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Moodle Offers Cloud hosting

July 16, 2015 / Troy / 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.

ISTE 2015 Day 2

June 30, 2015 / Troy / 0 Comments

ISTE continues to be an overwhelming and wonderful experience. I have been to several sessions that were just packed with information. One of the sessions that was absolutely packed with learning focused on using Google as an assessment tool. The session was called: Authentic Publishing: Add-Ons and Scripts Case Studies by John Calvert. (You can check out his site at http://edtechtofu.blogspot.com.) This was a wonderful session that presented some strategies for using Google Forms to have students write Tweets that demonstrate their reflection on the lesson of the day. The forms are then moderated by the teacher. Once the teacher moderates the Tweet, it is automatically posted to Twitter. By encouraging the parents to follow the Twitter account, parents now have a discussion starter when the kids get home. The session also presented a way to create a timeline from Google forms. The timelines look wonderful. There are a couple of options for creating the Timeline: students can create them individually, students can create them as a group, or the teacher can create them. I’ll need to dig into the specifics to truly understand the process and each of the tools used. I’m looking forward to it.

ISTE 2015

June 29, 2015 / Troy / 0 Comments

I’m currently at ISTE 2015. I was lucky enough to bring a group of people – there are five of us in total. For the rest of the group, this is their first ISTE experience. ISTE is an overwhelming but content rich conference. The entire day is spent either walking to a session or soaking up wonderful information.

The first session that I tried to attend (notice the tried) was closed by the time that I got there. I had hoped to attend a session on Blended Learning, but, apparently, so did a whole lot of other people. I was able to find another session, which was filled with some good stuff. This is probably pretty indicative of how the conference will go.

Moodle Thoughts

May 31, 2015 / Troy / 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:

It would not be a major rewrite of Moodle or a theme.
The full power of Moodle would still be available.
This would greatly streamline the process of creating new assignments.
The cognitive load would be greatly reduced.
Teachers could be “walked through” the important aspects of creating an assignment without the distractions of possibilities.
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:

Assignment
Forum
Quiz
URL/Link
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 / Troy / 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 / Troy / 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.

Moodle vs Google Classroom

April 20, 2015 / Troy / 0 Comments

Dr Jak Tangkuampien, over at Jak’s Thoughts, has a terrific write up about Moodle vs Google Classroom. I had been thinking many of the same thoughts, but he has written up before I did. Give his post a good read. But first, I’d like to expand on couple of thoughts about Moodle vs Google Classroom.

Underlying pedagogy

Google Classroom does a really good job of replicating what many teachers are very comfortable doing already. That is, Google Classroom allows teachers to create documents (templates) that are then distributed to the students to complete and turn in. Google Classroom organizes this nicely. This is analogous to creating a worksheet and passing it out to students. Classroom does make this a digital transaction, but it doesn’t fundamentally change the relationship or the process of education.

Moodle was founded with constructivist educational strategies in mind. Founded by Martin Dougiamas, Moodle was the result of his experience with distance learning in the Australian outback. He was also interested in social constructivist teaching strategies.

Developed by Teachers

Whereas Moodle is developed by educators with an educational bent, Classroom is designed by engineers geared toward education. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Engineers can come up with wonderful ideas.

Long term viability

Google has a tendency to iterate, iterate, iterate. That means that things change. Most of the time, this is for the best. However, as a long time user of Google Reader, well, as a former user of Google Reader, I can tell you that relying on Google to have a product around forever and lead to disappointment. Google killed Google Reader back in 2013. This was after Google had effectively killed off all the other RSS readers but making Reader free and phenomenal. Similarly, Google has retired many other products. A few come to mind:

Google Wave
Google Health
iGoogle
Knol

Google has no problem discontinuing products that it no longer feels deserve it’s attention. One must be aware that the discontinuation of a product is definitely a possibility. Thus, given this history, the end of Google Classroom is always a possibility.

Moodle is open source. Even if Martin Dougiamas (founder of Moodle) decides to move on, Moodle can continue to be developed. In fact, there are several forks of Moodle already in existence. Thus, Moodle is sure to be around for quite some while.

Flexibility

Google Classroom handles the distribution and collection of materials. Using Google tools, the teacher can also create quizzes that students complete. Moodle does these things as well. However, Moodle has a great more flexibility and functionality built in.

Jak’s Thoughts

Jak’s Thoughts is a nice write up. He includes things like multiple teachers, groups, the ability to create prior to distribution and more. Multiple teachers is a huge issue for my district. We utilize team teaching throughout the district. Moodle allows for that collaboration to happen easily. Teachers can allow other teachers to just view, to help with grading or to fully edit a course. This power is greatly needed.

Overall

Google Classroom is a nice tool. It has a beneficial role for teachers. The learning curve to get started is certainly much lower than Moodle. If you are looking for an investment that can lead to true change, Moodle is hard to beat. If you are looking to move toward using digital tools and taking a small step with low barriers, Google Classroom is a great choice.

Great Tools Matter

April 6, 2015 / Troy / 0 Comments

Great tools matter. I like to joke that my daughter made me buy a fountain pen. Actually, it was both daughters. My oldest daughter let me write with her new fountain pen. I really liked the feel and the result of the pen. I had always thought that fountain pens were old fashioned. I thought that they were very troublesome to use. I was wrong. I chatted with my youngest daughter. She put together a wonderful chart that described the pros and cons of a variety of fountain pens. After our discussion, I ordered a TWSBI 580 and a variety of ink colors.

I found myself taking more care with my writing. Although my handwriting is certainly nothing to, um, write home about, it is much more legible now. The care that I’m taking is producing tangible results. I’ll continue to work on penmanship as well. The tool does make a difference.

I’ve long known this. I’ve always purchased good tools – tools in the literal sense. I have a toolbox full of Craftsman tools that I know that I can rely on. I knew when I bought them, that I was buying tools that would last.

This is one of the reasons that I’m a big proponent of Moodle. Moodle is a great tool. Moodle is the tool that I know that I’ll be able to continue to count on to provide online learning. It may not be the flashiest tool. There may be some expense in terms of learning how to use Moodle, but, in the end, it remains a powerful tool that will serve me well.

I’m a convert to the fountain pen world. I really do like to find the right tool. Some things just feel right. When you find those things, treasure them. Great tools matter.

Moodle Presentation

March 19, 2015 / Troy / 0 Comments

Ice flowing down the Detroit River

MACUL 2015 kicked off yesterday. I presented a pre-conference session titled “Moodle- Making it Work for you”. This is a session that I co-present with Mr. Chris Kenniburg. We had a great session. The pre-conference sessions are offered at an additional cost to the attendees. We had a solid group. The questions that they asked were spot on.

The session is always a challenge because there is so much material that we could cover. Thus, the first thing that we always have to do is to find out who is in the audience. A teacher is going to be looking for different answers, different tips, different resources than a Moodle site administrator. This is partly why the presentation has been so very different. Sometimes the audience is composed of mostly teachers; sometimes mostly site administrators. Sometimes, we get people who are both. Our audience this time was a mix. There were slightly more teachers than site administrators, but both groups were in represented.

We began with an overview of why Moodle works and a broad view of how to customize Moodle to work more fluidly. We also discussed how Moodle can do just about anything that you want it to do. However, many people don’t really know what it can do. Part of the presentation for teachers is to learn what is possible so that they can ask the site administrator to set up certain plug-ins, features, filters, themes, etc. We also stress to Moodle administrators that one of the crucial points is to start with the end in mind. Choices should be made for instructional reasons.

We had a nice mix of questions. We were able to cover a great mix of site administrator questions and teacher settings to improve the usability of Moodle. Indeed, it was terrific to get positive feedback at the end of the presentation.

“If I get nothing else out of this conference, I’m happy”

This was my favorite quote from one of our attendees. This quote came from one of the teachers in our session. We had plenty of other positive feedback. One of our attendees was extremely excited about changing the theme of her Moodle install. She immediately saw the benefits of switching to a two column theme.

I love being able to share some of the tips and tricks that we’ve learned to make Moodle more powerful for teachers and students. The chance to share, to hear from users on how students are learning, to improve the usability for students is powerful.

Top 20 Podcast

March 11, 2015 / Troy / 0 Comments

I’m part of a top twenty podcast (breaking news, I’m part of a top 5 podcast). You see, I co-host Middle School Matters with the fantastic Mr. Shawn McGirr. We’ve been hosting, producing, recording and posting the podcast since August of 2007. That’s seven and a half years of podcasting. We’ve posted over 300 shows. I’m proud of the work that we’ve done. The podcast has allowed me to meet people that I wouldn’t have met. I’ve learned from people that I never would’ve crossed paths with. I’ve had the opportunity to interview some really great people.

Truth be told, it takes a little bit of magic to actually be a top 5 podcast. First of all, you have to be just a little bit creative with your search. If you just search for podcasts, you won’t find our special show. But, if you look at the Education category, well…. OK. Just looking at the Education category won’t quite do it either. But, if you look at the Educational Technology section, there we are, currently number five on the “What’s Hot” scroll bar. If you check out the K-12 category, we are in the top 20. If you do just a bit more magic, say, look for the top podcast that is hosted by two guys and appears in the Educational Technology and K-12 categories, then we have the top podcast. But who is going to think about that?

The show is focused around middle level educational tools, strategies, resources and humor. Lots of humor. Mostly middle level humor. Many of the topics and resources are applicable to other grade levels, but Shawn and I both are middle level educators at heart. We record the show almost weekly (sometimes life happens). We love when we get feedback.

Troy Patterson