Moodle

New Webtool Development and Finally That Assignment

Things have been very busy recently, moving schools has led me to havign to revamp my web-tools for learning, and its actually been quite fun. Now there exists the following web-tools which will hopefully expand on the successes and failures I had at my last school in Cairo:-

  • Techbribe – A weblog for MYP technology, to act as a portal and publishing site for students project work in design and technology as well as IT.SplashPic
  • ITGSonline– A weblog for Information Technology in a Global Society students, who will also have permission to post their work and relevant stories related to it.
  • hURL– A trial site based on Pligg, which acts as kind of a mini DIGG site – not sure about this one as whether we can get a critical mass of students posting and voting on sites?
  • IB Egham – Moodle– Aaahhh yes a revamped Moodle, which will need a variety of new courses, when I get organised but will mostly be used for ITGS students in the first instance.
  • Wiki and Eghs– Finally managed to install MediaWiki rather than TikiWiki to my server, and although Tiki was very flexible it seems that MediaWiki is much more stable and so should be able to be used for a collaborative project in the near future, although still like Pligg thinking that maybe a Web 2.0 version would be better.

Very busy indeed, and there is still a bit of skinning and quite a few courses ot iron out in Moodle to keep me busy but hopefully all will be up and running for the 23rd of August.

As promised last post here is a link to a very large .pdf –Social Networks in Language Learning – of the final assignment document. Still waiting on the result from Leeds University, but I cannot grumble after havign a two week extension.

Struggling along – 3 days to go…

Well its starting to come together, but now finding it difficult to intertwine all the different threads of the design process together and also whether to not hint at some level of apathy for certain parts of that process. I have been teaching or been taught various design processes throughout my career whether it be an architectural process for a house design or a design and technology process for a furniture project design and still come to the conclusion that sometimes things are generally a lot more fluid and personal that any rigid process can describe.

However I am quite proud of my design spiral diagram which I think sums up what has roughly happened while I was producing and developing my WBLE. Click on the thumbnail here to have a look. Funny but I  have only just realised that WordPress had this thumbnail built in function that makes life so much easier! Typical but at least I have found it now!Spiral Big

Not much else to report, I have too many different styles of usability reports and seemingly I will be told off for numbers of screenshots within my assignment. But I find it very difficult to write about visual issues without a screenshot right next to it, so for anyone including Karon reading the assignment I would think this would be of great importance. Maybe my writing is not descriptive enough. Who knows?

Assignment – HOW many words!

Well 8 or 9 days to go and the usual word worries are beginning to creep in. First draft, yes I know it is late is not finished and I am on 9,287 words. Oops so already will need to prune over 3,000 words and have’nt even touched accessibility or usuability issues. Have finally realised that my ideas for what this assignment was meant to cover might be a little extravagant especially when i am going into the merits of using a LMS like Moodle rather than starting a WBLE from scratch. Still very worried about my research into George Siemens work into the so-called ‘connectivist’ pedagogy and whether the very new research and linking to weblogs and various websites will be considered adequate references.

Well beyond anything else it is a little late now I think to turn back. Still the most urgent thought going through my head is related to the ideas if todays ‘digital natives’ not multitasking but being in a state of ‘constant partial attention’. This seems the way I am while writing this assignment, as I continue to wander around the web researching for more information; found a great explanatory diagram about LMS and their position within today’s online learning from Derek Wenmoth along with the very interesting usability tool related to testing a website in over 23 different browsers at Browsershots.

Time to get back to my state of constant partial attention, and stop writing on this blog.

Outline finally done…

Well I have been putting off the inevitable, – yes that is starting the assignment for my Masters second module. Having first produced a Mindmap of topics I might need to cover, and then converting that into an outline. Heres a link to the Mindmap – be warned its a large file!

So I have approximately a month left to complete the assignment and finally finish the testing of the Moodle. The Heuristic testing is to say the least a nightmare and shows the difficulty of making a website let alone web learning environment truly accessible. The Open University has been doing a lot of work on this which will eventually filter through into later versions of Moodle.

Have been reading much more related to ‘Connectivism’ and how it might relate to actual learning within schools. There is a great post written over at the Education Bazaar Blog along with an interesting paper at the Bazaar.

Other interesting news is on the development of integration of Elgg – a Personal Learning Environment , with Moodle and then an eportfolio application. Its in its early glitchy technical stages but this might be a resolution to the problems I have come across within Moodle specifically related to lack of ownership by the students using the learning environment. This might be down to me being a little precious and not allowing the students to change themes to suit themselves, but there is much more than that.

Anyway, enough I need to get on with this assignment. I wonder how everyone else is doing?

Time is not on my side

Well only two days till I can hand in an outline, and have not really even sat down to think about it yet. The testing of the site with a year 10 student is taking longer than expected and showing the course is much more demanding than I initially thought. All the time I am changing and improving the functionality of the course.

Have begun to test for usability and found a really interesting variation on the web usability tests – which is visual and have linked in my del.icio.us account.

Gliffy Static and Grazr Crazy:)~

Well now following along with my trial student, ironing out problems in my Moodle course. Of which there are many. The student has a dial up connection and so the ‘screencasts’ are very difficult for him to access, so I am going to place them as a zipped resource hopefully which will allow him to download them over a period of time.

Apart from that I am finally about to start my Outline draft for the assignment, and hopefully will be able to get that done soon.

At the moment have made the joyful discovery that Gliffy Beta is finally up and running, and I have had my first play. Its a great flowchart drawing Web 2.0 application with great collaboration features and ability to embed into any site or of course Moodle. It will be of great use in the future especially for those students on the AS who don’t have access to the likes of Smartdraw. It will definitely form part of the second projects tasks.

And also apart from the fact that it does not work in Moodle – aarrgghhh (need to find out why) – Grazr takes a OPML for RSS feed and places it in a mini browser window that is interactive, not only displaying the links but also able to link to more information. Check it out where that horrible TAGBOARD used to be!

End of a long night……..

..well also managed to:-

*Sort out the grading system – Note it has actually amazed me how comprehensive the grading system is.

*Sorted out a workshop module where students are not only marked by a tutor, but also through self-assessment and pier assessment…that will definitely be interesting to see how it works out.

*Added Masters students as Users..just need to join them to a course

*Emailed all GCSE users that course is ready – the quickmail addon is absolutely fabulous I can tell you.

So only need to do a few things including a little introduction animation, and then testing really begins and it will be time to actually start writing the assignment, or at least getting the outline together.

At least I am in site of the first hurdle.

Zombie processes got me….

Well I was working at 100% to get this Moodle course fully finished today…and then my server went down with Zombie processes whatever they may be? So I,ve only just got back on lets see if I can wrap it up today…….

So far have managed to add:-

*Questionaire for Masters students involving slightly more complex feedback questions related to WBLE

*Finished other questionaires

*Added ‘Aim-Objective -Practical’ , resources to each topic as summary for students to know exactly what they are meant to be doing.

* Added Presentation, PPT slides for showing students how to join YackPack, and added new link that makes it easier to join

Okay hopefully will be back tonight, able to say it is all ready to rock n roll…

Until then…

Groups…

Well in between marking and other school stoof, managed to begin to get back to Moodle and MA work. Have finally worked out how to use the Groups mechanism within a course, so will now be able to allow AS students and my Masters colleagues to both use the same course but not affect or bump into each other. Fabulous.

Have remembered that I wanted to use 3dMMS as a way of showing an entertaining way to introduce the course, with me as a kind of 3d animation. Probably not worth the pain, but…….

Have found a few sites that I am jealous of their way of theming Moodle, and will definitely after this project have to look into the CSS styling of Moodle in a better way. And beyond that maybe clearing out the clutter of a Moodle site as here

Also found a pod-casting Module that is being developed….always something new to distract my attention….

Screencasting Over…

Well finally spent a whole day finishing off the screencasting, which became easier maybe due to my realisation that trying to reach a perfect ‘cast’ was impossible and the more relaxed the better as it might actually enhance the learning experience for the user.

Heres another sample from my Bloglines section. There are still problems of the size of teh file for streaming over a 56Kb dial up connection. BUT most students that I have asked on the ICT courses at the school have an ADSL connection.

Now am concentrating on adding more ‘constructivist’ elements to the other parts of the course, including the NumSum interactive spreadsheet assignment and the use of Lessons , Wikis and Assignments.

Other problems have included the usability of the site on a variety of resolutions and sizes of monitors. I have tested on some very small monitors recently and reduced the graphic front logo still further and some of the embedded graphics. I think I will change the banner graphic to improve consistency.

Aiming for the students to test and try course, from mid next week 9th May. Ready for final testing of scenarios and readying for presentations to my Masters group.

Nearly there :)~

Nice to be chatting again..

Well it was nice to get back to FirstClass and chatting. Interesting to see other Masters participants sites including Will’s and Dan’s , both of which are looking very good probably a little more professional than mine but maybe that is due to the type of user I am designing for and obviously the type of WIBBLY / course based constructivist that I am aiming for. Did find that the more I am designing my WIBBLY and playing with new Web 2.0 tools the more frustrating it is becoming using FirstClass though. Where is the shared-bookmark feed, clips from web-pages and blog-aggregator within FirstClass to maybe make the collaborative experience more genuine? Answers on a postcard please?
Will’s ‘favicon’ inspired me to sort out that wee thing, to brighten up the browser search bar. Something I had never down before. Favicon

Still putting off the screencasting, although came across a really fun one which made me think about how smooth and professional do I want it to be, when this one both amused me and got the message across. Check it out at Alex Barnett’s Blog . He introduces you to a new tool called immedi.at which links Instant Messaging to RSS feeds. Its fab and would link into my ideas for the Moodle of a connectivist nature and interlinking of the sending of chunks of information. BUT it does work, but shall we say is a little temperamental…so whether I include it as a tool to use in the AS Applied ICT Intro course I don’t know. Could be fun to include that as one person adds a bookmark to the group del.icio.us account that it then sends a message to anyone who is online that this has been published!!!

My other stumbling block is the use of content and whether I can embed or add some .pdf documents or not. Some from ‘Educause’ that I want to use as reading seem to suggest that I can use the documents for educational purposes as long as it is explicit where the documents came from. So I’ll go for it, but there seem many pitfalls to online copyright.

Have also taken the criticism of some early visitors to my Moodle site, that it is made for high resolution large monitors. By decreasing mainly the size of the opening page graphic…..lets see if it helps, I need to find a low resolution monitor somewhere?

Okay see if this gets sent to my IM account……fingers crossed…

UPDATE – It works….just click on the ‘Monitor This’ – e.g the ROBOT image button and have a go yourself….

CSS styles again…

Well spent most of the day finally theming my Moodle, adding logos etc etc. For some reason I picked my Granny’s favourite colour ‘green’ as the main theme of the site – which I am not sure if it works but to tell you the truth I have learnt a great deal from continually messing around with the style sheets in Moodle which will enable me to be able to change things easier and quicker next time. That is the wonderful thing I can do that without effecting any of the content anytime and any place. Obviously in the long term students and teachers can also alter the theming and stylesheets maybe from a small range to feel ownership of their learning and teaching experience.

Typically it seems one part of the style sheet does not work in Internet Explorer but does in Firefox – arrgghhhh! Will try to figure that out tomorrow if I can. Have added loads of get Firefox signs to main page, but also know at my school, all computers only have Firefox enabled so most of the GCSE and AS students that will be using this course are used to the ‘better’ browser.

logoscreenshot2.jpg

screenshotlatesthomepage2.jpg
Obviously check the website to see the graphics in situ I could keep messing for another month, but its time to move on and begin to finalise the rest of the main parts of the course.

A little worrying that I can only see Will’s progress via his blog, must say am a little dissapointed at the lack of a ‘community of practice’ that has seemingly not evolved with this unit. Is this due to its practicality? OR due to the fact that alot of the students are based in Leeds for this unit and so see each other face-to-face???

Anyways, will be back to screencasting tommorrow, and hope to finish my two main screencasts by the night – on del.icio.us and bloglines. Must then add the lessons and assignments………hmmmm…have just checked my Gant chart and can safely say I am behind. Evaluation, I am hoping there will be some willing students who are not too involved in their GCSE revision to help me along.

Arrgghhhh…screencasting is EVIL…

Hmm spent all day playing with Camtasia and its not as easy as it seems, ended up with a screencast for showing how to use ‘del.icio.us’ of over twelve minutes which works out ehen converted to .swf as being quite large. However the main problem was the fact that Camtasias pre-loader does not work, so had to save and convert in a different way, to finally get it working. You can check it out at this link – note the other problem is I still have a cold and some there are many sniffles!!! LOL.

Decided I will break screencast down into manageable chunks……..the above will end up in three chunks. I do like the flash questions you can add to the presentation but have not tried to connect them to Moodle yet. Tommorrow will be screencastign all day to produce the casts needed for ‘del.icio.us’ and ‘blogline’.

Everybody must checkout ‘del.icio.us’ because now you can upload /import all your favourites /bookmarks from Firefox , and so now end up with a complete bookmarking setup online!!! Wowee!!
Will then use the rest of this holiday to sort out the style sheets and graphics along with adding ‘lesson and assignment’ modules.

Also spent some more time today with the Questionaire module which is actually after a period of time easier to use than expected. So will definitely add this to evaluation.

Created YackPack on my WIBBLY..

Well still wandering around the periphery of my WBLE, not wanting to do the hard jobs of theming, css and screencasting in favour of messing and adding other facilities and tools/objects for communciation. Part of this is probably due to one of the main positives with using a VLE creation tool like Moodle. Which is the fact that you can design course and tasks in an iterative / brick by brick kind of way. Each time adding alterign and changing the enviroment and tools to hopefully improve the learning environment for the students.
Just came across the YackPack which looks like a great idea for communciating with classes and also providing verbal feedback on assignments within Moodle….whether it will work or not we will have to wait and see. Have added a connecting button to Moodle and sent emails to my prospective students…..

I wish I had a little more time, as I feel after my holidays this week, I could do with runnign through the scenarios again and also testign with a small group of students to see the issues and problems that come up. Also worried about load times of Moodle pages, if I have embedded so many different resources to use?? Needs checking.

Anyways below is a picture of the AS Applied ICT Yack Pack , check out their website too some nice demos to give you the idea…

YackPack Screenshot

Cron Jobs, Adding Modules for Interaction and more…

Well had a busy and successful day, deciding to leave the themeing for a little while. And sort out some technical aspects of the site and add some extra elements to the WIBBLY specifically for intereactivity and evaluation:-

*Cron Jobs – Hmm what are these, well I have been assured by a webpage somewhere on the internet that they allow me to automate my backups of Moodle so fingers*crossed from now on I don’t lose anything!
CronJobs
*Questionaire Module – Should be good for use by students to use to create questionaires (will need to check this), but also for me within evaluation of the course (if I manage to get it finished in time for anyone to try and use it?)
Questionaire Module Moodle

*Gizmo Block – From this java module, I should be able to monitor and chart and then export all the students movements and uses within Moodle. But as above depends if I get it finished in time to do so?
Gizmo Monitoring Tool

*Presentation Module – I have been messing with screencasting, but this will also give an alternative with a PPT like inbuilt activity, that students should find very usable and also great for ‘chunking’ information.
Presentation Module Test

Tommorrow I promise to give you a sample screencast, and some improvement on the themeing of my Moodle.

:)~