety of cadences and voices.

Well, I’m using this the next time I assign the Glossary module. With Moodle 3.5, the ability to record audio and video is built in. So I’ll have participants (whether they are students or adults), include a short audio or video as part of their introduction.

I’m really excited about the built-in ability for students to record audio and video easily. That is one powerful tool.

Accommodations in Moodle

September 3, 2018 / / 0 Comments

One of the Moodle Mooters (those who attended a Moodle Moot training session) and good friend shared how he is making some accommodations in Moodle. Not only that, but he shared this with some Special Education teachers who were blown away.

He has created a vocabulary quiz using Drag and Drop text. The quiz has the vocabulary words listed with Drag and Drop text options available for the students. There are ten or more words. He showed this during a training. The teachers thought that this was useful. However, he did next, well……

Next he duplicated the quiz . Then he went into Editing the quiz. He renamed the quiz by appending “Beta” to the quiz name. He grouped the responses by pairs (so that the responses and vocabulary words are grouped by color – i.e. there are two blue vocabulary words and two definitions which are blue, two tan vocabulary words and two tan definitions, etc.). (By the way, the Special Education teacher that he will be working with announced that he should “pair” those answers prior to him showing them paired. Looks like a good start to working together).  He gave the students unlimited attempts. He added a restriction to limit which group would see this quiz.

All in all, it took a about one minute to accommodate the quiz. He now has two quizzes in his course. Students will only ever see the quiz that is appropriate for them. On one quiz, the students have one opportunity to take the quiz. They have ten definitions to match up to ten vocabulary words. They can drag one definition as many times as they want. In the second quiz, the students have some guidance to assist with which definitions go with which vocabulary words. Once they move a definition, it moves into that one spot, without being “left behind”. The second quiz can be taken as many times as necessary.

Again, the students will only ever see the quiz that is appropriate for them. (Yes, they will eventually figure out that there are two quizzes – kids talk, but they will only ever see the one that is appropriate for them).

Oh, and both quizzes will be automatically graded AND entered in his official school gradebook without him typing them in.

The Special Education teachers wanted to know how many teachers were using this magic. They want to be able to create accommodated versions of quizzes and assignments this easily.

If you’d like to know exactly how to do this, please let me know.

Calling Bull

August 29, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been listening to the wonderful Calling Bull (well, actually, they don’t use “bull” but the whole word), course. I’ve had it on in the background as I work. There is a part of me that thinks that this should be required for everyone. It is a great reminder of logical fallacy and the importance of thinking clearly. 

What is Calling Bull?  Well, let’s take a look. 

Our learning objectives are straightforward. After taking the course, you should be able to:

• Remain vigilant for bull contaminating your information diet.
• Recognize said bull whenever and wherever you encounter it.
• Figure out for yourself precisely why a particular bit of bull is bull.
• Provide a statistician or fellow scientist with a technical explanation of why a claim is bull.
• Provide your crystals-and-homeopathy aunt or casually racist uncle with an accessible and persuasive explanation of why a claim is bull.

We will be astonished if these skills do not turn out to be among the most useful and most broadly applicable of those that you acquire during the course of your college education.

Now, the structure of the course is a pretty traditional college lecture class. I would love to see this reimagined as something a bit more entertaining. (To be clear, I’m enjoying the heck out of this just the way that it is. I just think that another delivery method would help with those less likely to seek out this kind of information). 

The course features two presenters who do a good job of handing off the lecture back and forth. There are lots of good, realistic, relatable examples. They discuss why identifying and calling BS is so important and crucial. 

I know a few people who regularly share BS stories “just in case it is true”. I’ve tried referring them to Snopes, but still they persist. These are good people who aren’t dumb. They just don’t realize how dangerous sharing some of these things are. 

Please check out the wonderful Calling Bull site. It is good exercise for those thought muscles that we all need to exercise once in a while. 

Moodle, H5P and Sorting Activities

Moodle, H5P and Sorting Activities

August 19, 2018 / / 1 Comment

I was asked to replicate a sorting activity. See, as an instructional practice, we have a couple of groups of things that we have educators sort. We have twenty slips of paper that are cut out. We ask the participants to sort the items into two columns. Usually, we have participants work in teams. 

The activity works well. They can sort and discuss and resort. What it doesn’t do well is scale. It’s fine that we have six envelopes with twenty slips of paper each. However, we are being called on to complete this exercise with a very large group. This would call for thirty envelopes. That’s a lot of copy/cut and organize. Plus, this activity would then be rolled out to their staffs. 

Instead of making all those copies, cutting up all those slips of paper and stuffing them into envelopes, I decided to move this to a digital activity. But how? Certainly we could’ve used Google Drawing and shared the document. That would work, but the user experience isn’t wonderful. 

Rather, I turned to Moodle and H5P (two pieces of open source software that can really help with learning). H5P activities can occur right within Moodle. I quickly created a Drag and Drop activity using H5P within a Moodle course. Now, the can easily be replicated. A quick back-up and restore, and done. 

For the participants, this is great as well. They have a labeled column on either side of the screen (Column A & Column B). In the middle are 20 statements which they can drag to either column. They just need to put the statement anywhere in the column. Once they are done and agree, they can click the “How did we do?” button. This will show them which answers are correct (appear shaded green) and which one are incorrect (appear shaded red). Then they can try again if they wish. (The statements will all return to their original position in the middle, so no mindless moving of the statements). 

A visual example of the sorting activity (this one is just a generic example). 

This same process could be used with a chart as well. I’ve shared this process with a social studies teacher who is going to have the students classify different time periods in terms of different criteria. (Basically, the teacher has a table with twelve different boxes. Each box has one to four statements that occur with that box. 


New ColoniesMiddle ColoniesLater Colonies
EconomyStatementStatement
Statement
Statement
Statement
Political ActivitiesStatement
Statement
StatementStatement
Social ActivitiesStatement
Statement
Statement
Statement
Statement
Statement
TechnologyStatement
Statement
Statement
Statement
Statement
Statement

The statements will be available on the screen below the table. Students can then drag the statements into the correct box. 

This process can also be done with GapFill. However, in GapFill, the student must put the statements exactly where the teacher had them (so, not only in the right box, but the right line of the right box). With H5P, we can designate anywhere in the box. 

I think that this is a great enhancement. It allows teachers to replicate and scale a useful teaching strategy. Not to mention that the assignment can easily be differentiated for students with different needs. 

ISTE 2018 & Open Source

ISTE 2018 & Open Source

August 18, 2018 / / 1 Comment

I’ve been ruminating about ISTE 2018. I’ve held off on posting this for a while. Now it’s time. 

When I went to ISTE 2018 this year, I had a couple of goals. One goal was to look at Sketchnoting (which I’ve written about).  Another goal that I had was to check out some of the Open Source opportunities that exist in education. 

Now, I know that ISTE is a conference largely driven by the Sponsors and Vendors. We need sponsors and vendors in education. Districts can’t afford to only be open source. Many districts don’t have the technical background to implement very much open source at all. That is something that I was hoping that ISTE 2018 would be able to help address. 

Keep in mind the Vision of ISTE:

Our Vision

ISTE’s vision is that all educators are empowered to harness technology to accelerate innovation in teaching and learning, and inspire learners to reach their greatest potential.

For me, empowering all educators involves open source options as well as the paid, proprietary ones. 

Now I was able to attend one (yes, one) session that was an open source session. The session was quite good with lots of resources. However, I would like to see more. Much more. 

A Proposal

Open Source

I would like to see a track or least notation of open source presentations. I little bit of support and acknowledgement could go a long way. There are some open source alternatives that could help empower all educators and students. 

This would not be the end of the Sponsors and Vendors. They would still have a role. They would probably have an even bigger role. Vendors could tout how much better and easier to use their product is. They could solve issues and provide opportunities that open source just wouldn’t. 

There is currently a push to incorporate OER (Open Education Resources) into curriculum. This has taken a long time. It still has a long way to go. But, at least that push has started. 

ISTE has a lot of educational leaders attending. (This is always interesting to me. I always expect more teachers to be in attendance. There seem to be a lot of Technology Directors/Coordinators and Technology Coaches in attendance). These groups should be leading the way for knowing our options. Not just the “shiny” ones, but all of them. 

I would like to throw down the gauntlet to the wonderful ISTE leaders to use their influence and power to make open source truly part of the educational process. This will truly help EMPOWER all educators. 

Grading “Real World” assignments

August 8, 2018 / / 0 Comments

stokpic / Pixabay

Blended learning is becoming more and more popular. I’m a proponent of using Moodle for blended learning because it is open source, has a long history of development, and is extremely flexible.

One aspect of blended learning is real world assignments. Not everything can, or should be, digital. However, in a blended learning world, tracking those real world assignments should be cohesive with online material.

I’ve written about grading student speeches (a definite real world application) using Moodle and rubrics. That still works. Since I published that four years ago, a quick overview is in order. In Moodle, set up an assignment with nothing selected for Submissions. Select (or create) your rubric. As students give their speech, complete the rubric. Students receive truly timely feedback. The teacher is done with grading by the time the students are sitting in their seats (no more nights of translating notes, transferring grades, etc.)

However, I’d like to take this even further. I’d like to have the students acknowledge that they have received the feedback. Plus, I’d like them to be able to respond. Finally, I’d like to have a “pretty” printable version (sometimes we still need to print things).

The Assignment module hack almost accomplishes those things. The rubric works great. However, students can’t respond, nor can the acknowledge receipt of the feedback. (I’m really considering something like the way a student can acknowledge that they didn’t cheat when turning something in). Printing is UGLY.

Using the Assignment module really is a hack. See the perspective of Assignment is that the students are turning something in. What I’m proposing (requesting?, considering, dreaming of), is something that is from a teacher to student feedback perspective. The student is the really the genesis, the teacher is starting the process. This is more of a coaching perspective. The coach (teacher) gives feedback on the performance of the student. The student takes that feedback, makes some corrections and continues. Ideally, the teacher could provide updated feedback.

*This conversation was begun over in the Moodle Forums. If you are a member, or willing to create a free account, please head over there and add your thoughts.

The posting is duplicated below:

Grading “Real World” assignments

I’m looking for a way to grade real world assignments. Not just grade though, but have a documentable copy of that grading.

For one example, let’s say that the students are presenting on a certain topic. (I do see other uses, such as Project-based learning, creating models, cooking an example dish, building a cardboard boat, etc).

Current situation:

We use the Assignment Module. The student doesn’t have to submit anything. We have a rubric set up that the teacher then uses to grade and provide feedback. Some of the teachers will “forget” to mark the rubric “Released” to student. We then click on the rubric and select “Print”. The rubric and Feedback is printed and then signed by the student.

Ideal situation

The teacher pulls up a Rubric. The teacher has the list of students to pick from. The teacher uses the Rubric to grade appropriately. The teacher also provides feedback. A copy of the results are released to the student. The student acknowledges the receipt of the feedback. (This could be similar to the submission statement feature but at the end acknowledging receipt). There is a report or a print button to allow the teacher to print the rubric, the feedback and the student’s acknowledgement.

ISTE 2018

August 8, 2018 / / 1 Comment

ISTE 2018 is now in the books. I’ve had some time to process the information and the experience.

ISTE is always overwhelming. There is a lot going on. There are thousands and thousands of people. (I know that they said they had the highest attendance ever, but I never heard how many). According to what I heard, there were over 18,000 people.

I didn’t feel as though I saw everything. There are poster sessions, presentations, and meetings that I would’ve liked to see but missed. This has always been the case. There is simply too much going on.

However, I always have a perspective of what I want to get out of the conference. For me, this year was about not getting caught up in the “shiny things”, but trying to focus on substantive topics, ideas and learning. I still believe that we get way too caught up in focusing on shiny things.

Observation 1

MicroSoft really, really, really wants back in on education. Chromebooks have eaten their lunch. MicroSoft took some really specific actions. They bought Flipgrid and made it “free” (there is an event set for August 1st which should provide more information (i.e. will an account be necessary? will students need an Office 365 account to use it?). Secondly, MicroSoft had a really big area in the vendor showroom. MicroSoft also has released a small tablet (the MicroSoft Surface Go), for the education market.

MicroSoft also had vending machines that gave out some swag provided that you tweeted with a given hashtag.

Observation 2

There were a great many more people creating Sketchnotes than I’ve ever seen. Sketchnotes are graphical notes. I went to a couple of sessions at a previous ISTE to learn about Sketchnotes. I also went to a couple of sessions specifically to learn and practice how to do Sketchnoting. However, even at sessions that had absolutely nothing to do with Sketchnoting, there were several people taking notes via Sketchnoting.

I’m still processing how this plays out in classrooms. I think that for many students, this could be a wonderful tool/strategy. It is clearly not a silver bullet that will fix everything, but the brain research seems pretty solidly behind this. Creating graphical notes seems to help the brain truly remember and understand the material. Which tools and how remains to be seen. iPads seem to have an advantage over Chromebooks for this task. However, iPads in schools come with many other issues.

Did you go to ISTE2018? What are your observations?

Good with Tech

June 3, 2018 / / 0 Comments

This phrase seems to be coming up a lot these days.

  • Kids are all “good with tech”.
  • The new teachers are all “good with tech”.
  • Principal so and so is “good with tech”.

All are very well meaning. But what does “good with tech” really mean?

Let’s start with kids. Are all kids “good with tech”. No. (All kids aren’t good just about anything). Are some kids “good with tech”. Absolutely. But let’s define what “good with tech” means.

Mostly kids aren’t afraid to push buttons. They do “stuff” on technology items. Some of them have worked extremely hard and put in lots of time to understand varies technologies or skills. This background can be very advantageous and useful. However, this doesn’t make all kids “good with tech”.

So, how about those recent college graduates? Certainly, they must all be “good with tech”. Recent college grads grew up completely within the time frame of readily available technology. (We’re going to partially ignore those non-traditional college grads who had gaps between high school completion and finishing college). After all, these college grads grew up after the Internet was widely available. They don’t know of a time when computers were NOT readily available. They grew up with the iPhone. They grew up with the Internet already available and moving into every home. Thus, they do have a grasp of what technology can do.

How about Principal “so and so”? Well, just like above, Principal “so and so” may not be afraid of pushing buttons. Principal “so and so” may use more technology than his/her/they peers.

And one could argue that all of these nice folks similarly lack a fear of pushing buttons. These things do not, however, make one “good with tech”.

To be perfectly honest, we are still figuring out tech. We know what a lot of the research says. We know that technology is not a magic savior by itself in its current form.

There is one of the pillars of “good with tech” for me. To be “good with tech”, one should have a firm grasp of what tech can and can not do. One should intimately understand many of the basics of technology. To be “good with tech” means that one doesn’t use the phrase “can’t you just…” when talking about technology. To be “good with tech” means understanding some of the unintended consequences. To be “good with tech” means considering how something is used and implemented. To be “good with tech” means that one considers whether the problem is best solved by technology or not. To be “good with tech” means to not try to rely on technology solve problems that are best solved by humans.

Are you “good with tech”?

#GoOpen

May 8, 2018 /

Michigan, like several other states, is adopting the #GoOpen movement. Michigan is planning on rolling out their #GoOpen site in June of 2018.
I think that this is great news. I’ve long been an open source advocate. I believe that you are investing in yourself or investing in someone else. Teachers have long created a wide variety of materials. Many of these excellent materials could be shared and utilized across the state (nation, world).

Challenge

Quite frankly, I’d like to call on Michigan to really #GoOpen. Let’s have school districts across Michigan utilize open source and share those resources. Let’s see Michigan start developing (or coordinating the sharing from districts) of a wide variety of open source projects.
Most school districts have similar concerns. We have similar needs. Let’s start with some curriculum resources. Michigan is doing that with the development of Michigan #GoOpen hub on OER Commons (or see OER Commons).

Kudos

This is a great start (at least it will be when unveiled in June of 2018). But why stop there? Why not work with great educators around the state (and maybe even some college students who are studying programming at some of our fine colleges) to develop resources for teachers? For example, many students learning programming need a real world project to help them learn and refine their skills. Why not take some of the open source projects and specifically adapt them for educational use in Michigan?
Michigan has adopted the Ed-Fi platform for sharing information. According to what I’ve been told, this has resulted in improvements and sharing between Michigan and at least one other state.
Michigan has also developed some textbooks that are OER. The Michigan Open Book Project is great. This project has created some good social studies materials.
However, Michigan chose not to use open source software to provide professional development (instead going with a vendor who gave them a “great deal” for a couple of years – a vendor that has a history of losing money to gain customers).
Anyone who reads this knows that I’m a big supporter of Moodle. It’s open source, free and can be pretty and effective.
However, there really are a lot more open source options that Michigan could lead the way on implementing.

Options

Here is a quick list of open source software that I’ve used:

  • Moodle– powerful, efficient, pretty learning management system.
  • WordPress – powers about 30% of the web. Give every teacher the power of a blog.
  • Anki – powerful, intelligent flashcards. A great tool that supports retrieval practice (spaced retrieval).
  • LimeSurvey – survey software
  • Scribus – desktop publishing. Schools need to do a variety of desktop publishing. Some of these revolve around security.
  • Linux – operating system. Lots of tools.
  • OpenBoard – Interactive whiteboard software. Can be used with a variety of interactive projectors/boards.
  • H5P – creates interactive tools to use within Moodle.
  • GIMP – Image manipulation. This is powerful, but training is important.
  • Mahara – ePortfolio solution. We have ours integrate with Moodle for a wonderful user experience for students. Imagine students being able to create portfolios and “take them with them”.
  • Pressbooks – create books that can be shared and repuposed.
  • Hypothes.is– annotate the web. Also bookmark and share the web.
  • VUE – mindmapping and non-linear presentation software.
  • Blender – 3D creation suite. Give students the power to create.
  • OpenShot Video Editor – video editor.
  • Minetest – game creation engine (developed in conjunction with MineCraft).

Potential Projects

Just about every school district will have some needs that open source software can help address. Things like HelpDesk software and approval processes. Michigan could lead the way in coordinating options for schools. This could be high leverage, low cost for Michigan.

Final Thoughts

I’m sure that I’ve missed some software that I use frequently. Not every school district would want to implement that same options. Different schools have different needs. However, our needs are close enough that opening up these options and creating these resources could open up a great wealth of money for schools to use in other ways.
Come on Michigan, Let’s Truly #GoOpen!

WordSelect

April 24, 2018 / / 1 Comment

I’m sure that you’ve heard of the 15 minutes of fame. Part of my 15 minutes of fame goes to GitHub (is there a thing such as GitHub famous?). I chatted with Mr. Green about the icon for WordSelect. I made a couple of suggestions on a different icon. Even though I did very little, he still nicely placed a “shout out” to me in the GitHub notes.

New [w] icon with a hint of red. Added an svg vector version so no pixelation on zoom. Credit to Troy Patterson for ideas and inspiration on the icon

Marcus Green does some really great work. He has developed the  Gapfill plugin, which I really like, as well as some others. (Gapfill is a very thoughtful implementation of a Cloze activity).

His latest plugin is WordSelect. This is another terrific plugin for Moodle. WordSelect allows you to do exactly what it says, select words. The teacher simply notes the words that will be the correct answer by putting square brackets around the word.

There are several ways to use this new plug in. Teachers could use this for grammar (have students select all of the verbs for example). Teachers could use this to have students identify the correct entries on a table (find all of the mammals listed below). Teachers could also add a number to each sentence and ask students to identify the sentence that is the topic sentence (or which sentence supports a specific idea).

Anyway, Marcus Green is fine human who has done some great work supporting student learning. We need more people like Mr. Green. Now go install the plugin and get to creating.

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