Frances Long What’s Moodle? (Why Should I Care?)

Our Time Together… Ask questions & interrupt

Knowplace & Moodle  Knowplace began in 2001 as a single teach and design online site in partnership with Capilano College (49 courses)  Developed our own open source LMS  Joined with Moodle in 2003 and offer Moodle training & hosting internationally  Developed 6 other sites in 2006 (2 are online conference sites)  Brought together the partners to Host the 1 st MoodleMoot in Canada in 2007 (online and f2f)

Knowplace Environment  Rarely meet in person (if ever)  Rarely hear voices  Very few photos  Talk through typed words  Talk through Internet (VOIP) We Work Entirely Online!

 Choose open source products only when there is a robust programmers community and a robust user community  Choose freeware only when there isn’t a viable open source alternative  Choose proprietary systems only when freeware and opensource don’t meet needs Knowplace Principles

Knowplace Online Facility Requirements Intake  An easy way for people to join our activities  Advertise activities  Calendar  Course Descriptions, dates (visible to guests)  Easy to open new courses  Easy methods to take money Programs, Courses & Activities  Discussions  Group projects  Self directed projects  Polls  Enrolment key protected  Re-use some courses (eg: change dates)  Track participants  Rate activities  Real-time Chats Exit  Quizzes  Assessments  Follow up

Growing exponentially!  200,000 Users World Wide  75 languages  184 countries  sites  697 Canadian sitesCanadian sites Proprietary LMSs are falling out of favour Who Uses Moodle?

Moodle = Modular Object- Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment

What’s Moodle? My simplistic definition?  It’s a Virtual School House!  Everything you can do face- to-face you can do online in Moodle! (well… almost!)

This electronic environment is called….  Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)  Content Management System (CMS)  Learning Management System (LMS)  Learning and Content Management System (LCMS)

There Are Many Different LMSs!

LMS provide…  Information Storage and Retrieval (from anywhere)  Handouts on demand  Share site & course files (Substitute teachers can easily find information)

The ability to talk through forums, chats, and instant messages LMS provide…

Moodle is … a software package designed to help educators easily create quality online courses.

Moodle is Open Source

Moodle is flexible! You can move things around! It’s open source

Open Source?  Free and available programming code that permits others to download the code, install the program and change the code to suit your interests = FLEXIBLE  Need an active programming and user community to support the software eg: Moodle.org  Many upgrades to meet community needs Freeware ?  Programs that are free to use but usually contain ads eg: Yahoo, MSN Proprietary ?  Programs that cost, and you can’t change the code or manipulate them eg: MS Office

Open Source Communities You can take from the community but you should also give back to the community How you give back… is up to you….

Moodle Features

Moodle promotes a social constructionist pedagogy (which includes collaboration, activity- based learning, critical reflection, etc)social constructionist pedagogy

Moodle is suitable for 100% online classes as well as supplementing face- to-face learning

Moodle works with all computers – it has a low-tech browser interface

Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings, journal entries, etc) can be edited using Moodle’s WYSIWYG HTML editor WYSIWYG = What You See Is What You Get

Moodle Courses can support many media formats for posting images, videos and sound files

Courses can be categorised and searched - one Moodle site can support thousands of courses Course listings show descriptions for every course on the server, including accessibility to guests

Moodle (What you can do with it! )

Moodle Format/Layout…. The front page of Moodle and each course homepage contains: Moodle is based on three columns (in a table)  Administrative blocks on the left and right  The centre column contains the course content (activities & resources) The front page and the course home page are identical in format/layout

Moodle.Org Home Page

Moodle Blocks Each course homepage generally contains blocks on the left and right with the centre column containing the course content.

Moodle Blocks Blocks may be added, hidden, deleted, and moved up, down and left/right when editing is turned on.  Over 16 different block types provide additional information or functionality to the learner by the teacher.  Many non-standard blocks developed by Moodlers that an administrator can add to this list.  Teacher also have a course administration block: backup/restore, enrollments, format, reports, grades, activity logs, files and other useful tools.  Latest News, Blogs, Upcoming Events, and Recent Activity are a few examples.

Moodle Activities Activities that you and your students can do online

Moodle Activities

Moodle Activities  Chats and Forums: Communication and collaboration  Choices: Gain group feedback.  Wikis: Students work together on a project  Assignments or Workshops: Work submitted by students and marked by teachers  Quizzes: Several options for automatic scoring. You can even integrate your Hot Potato quizzes by adding a Hotpot activity.  Lessons & SCORM: Deliver content and offer ways of individualizing your presentation based upon a student's choices.  Glossaries: Key words can be added to by yourself or, if you allow it, your students.  Surveys and Databases are powerful additions to any course.  Many non-standard modules: not part of the official Moodle release

Moodle Resources

Moodle Resources Include almost any kind of digital content into your courses:  Text page is a simple page written using plain text.  Create a Web page with Moodle's WYSIWYG editor.  Link to an uploaded file or external website such as sound, video, graphics  Display the complete contents of a directory in your course files and let your users pick the file themselves.  Use a label to embed instructions or information in the course section.

Roles & Permissions  Guest  Student  Teacher  Non-editing teacher  Course creator  Administrator  Site-wide  Front page  Course  Activities Create a role for parents to look but not have permission to “touch”

Moodle RoadmapRoadmap  Lists all the planned developments and expected release dates Moodle Playpen  A place to learn about the latest build Where is Moodle Going? Everyone’s excited about the new gradebook for v.1.9

How Moodle Problems Are Handled Tracker.moodle.org  Anyone can put in an issue  Bug priorities are sorted by votes  Third party modules

Moodle Summary

Moodle is…. A flexible online learning tool or LMS (Learning Management System)

Moodle is…. Used to communicate, collaborate and build communities around learning

Moodle is… The most widely used LMS in the world and has been adopted by several leaders in online education

Moodle is…. An online course workspace to store course files and build interactive learning activities. These files can be accessed by anyone, anywhere (with the right permissions!)

Moodle is… An easy way for staff and students to use the web for teaching and learning and can be accessed from any internet connection in the world

Continue Your Learning

What’s new today is ancient history in six months ! A single person cannot possibly stay up-to-date. Learning alone online can be confusing Relativity, MC Escher

Teamwork – working together is the key to making things easier and more productive – you should never have to struggle alone!

Look at how others use Moodle Moodle at Royal Roads Moodle School New Zealand South Peace Secondary SD St. Thomas Aquinas Ecole Saint Sacrament