Moodle Research Conference extends submission deadline till 28th May

0
May 16, 2012

Earlier today Martin Dougiamas posted on Moodle.org about the upcoming Moodle Research Conference on 14-15 September 2012 in Heraklion, Crete.

“The purpose of the conference is to support networking and sharing among those who are researching Moodle and thinking about ways to improve it for different learning scenarios.   It will also directly inform the development of Moodle in the future.”

This is going to be interesting aspect which was not apparent before but makes sense to learn from successful case studies of implementation of Moodle.  Martin went on to explain:

“We’ve had a good number of papers already submitted for the conference, so it’s looking pretty exciting!  Submitted papers range from in-depth case studies of how Moodle can be applied and used in various environments to interface design experiments and the development of whole new modules to introduce new techniques.

(Personally I love detailed and rigorous case studies.  There are so many ways to apply even a stock Moodle but it’s important to understand what patterns best achieve our goals of improving education and why they work)”

They have extended the submission date until the 28th May, so if you have a paper to submit, go ahead! You have two more weeks to do so.

Conference link – > http://research.moodle.net/

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Some criteria to review when considering a plugin

1
May 14, 2012

Although for my plugin reviews I do not do a comprehensive analysis, this is something I use in my consulting and training and recommend to people to think about these type of issues when considering implementing a 3rd party plugin.

There are many great 3rd-party plugins available for Moodle. However, it is important to assess the suitability and reliability of the plugin before adopting it. The list in the linked document is not exhaustive as there may be more or fewer questions depending on the individual installation and organisation.

Some hosting providers may have already have audited the plugin and publish a list of ones they approve for their hosting platform - Remote-Learner for example. However. as although something may be technically okay, the suitability and cost implications may be something to make you think.
The list is basically something that one could use to assess the risk related to implementing the plugin. Each question could have a few lines to describe what it means, but you should get the overall picture. To give some context I will explain the reasoning behind three of the questions here:

Question: Has it got a Moodle Docs page.

Even though a plugin may have extensive documentation already, if someone is in Moodle and clicks the Moodle Docs link at the bottom of the page in a plugin that’s where they end up. So having a page, or even a stub page which has the links to official documentation is a good thing and helps people getting lost.

Question: Do they (the author)work for an established Moodle development team (Moodle partner, the OU, or HQ for example)?

This is an assessment of business risk. If someone is a freelancer, the ability for them to provide ongoing support for a module is sometimes (not always) less than where it was built-in an established development team where it may be in use by many clients or installations and thus maintained for business reasons. This is not always the case, but it is just one of the many things that one coud consider.

Question: Does it impact performance of Moodle in normal or high traffic usage?

How complex is the solution? Is it using a lot of slow database queries constantly, are they optimised? are the server resources being heavily used by this and reducing the overall performance? Does it encourage more synchronous activity or is it asynchronous? Understanding what the impact of the usage of the plugin, especially if it is heavily adopted by courses is important.

pdf Download Some Criteria for reviewing plugins (pdf) - 409.64 kB

Please feel free to add any questions or sections that you think should be added to the list

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Moodle 2 Tool Guide in German

0
May 10, 2012

As you may remember I released a Moodle 2 version of Moodle Tool Guide which was created by Joyce Seitzinger (@catspyjamasnz).

Ralf Hilgenstock of eLeDia and Susanne Gebauer and Gerald Hartwig have now completed the German version of the Tool Guide which can be downloaded from Slideshare.

Moodle2 toolguideforteachers v2-de

There is also a Spanish translation of the Moodle 2 Tool Guide by  Alfredo Ruiz.

If you want to create your own version of the Moodle 2 Tool Guide I have added the powerpoint to the original page.

Just one request, if you can send me a copy of the changed one for an archive – that will be great!

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Some upcoming conferences and Moots!

2
May 9, 2012

The conference season has really kicked off now, and they are coming quite fast over the coming months.

1st Moodle Research Conference – Sep 14-15
The call for papers on the 1st Moodle Research Conference being held in Heraklion, Crete-Greece is nearly up as 14th May nears, so if like me your have your submission nearly done, time to finish it!
For information on the Conference check out http://research.moodle.net/

EdTech 2012 – May 31, June 1
Although not a Moot, this Ireland based EdTech conference is being held in National University of Ireland Maynooth has a focus on Digital Literacies. There are some very interesting keynotes (Martin Oliver and Lesley Gourlay , Martha Rotter and Doug Belshaw) and there is also a workshop session on Moodle 2.
For more information check out http://www.ilta.net

Here are some of the Moodlemoots in the coming 2 months:

iMoot 2012   May 26-29
This is an online Moot, focused on Communication, Collaboration and Community.  There will be a good number of presentations from Practitioners around the globe. The 4 day ticket is only 80 AU$ – which is great value so this is one not to miss.
For more info check out  http://2012.imoot.org/

Mountain Moodlemoot  May 30, June 1
This moot is held in Helena, Montana and features a rich schedule over 2.5 days with a nice range of pre-moot sessions from Tammy Belgarde, Michelle Moore, Floyd Saner, a keynote from Laura Pasquini of the University of North Texas, and presentations from Helen Foster and Tim Hunt.
For more info check out http://www.mountainmoot.com

MoodleMoot Oklahoma – June 4-6
The Moot will be held at the Metro Technology Centers, Springlake Campus. The first day is a selection of training sessions and then the main days will be broken into four/five tracks on Curriculum, Hands-on, Technical and Business.
For more info check out http://moodle.metrotech.edu/

Moodlemoot Croatia – June 13
This Moot will be held in Zagreb, Croatia. The topics will include Implementation and development of the Moodle system

  • Teaching and Learning with Moodle
  • The technical side of Moodle
  • Moodle 2.x

The two named speakers are Joyce Seitzinger ( New skill of digital curation ) and Susana Leitão (Moodle and SIGARRA IS – an integrated environment).
For more info check out http://www.srce.unizg.hr/moodlemoot

MoodleMoot Euskadi June 15
This Moot is held in Txorierri, Spain and looks to be a very interesting day with a number of key presentations and then three parallel sessions.
For more info check out http://mooteu12.moodlemoot.net/

French MoodleMoot  June 20-22
This 8th Moodlemoot in France will be held at the University of Nîmes. There is a wide choice of case studies, round tables, and Technical and training sessions including quite a bit on Moodle 2 and on Mahara.
For more info check out http://moodlemoot2012.unimes.fr/

Hungarian MoodleMoot – June 28-30
The Hungarian Moot is held at Szent István University in Gödöllo, Hungary. The first two days are presentations with the 3rd day of practical work. The presentation themes include elearning content development, ePortfolios and Moodle integration among others.
For more info check out http://moodlemoot.hu/

: Moodle
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Moodle 2.3 – Section per page

4
May 8, 2012

One new setting that I think many people will like is the new Course Setting called  Course layout. This is set by editing the course settings. This is taken from the Moodle 2.3 Dev branch.

This setting determines whether the whole course is displayed on one page or split over several pages. The setting has no effect on the SCORM format however works nicely on topics and weeks!

The Options are

  • Show all sections on one page
  • Show one section per page

So what does it look like?

The following images show the course page as it is at first with just the section name showing in a list, and then as the user moves through some of the sections.

The things to note are

  1. The main page is now an index for the course
  2. There is basically a next section / previous section above and below the section area but using the name of the section
  3. Section 0 is still there (like using the old  &section=  option, so you need to be aware of what you put in that section).
Index of the Course page - "One section per page" option on

Index of the Course page - "One section per page" option on

 

Looking at one section

Looking at one section

 

Paged Version of Course - Last Page

Paged Version of Course - Last Page

 

So as you hopefully can see this provides a nice section by section experience.

Of course now, make sure your section 0 is just 1 line of text/graphic in size to get best use of this and that your topic fits on one screen!

Nice improvement!

As per comment, changed the images to be a real course.

This is one of a number of great improvements for the course page which includes the lovely activity selector pane. So keep an eye on the Moodle tracker!

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Two short videos on the new Moodle Assignment Activity for Moodle 2.3

10
May 4, 2012

I saw that the new Assignment Activity code was in the development stream today, so I installed it on my test site to play.

I like it! It is super cool.

So here I have added two short vidcasts of the assignments settings and one of an example from teacher and student point of view.

Hope you find them useful.

Assignment Settings

Assignment Example

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