Haidee Foxwell

Can Moodle change a school? YOU BET!

Recently I discovered the “Human” Blog created by Tomaz Lasic and have very quickly become a fan of his work. He is an avid Moodler who is not just using moodle in his own classroom but also has also demonstrated and proven the tool to many of his collegues as well.

Tomaz is a teacher and ICT coordinator at Belmont City College, a medium-size public school in Perth, Western Australia. As an ICT coordinator he coordinates efforts at the school to use ICT for greater motivation and engagement of staff and students, and this is a job he obviously does well.

With Digital Revolution funding putting more desktops into classrooms at a soon to be rapid pace, it is important that Heads and other key decision makers start considering LMS systems to allow them to make good use of the soon to be introduced technology. This decision needs to be made now, before the technology is implemented to allow time for effective implementation and staff PD. The decision of LMS can be very difficult for those who have no experience or much knowledge in this field and if not made correctly could spell either disaster or success for e-Learning as a whole in their institution.

Tomaz has created a series of posts on his Human Blog that really outlines very clearly the many reasons why moodle has been successful in not just his, but many other classrooms worldwide. He goes through each of the major tools and functions within moodle and puts them into the context of use within his schools classrooms.

If you yourself are a decision maker or know of one who has not yet looked moodle, then this video is a fantastic starting point. Be sure to visit his blog for the second half of this video and add please add your comments to his post so as to encourage Tomaz to create more of these fantastic resources.

Authored by moodleman. Hosted by Edublogs.

Re: Looking for some stellar examples of Moodle courses

by Tabitha Roder.  

There are quite a few presets uploaded all through this forum, so it will be great to see them in a database for others to use.

Re: Looking for some stellar examples of Moodle courses

by Helen Foster.  

Yes, thanks Julian for sharing your book reviews database preset.

Tabitha, thanks for your suggestion of using Moodle Docs for sharing presets. As a temporary measure, I've added a link to this discussion in the database presets documentation. Hopefully it won't be long though before we have a database for sharing presets on moodle.org, similar to the themes database.

Re: Looking for some stellar examples of Moodle courses

by Tabitha Roder.  

Thanks Julian. I have used your preset, worked excelente. I then played with it, edited a field (genre - added more options) and added entries to it. Gracias!

Now just looking in Moodle docs to see where we should be adding presets to the documentation area for sharing

Re: Looking for some stellar examples of Moodle courses

by Julian Ridden.  

I have received a few PM's about this one. Remember all, it is usually best to post questions in the thread so that everyone can get the benefit of the response.

I have attached the template file for this book review database to this post so tht anyone else can use it or maybe dissect it a bit to see how it works.

Would be great to see more people sharing their Database presets as I am sure there are many other fantastic uses out there.

---

To use someone else's templates (called a preset) follow these steps.

1. Create your database activity as normal.
2. Click on the "presets" tab
3. Scroll down to the "Import from zip file" and upload then choose the zip file of the preset . (mine is attached to this post)
4. Click "import"
5. You are done. you can now use your own new Book Reviews Database.
   

Julian

Re: Looking for some stellar examples of Moodle courses

by Lesli Smith.  

Hi, Julian. Thanks so much for posting these examples! It's nice to know that the database entries can look so snazzy as my attempts at creating formats have been rather drab.

I also like this last idea for sharing study notes. I used the wiki, pre-database Moodle versions, to accomplish a similar objective, but the ability of the database to keep notes hidden until one has contributed is brilliant! Thanks again.

Re: Looking for some stellar examples of Moodle courses

by Mark Drechsler.  

Now that (and in fact the other examples as well) is an excellent use for a database! Well done to whoever came up with the idea

Re: Looking for some stellar examples of Moodle courses

by Julian Ridden.  

One last example, but no screenshots of this one.

Last year I created a database for our Year 12 students to allow for them to share their study notes with each other. It was set up so they could only view other students notes once they had uploaded at least 2 of their own. this was immensely successfully and ended up with about 40+ files collected.

The students could upload, categorize and summarize their study notes while finally attaching the file itself. With our year 12's offsite for some time before the HSC kicks in, this still allowed them to network and share information with each other while offsite.

Re: Looking for some stellar examples of Moodle courses

by Julian Ridden.  

A second example of databases in use is by one of our Geography teachers.

Students were issued a GPS device and asked to locate and geotag certain locations. At each location there were to collect certain data (long/lat, temp, elevation) as well as take a picture.

the great thing about the database is it can link the long/lat field to tools like Google Maps and Google earth. in this case we used Google maps. The teacher could click on the link to determine if in fact the students photo matched the co-ords to double check their work.

Re: Looking for some stellar examples of Moodle courses

by Julian Ridden.  

Here is an example of how my Junior School librarian used the Database tool for a book review project.

Students are encouraged to review books that they have read and to add them to the database for other students to see.

Screenshot attached.

Adaptive Curriculum

by Ryan Camire.  

Has anyone had any experience using the Adaptive Curriculum software in Moodle?  I am wondering about how the activity objects are launched as well as the tracking of student data when those AO's are accessed.