Crucial Thought

So I have had a few days with a fresh install of Moodle 1.7 Beta and so far it has been a fun ride. I have to admit that it was a little foolish of me to attempt to learn a new piece of software with a new and fairly buggy release (I downloaded it when it first came out on October 10 and installed after my last post, so it was a little stale) but nonetheless it has been good. I had a few errors and ultimately had to delete the entire install and start over, but it has been a fantastic learning experience. Here are some of the things that I like so far and how I have implemented outside tools.

First, here is a screenshot of what my front page looks like when you are logged in as my tester student. I want to also point out that the site is closed to the outside, but I will allow guest access to courses with a password. I think this is a great way to encourage parents to join in on the learning!

• Courses can be built around a social framework. Right in the center of my course page is a discussion forum. When I first began playing with Moodle I discarded the social framework calling it “too loose” and wanting more structure. The more I thought about the nature of learning these days I realized that learning is inherently social and that I needed to leverage that as opposed to run from it! So my courses, at least virtually, are built around a social framework.
• You can compose HTML pages directly from within Moodle and Moodle incorporates a WYSIWYG editor. Now, in order to embed some of the media that I wanted to use, I had to tell Moodle to allow me to do that, as by default Moodle can prevent users from using embed and object tags. I was ok with allowing this, and may explore a more secure way to do it, but for now it works fine. What I ended up doing was uploading all of my presentations to Slideshare, a new favorite website, and within minutes I had them all listed as resources. My entire nine weeks course is already there, I just have to unhide it after I present it in class.

• The quiz module works wonderfully. I have learned how to import questions from a text file using the Aiken format, which is essentially the easiest thing on the planet. As of yet I am only using multiple choice questions, but as our usage of Moodle increases (and so does my willingness to experiment) I will look towards matching and otherwise. These are not my favorite of questions, but considering I do teach a foreign language, there is a certain amount of vocabulary that kids need to review. This is a wonderful way to do it in a no-stress environment.

• I also like the fact that there is a chat feature and a wiki available. I think Moodle’s Wiki leaves a lot to be desired, so for now we will still use one of the external wiki services. I do know that they are looking to integrate a new, more feature-rich wiki sometime soon, and when that comes out I may consolidate a bit. I am becoming more and more of a fan of Wikispaces, although Wetpaint still has the hearts of some of my kids. I am going to begin a series of Wiki interviews to kick off my new blog, which will be announced shortly. I can’t wait to hear what some of these guys have to say about the Google acquisition of Jotspot. The Wiki market is heating up!

• I also love that Moodle has an internal blogging engine. As Elgg 0.7 comes out, I may consider integrating Elgg and Moodle for a more social platform, but I would have to see that in action first.

So that’s my Moodle wrapup! If you think there is a feature I am overlooking, or you want to check out my installation firsthand to see what it’s all about, let me know! I’ll gladly send you the guest access password, since there are no kids involved yet. That’s coming next week!

Update: Fixed font formatting issues. No content change

Update 2: Fixed broken links (sorry). No content change