Moodle - Colin Matheson

Comments:
This was a great session with an overview of the use of moodle and some helpful examples. These are the notes I have from the session. I have used our district moodle with students as a threaded discussion in which students each posted a response to a writing prompt then commented (addressing specific criteria) and responded to comments. However, I plan to explore our district’s moodle more over the coming year for some of these other tools. One of the questions I haven’t resolved is which type of tool is best for the various applications. There needs to be a balance between the most effective tool and the convenience of having everything on one place.

Notes:
Moodle is useful for wiki, forum, blog, survey, social networking, and user generated content.
You can use your moodle as a teacher webpage with a weekly schedule, documents, and rss feeds. You can insert images in textboxes.

Forums:
discussion board w.cytochromec.net/moodle2/mod/resource/view.php?id=41
uses: co-write story
attach video or create multimedia gallery
upload documents + ppt – turning into class rather than just teacher

rating system – stars, numbers etc or words thorough, well researched, etc

viewing depends on the initial type of forum set up

Choice/ Feedback:
create a poll, group selection – limit the number of people who can choose (closes group)
students vote
feedback activity will be in moodle 2.0

Quizzes:
Multiple choice, fill-in, matching, cloze, t/f, numeric
essay available for teacher grading
adaptive mode allows revision with a pre-determined penalty
upload questions from exam view or formatted word document, create random grab of textbook questions (examview 4 export webct3.0 download module to upload with blackboard 6 – examview blackboard upload)
read chapter, take quiz before the discussion (80% comprehension to participate or else do something else during discussion) – 2.0 will have conditional activities
can export to excel
integrated gradebook tabulates and emails responses

Glossary/Database: Creating shared knowledge banks
go to Terms to Define to add to our Web Terms glossary
artist portfolio database
country reports
book review
autolinking options to link words in moodle to glossary definitions

Webfile locker
create through adding a new assignment
‘advanced uploading of files’
for student’s own work, ungraded storage place, to keep there before submitting work

Staff development
build teacher use by just doing ONE THING

Open Source
apache runs 70% all internet, runs on open source

Chat/IM/Web presentation
online chat room: test review, chat logs can be viewed later by students who missed
use @person’sname to direct answer
can give extra credit to students who answer questions
can be student run – share responsibility
can chat if people are logged in
make school site the social go-to site
get teacher web page to be interactive with students
monitoring students: reports, read a log report, search for key words
closed environment