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Flashcards

March 1, 2020 / Troy / 0 Comments

Flashcards can be a powerfully learning tool. These are really good for learning material. Popularly, these are used learning languages. But, these can be very useful in many, many other situations as well. Science teachers frequently need students to learn concepts and names. Social Studies teachers need students to learn dates and connections. Language Arts teachers can use flashcards to teach sight words, meanings of words, synonyms, antonyms, etc. Mathematic teachers can benefit from concepts, memorizing multiplication tables, and much more.

Flashcards can be useful for all students in a variety of ways. There are a couple of tips that make flashcards even more powerful:

students should make them
cards should be able to be practiced “both” ways
cards should be randomized
distributed (spaced) practice concepts should be available

Physical Cards

Flashcards orginally come from, well, cards. Index cards can be used. These are easy for students to understand and create. Lots of colors can be used. Students should be encouraged to use pictures and colors. Cards are easy to study either front to back or back to front. On the downside, portability isn’t always the highest. These can be tough to manage as well. These can be shuffled, but it isn’t difficult to manage distributed learning.

Moodle Database

Naturally, you can create flashcards in Moodle. There are actually a few different ways to create flashcards in Moodle. I’ll start with the Database activity. I have instructions on importing a flashcard database preset available for you. The preset -(see an example) is a Database activity that was designed by some friends. This activity allows the students to create their own flashcards. The flashcards can be multimedia as well.

These have several advantages. Cards are created by students. Cards can be shared within a class. At times, this can be useful. Students studying cards other students created can be useful as well. With the preset, there is the ability to randomize the cards. On the downside, there is no managed, distributed (spaced) practice.

H5P

I need to spend time working with H5P. I’m not as proficient with H5P as I’d like to be. So what follows is from their documentation.
From H5P:

The Flashcards content type is a set of cards containing a picture on one side of the card and a corresponding text on the other side. The learner is asked to type a word or expression corresponding to the picture, before turning the card over and revealing the correct answer.

The H5P Flashcards are interesting. You can create a spot for the students to answer the question right on the card.

I’m not sure that the students can create their own flashcards.

I don’t believe that distributed (spaced) practice is available either. Flashcards seem to be structured in one direction (i.e. it isn’t easy to study “back to front” as well as “front to back”).

Remember that H5P can be available within Moodle as well.

Anki

This is actually my favorite. Anki is open source. There are applications available for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android and the web. Like Moodle, Anki allows for multimedia options. Anki seems to have all your bases covered in terms of access. This means that students can have access at any time. There are also Shared Decks that can be downloaded and used (but remember that there is power in creating the cards.)

Anki is completely designed for distributed (spaced) practice. Cards are moved into different time patterns based on how well the student knows the material.

Anki is also very powerful. It can easily be used quickly. But, if students want more control, it is very customizable as well. Anki is template based and those templates can be adjusted and modified. There is a ton of documentation available.

Suggestion

I would strongly suggest that you introduce your students to the power of flashcards. As different learners have different preferences, some of them may really be effective with flashcards. Naturally, I would suggest that you experiment with flashcards as well. This will help you help your students.

Even though I believe that Anki is the absolute gold standard, using Flashcards in Moodle can be a good introduction to the students. Plus, the more times students deal with information the better chance they have for remembering and learning that information.

Why This is Hard

February 24, 2020 / Troy / 0 Comments

I love the flexibility of Moodle. It is powerful and can have complexity. Let me give you an example of why.

Gapfill

I’m a big fan of the excellent Gapfill plugin by Marcus Greene. I’ve found this plugin extremely useful in a variety of use cases.

A quick overview:

Essentially, the plugin allows you to add a question within a quiz that creates, well, a gapfill question. The teacher writes a question and surrounds the correct answers with brackets. Thus, the [correct] answer in this sentence would be “correct”. Then the teacher adds some distractors (notice that the correct answer is NOT included in the distractors).

The student is presented with the question text (with the “correct” answers represented by a box). The student can drag and drop from the possible answers. The correct answer and the distractors are always shuffled.

I then took this concept to a different use case. Since spelling is a place where we could free up teacher time, I created a question where the teacher creates 13 empty boxes. The teacher then types in the correct spelling word by adding the appropriate letter. Thus, the question looks like this:

[s][p][e][l][l][i][n][g][][][][[][]

The teacher records the word (in this case: spelling), uses it in a sentence, and maybe says the word again. (The blanks function to not give the number of letters in the word away.)

Then, the teacher adds every letter to the distractors.

a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,o,n,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z

Here is an example that I’ve completed. Notice the recorded section that tells the students which word to spell. There are more boxes than the student would need. The distractors are all there, but not in any order. This adds complexity that doesn’t help me know what the student knows, just adds frustration.

The teacher could add capitals, but let’s not complicate this any further than I already have. 😉

Since this is to be used with elementary students, I don’t want the distractors shuffled. I want them in, well, alphabetical order.

I would want the “correct” answers (in this case, letters) to be selected from the “distractors”. I’m creating spots for answers that are intentionally left blank.

Note that I can also see some other use cases where I would want the distractors in a set order. When working with elementary students (and a wide variety of other students), it can be useful to provide a set structure.

Hard

This is why Moodle can be complex. A slightly different point of view (hey, I can create a great spelling experience that would free up teachers and let students be in control of their learning) can lead to a wide variety of complexity.

In my example, the answer is included (provided that I don’t add a space when typing), but how does the gapfill plugin know that? What happens if I don’t type exactly the same thing as the answer in the question and in the distractor? What happens if I forget to include the answer in the distractors?

Remember, the plugin was designed to add the distractors to the correct answer and shuffle those options. My use case if fundamentally different. I don’t want to provide just distractors, but all of the possible answers. While this is easy to understand as a teacher, it is more difficult to “explain” to a computer.

Marcus Greene

I huge shout out to Marcus Greene for even considering my request. I keep finding this willingness to collaborate and do what is best for students throughout the Moodle community. Mr. Greene is a terrific example of this community. I’ve never met Mr. Greene in the real world, but he is a hero of mine. His work has helped lots of kids learn.

You should also check out his WordSelect plugin. (And, yes, I use that one in a way that he didn’t intend too. See the part about identifying topic sentences, which is NOT a word.)

Baseball

February 21, 2020 / Troy / 0 Comments

For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

Ernie Harwell started every Tiger’s season with the above poem.

It’s time for baseball again!

Weekly Review

February 20, 2020 / Troy / 0 Comments

Music

I’ve been listening to Josh Ritter quite a bit lately. Great music, great lyrics. I’ve really had “Joy to You Baby”, “Hopeful”, “All Some Kind of Dream”, “Showboat” and more playing on a regular rotation. Josh Ritter’s music brings me true joy.

Josh manages to remain ever hopeful and positive even when life seems tough. He has largely avoided a political stance until recently. The events, the mood of what is going on, has called him to action. Was It All Some Kind of Dream is his response to being human in our current environment. A few of the powerful lyrics from that song:

There was a time when we were them
Just as now they all are we
Was there an hour when we took them in?
There was a time when we held them close
And weren’t so cruel, low, and mean
And we did good unto the least of those
There was a time when we chose our sides
And we refused to live between
We rose to fight for what we knew was right

Generally, though Josh Ritter speaks on a more mundane, personal level. He has certainly seen his share of strife (a well publicized marriage and divorce), but remains a positive force in the world. Give his music a listen.

I’ll be heading off to see his “A Book of Gold Thrown Open” tour in a month, I really wish it was coming to a venue closer to me, but it will be worth the trip.

Big Brother is Watching…

I had the opportunity to go to a presentation on “Big Brother is Watching, But Should He”. This was focused on schools and camera surveillance. Interesting times that we live in. The jist of the presentation was that we don’t really have a choice. Cameras are here to stay, but we should be wise and in control of where and when those cameras are available.

Update Frustrations

Mac

I updated a Mac. The process took while. Then, then, then, a problem. The update wouldn’t complete. A bit of digging let me know that a memory module was bad. Ah, but which one. The notice seemed to indicate slot 2 was bad ( I have 4 memory slots in that computer). So, I pull the memory module from slot 2. Restart. Run update. Nope. Replace memory in slot 2. Remove memory from slot 3. Run update. Nope. Replace memory in slot 3. Remove memory from slot 4. Run update. Nope. Replace memory in slot 4. Remove memory from slot 1. Run update. Success. Now, remember each of these steps take several minutes to accomplish. I’m doing this in between meetings and other responsibilities. This turns into a two day process.

PC

Naturally, I couldn’t just update my Mac. I also had to update my PC. Oh, and also my Virtual Machine PC as well. (I find it most efficient to generally use my Mac and a PC on a Virtual Machine within the Mac, but I have a separate boxed PC to use as well). I ran into several issues with the PC update as well. However, I mostly just deleted the PC and reinstalled from FOG.

The 1930’s

I’ve been reading lots of articles relating to comparisons between today and the 1930’s. If you aren’t familar with the history of the United States and the world in the 1930’s, please take some time to review. The 1930’s led to the growth of fascism. This also led to the literal destruction of a vast number of real human beings. People died by the millions. It wasn’t a singular event that led to that result, but a slow drip of decisions. Obviously, today is not a perfect corrolary to the 30’s. Times are different. The economy of the United States is in a different place (though there is concern about the amount of debt). But many attitudes are scarily similar.

Spelling

I’m working on a write up for spelling within Moodle. I hope to have this done soon. The key here is to free up teachers and empower students to take control of their learning.

Oscar Shorts Nominations

I went to see the Oscar Nominated Shorts. Much easier on they pyschice than last year. I already wrote that up as a separate post.Oscar Nominated Shorts

Oscar Nominated Shorts

February 5, 2020 / Troy / 1 Comment

I had the opportunity to check out the Oscar Nominated Shorts for Animation and Live Action. Warning, spoilers follow. Unlike last year, this year was not all “gut punches”. Some of this year’s nominated films are funny. Naturally, there are some emotional ones as well.

Animation Nominees

Official Oscar Animation Nominee Page

Hair Love – Cute opening movie. A young girl and her Dad struggle with doing her hair. It ends with a bit of an emotional heart tug.
DCERA (Daughter) – Really powerful animation. This one was able to communicate so much with visuals. The story is definitely not a “Hallmark” story but powerfully told. The story is of a young girl (now grown) and her relationship with her Dad. This is my choice for Best Animated Short.
Sister – The story of a child from China and the sister that he never had due to China’s “one-child law”.
Mémorable – The story of a painter who experiences the world mutating to unrealistic objects. A powerful story that hit home for me. Well done, well told. A close runner up to DCERA, I wouldn’t be upset if this wins.
Kitbull – A pretty traditional PIXAR short. Well done. The story well told, but no new ground is broken. A very satisfying story.

Live Action Nominees

Official Oscar Live Action Nominee Page

A Sister – In a car at night, Alie is in trouble. She makes a crucial call for help. An interesting story that is nicely told. Somehow this one missed out on emotion for me.
Brotherhood – A hardened shepherd’s son returns home. This is not the prodigal son returning. The returning son brings a pregnant wife and obvious tension with the shepherd. The other brothers welcome the eldest home. The eldest is revealed to have some different intents than the Dad thought. The Dad realizes this too late. In a short, every moment is critical. I thought that this short didn’t take advantage of that.
The Neighbors’ Window – A young couple with children discover that the new neighbors across the street have no curtains and a lot of passion. The couple deals with the reality of getting older and the idealism of others/ the past. Their frustrations develop as they keep an eye (or two) on the passionate couple across the way. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side though. Based on a true story (left me wondering how much, which parts were true). My runner up.
Saria – two orphaned sisters fight against abuse at the orphanage. They participate in a revolt and escape. However, the powers that be recover them and return them to the orphanage. Disaster strikes as one of those returned miscalculate just how uncaring the workers at the orphanage are. My choice for Best Live Action.
Nefta Football Club – Two brothers come across a donkey wearing headphones in the desert (in this case, the difference between Adele and Handel is crucial). The oldest realizes the donkey has a valuable cargo but shares a slightly different story with the younger brother (telling him that it is laundry detergent). One little misunderstanding leads to a comical end.

Weekly Review

January 21, 2020 / Troy / 0 Comments

Well, obviously I’m not very good at the weekly review process. (It’s kind of OK, since no one is subscribed to actually read the weekly reviews).

I’ll try to do better. For now, I’ll try to catch up with an overview.

New Political Party?

With all the news and political bickering, I’m wondering if we might actually see the rise of a new political party. We currently have a lack of logic and reason involved in the political process. America has been through several political party revisions (though we alway pretty much stay with two major parties). These changes generally occur around a specific event. The Republican Party seems to be set as extremly isolationist (anti-immigration, racially divisive, etc). Given the changes in population, that doesn’t scale well over time. Will the Republican part go away? Will it morph into something else? It’s not going to happen soon, but, again, the separatist beliefs don’t scale well over time. The Atlantic has an interesting piece that relates to the Republican Party.

RSS

I remain a big fan of RSS. I really wish that more people understood what RSS is and how it could be used. Facebook is really an advanced RSS feed (where someone else controls what you see). Facebook has packaged things really, really well.

A good RSS feed can/could be extremely useful.

Mod_Security

I installed an updated version of Moodle and hit a snag. I got a Mod_Security warning. This is not an Moodle issue, but a web host issue. If you are updating Moodle and get this warning, don’t panic. Reach out to your web host and let them know. They can fix this easily.

Loss

There’s been a lot of loss for me recently. My father-in-law passed away. A close friend passed away after a long bout with cancer. There is much sadness. I’m choosing to try to dwell on the positives of knowing them and having spent time with them. There are times and situations that are tough, but I try to remember the positives.

Kids

I did get to go see my kids over the Holiday break. It was great to spend time with them. Both of them are wonderful, kind, bright, beautiful adults. They make the world a better place.

CS (Computer Science) for all

I’ll have more detail for this in a future post, but I went to conference on CSforAll. The State of Michigan is looking to implement this across the state and wanted a partner district.

All My Sons

I went to see the National Theatre Live Event – All My Sons. Although set in 1947, I thought that there were lots of parallels to today. The play, by Arther Miller, isn’t exactly a “barn burner”. It moves a bit slowly (especially the first act), but I enjoyed it very much. Sally Field was excellent.

Podcast

The Middle School Matters Podcast is still chugging along. Shawn and I were able to record another episode this week (before the celebration of life). One of the discussion points was the habit of saying “like, yeah”. I’ve noticed this quite a bit recently.

Self-Assessment in Moodle

December 17, 2019 / Troy / 2 Comments

I love the flexibility in Moodle. Usually, I can find a way to provide an experience for learners that meets our needs. Sometimes, these could be improved visually, but, usually, I can find a way.

Except.

I’m still not finding a way for students to do self-assessment cleanly. The idea here is that self-assessment is a powerful activity. Having students self-assess is just good pedagogy. Being able to do this through Moodle would be fantastic.

I have tried a variety of methods.

Quiz

Ultimately, this is the winner so far. The teacher creates a quiz with the rubric as the questions. This allows for a grade to be derived. The student can easily see his grade and his assessment. However, this certainly doesn’t look or feel like a rubric. This can also be visually quite lengthy.

Assignment

This is my second-place finisher. I can get incredibly close with Assignment. The only caveat is that students can not be in any groups. Here is the process:

Course must be set to “Separate Groups”

This is where the caveat of students can only be in one group comes in. If students are in multiple groups (e.g. they are in a first-hour group, and a self-assessment group), they will see the results of everyone in all of those groups. Thus, students would be able to see all of first hour. To combat this, one could make a class just for self-assessment.

Create an Assignment.

Give it a name.
Uncheck all Submission types
Uncheck all Feedback types
Set grading to Rubric

Locally assigned roles

Adjust the Locally assigned roles for this assignment only. Make each student a Non-editing teacher.

Adjust permissions

Make sure that students can NOT “Access all groups”

Questionnaire

Again, close with this one, but two issues come up:

No “score”
Groups remain an issue: students can only be in one group.

Database

This can be pretty. It is easy to limit to one student. However, no total score is generated.

Workshop

Workshop is geared for peer assessment. However, it is geared for the whole class. Part of the Workshop system is that the entire class moves from one phase to the next. There are five phases:

Setup
Submission
Assessment
Grading evaluation
Closed

The entire class moves from one phase to the next. Additionally, you can restrict the activity by Group. However, this means that you would need to create the Workshop Activity, with all the settings and then Duplicate the activity times the number of students. So, if you had 98 students, you would need to Duplicate the activity 97 times. Additionally, you would need to reset the Group on all 97 of those duplicates. (Now you can automatically switch from the Submission to Assessment phase – which saves a ton of steps).

So, that’s a quick overview of our goal of having students self-assess. There doesn’t appear to be a simple way to make this happen.

Did the State Sell My Data?

December 16, 2019 / Troy / 0 Comments

The sale of Instructure, the maker of Canas, to the Private Equity Firm Thoma Bravo, seems to include all of the data that Instructure collected.

The State of Michigan bought into Canvas to provide Edupaths (don’t worry, they got a great deal for three years*). I took classes through Edupaths. So, what happens to my data? Does Thoma Bravo now have a good bit of data about me?

I’ve reached out to the State of Michigan asking if they exempted our data from being collected and sold by Instructure. I haven’t heard back yet. If they haven’t/didn’t/don’t, Thoma Bravo has a great treasure trove of teacher data. My data would be included in that.

*Canvas was well known to always be peddling a “great deal” for three years. Their stated intention was to turn those accounts into profit by raising prices after three years. This short-sighted thinking always kind of bothered me. Let’s be honest about what things cost. It seems somewhat unlikely that the Canvas model worked out as planned (though it did work out – they were purchased for $2 billion) as they never actually made money.

Comics

December 7, 2019 / Troy / 0 Comments

I find RSS very useful. I utilize Feedly to gather RSS feeds. (Basically, instead of going to a variety of websites to see if something has been updated, new updates come directly to the RSS feed reader. (This is kind of like Facebook but without the invasion of privacy and putting me in control instead of Facebook. Of course, this would mean that other people would have to set up a site to post their content. It would also mean that other people would have control of their content.)

Anyway, one of my categories is Comics. I enjoy reading comics. Usually, this is a late-at-night activity for me. I’ve used Dark Gate Comic Slurper for years. However, I noticed the other night that there were no new comics.

I waited a day (or two, it’s a busy time of year). In checking Dark Gate Comics on the web, I get a 500 error. Not good. Either Dark Gate is gone, or something is happening.

So, off I go to find alternatives. This is where I found Comics RSS. Comics RSS looks to have most of the comics that I like to read (I enjoy a mix of classics and modern comics). One advantage is Comics RSS is that each comic is on a separate feed. (Dark Gate Comic Slurper would create one feed with all of the comics that you picked). This will make it easier to add and delete individual comics. (This really wasn’t that hard with Dark Gate).

Comics are back. Now, I’ve got some catching up to do.

Buying an LMS

December 4, 2019 / Troy / 0 Comments

It’s been an interesting week for LMS providers. Instructure (the owner of Canvas – an LMS (Learning Management System)) just announced that it will be acquired by Thoma Bravo, LLC, a private investment firm for a cool $2 billion.

This news follows closely on the heels of Schoology being purchased by Powerschool (which is also held by a private investment firm).

Keep in mind that private investment firms are designed to do one thing (hint, it isn’t supporting student success). Apparently, there are some smart people who are expecting to make a lot of money from schools.

I’ve written before about Canvas. They were working hard to increase their market share so that they could then raise prices to make money. This seems to be a very real part of the economy right now, collect as many users as possible and somehow figure out how to make money later. This seems to be the plan for many, many companies, not just LMS providers in education.

Powerschool acquiring Schoology makes some sense to me. Powerschool provides an SIS (Student Information System). Powerschool wants to be able to provide a full-featured solution for schools. Powerschool having an LMS as part of that is good marketing and could provide some economy of scale to schools.

However, I remain concerned about investing in a company that pretty freely acknowledges that they want to build things up so that they can sell it off for a profit. I’m not in education for a couple of years, I’m in for the long haul.

The purchase of Canvas makes less sense. (The selling of Canvas makes total sense). The Board acknowledged their goals by gaining customers at a loss to eventually make money. Canvas was losing money last I knew. In their Q2 report, they noted:

“We’re excited by our prospects for 2019 and beyond and we remain focused on executing on our strategy, which we expect will sustain our revenue growth, help us achieve profitability, and generate shareholder value.”
emphasis added by me

For the second quarter ending June 30, 2019, Instructure expects revenue of approximately $61.8 million to $62.4 million, a non-GAAP net loss of ($9.2) million to ($8.6) million, and non-GAAP net loss per common share of ($0.25) to ($0.23).
Emphasis added by me

So what does Thoma Bravo see in Canvas? From the Press Release:

Thoma Bravo will support Instructure as it increases investment in education technology innovation and expands internationally.
CISIon – PR Newswire

Readers of this site will note my passion for Moodle. Moodle is open source. They have a financial revenue stream that makes sense. They have passed on being purchased several times. Martin Dougiamas is pretty dedicated to open source (while still being able to support the project financially).

Apparently, I’m missing out on something. I need to create an LMS and lose a ton of money while gaining market share. Does anyone have many millions that they would like to lose?