http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by Art Lader.  

Man, Jeff,

That is one shiny MooodleMobile!

-- Art

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by Art Lader.  

Man, Jeff,

That is one shiny MooodleMobile!

-- Art

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by Art Lader.  

Of course, we could do it dirt cheap in Aiken. I just do not think anyone would come.

-- Art

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by Art Lader.  

Of course, we could do it dirt cheap in Aiken. I just do not think anyone would come.

-- Art

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by John Isner.  

I did a little Googling. There is an annual event for reference librarians/publishers that takes place in Charleston SC, called the Charleston Conference. They actually have a Moodle site which looks quite interesting. Would it be useful to contact someone from their organization for suggestions?

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by John Isner.  

I did a little Googling. There is an annual event for reference librarians/publishers that takes place in Charleston SC, called the Charleston Conference. They actually have a Moodle site which looks quite interesting. Would it be useful to contact someone from their organization for suggestions?

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by John Isner.  

The Photoshop club?

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by John Isner.  

The Photoshop club?

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by Jeffery Watkins.  

Color is a photoshop trick... but the license plate is genuine.

http://www.classroomrevolution.com/jeff/moodleplatebig.jpg

Jeff

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by Jeffery Watkins.  

Color is a photoshop trick... but the license plate is genuine.

http://www.classroomrevolution.com/jeff/moodleplatebig.jpg

Jeff

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by John Isner.  

I knew that

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by John Isner.  

I knew that

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by Martín Langhoff.  

Heh! Here's a real classic Moodle car, and a Moodle coder.



http://she.geek.nz/archives/335-photos-of-recent-relevant-stuff.html

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by Martín Langhoff.  

Heh! Here's a real classic Moodle car, and a Moodle coder.



http://she.geek.nz/archives/335-photos-of-recent-relevant-stuff.html

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by Art Lader.  

Good idea, John. I will do it.

Looks like they hold their conference at a hotel.

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by Art Lader.  

Good idea, John. I will do it.

Looks like they hold their conference at a hotel.

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by Don Schwartz.  

Great plate John!

I think we need a forum "Flex Your Moodles". Then we won't be upsetting Art by invading his conference space.

I'd comment on Jeferey's but he's probably a Yankees fan.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/05/thinking-about-your-vle.html

If like us here at Bromley College you have been deploying a VLE, then like me you may be wondering after having structured courses with all kinds of content from Word files to podcasts, where the technology is moving and what the outcomes have been. If you are thinking along these lines, then you will be interested in the findings of the JISC funded projects that are about to enter their second phase, you can find the site here. I read a summary in the May 2007 edition of Cilip Update, which seemed to promote the conclusion of student preference for social networking over pure VLE, with the suggestion that educators are becoming concerned about the future of the traditional VLE. For my part I have no real evidence that this is the case, have you, please feel free to post.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/03/vles-and-poor-attendance.html

I was surprised by the concerns expressed in the recent HE Forum about VLE’s leading to reduced attendance. And so an emailed was circulated to a national list, not by myself I must add, to see if this is generally seen as a problem. The responses indicate the opposite. You will find a link here to some of the responses that you may find useful. The question posted was:- Using a VLE might lead to a reduction in attendance. Does anybody on the list have to deal with this worry? Is it true? How do you counter it? Please feel free to inform us of your own views on this subject by replying to this post.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/03/project-leon.html

Starting Monday 12th March ULCC are running London's first Online Conference looking at Web2 Technologies supporting 'personalisation' called LEON (London e-Learning Online Network). There are a number of strands to this project,and my own here at Bromley is looking to the potential of Second Life, where students can share a 3D space and presence in real time. The current project features a library with access for individual or group study, links to web sites, pod casts, movies, documents and virtual page turning books. Presentations and lectures can be delivered to groups or individuals using white boards, media players all delivered by the lecturer. The potential improvements for social engagement above that offered by the more usual first world experience of synchronous, asynchronous chat and forum seem boundless. If you are interested in joining us the go to the website and contact Philip Butler for enrollment details.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/03/vle-project-2-completed.html

Going by the transactions from the latest learning trial using Moodle, here at Bromley I feel certain that I will be looking at another successful outcome. There were 23 students taking part of which only 16 eventually completed the project and between them accounted for over 12,000 transactions in four weeks. For all those who did manage to stay the course, I presented feedback assessment for collaboration, and there is without doubt overwhelming support from them as well as a sense of achievement. However for students who’s engagement / attendance proved patchy before the project, the new approach seemed to be of little positive influence.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/01/learning-in-virtual-world.html

Just lately a lot of my time has been taken up with Second Life, if you have yet to try virtual worlds then let me recommend the experience. My principle reason for the whole venture is to see how this new semi-immersed virtual reality can be utilised for teaching and learning, even as an extension to our continuing work with Moodle. On Saturday 17th of Feb at 5pm I will begin hosting some presentation trials that will be looking at the Linden Script, that’s the language in SL, and comparing it with other main stream computer languages. So if you are free around that time and would like to come over for a short and small class and supply us with some feedback in another reality just click here and I will look forward to seeing you.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/01/video-beats-audio-star.html

At the start of this term decided to try using my PDA to record parts of my lectures, and these recording are in range of 3 to 4 minutes. The particular course that I selected for this is my High Level Programming for level 4 students, and to date I have made about 40 recordings. But I thought I would tryout something of an experiment by making these recording available in two forms, one being a straightforward mp3, while the other would feature a speaking CrazyTalk avatar. Although the speech content of the two media are identical, the CrazyTalk avatar version has attracted almost twice the number of viewings!

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/12/using-moodle-to-deliver-self-fi

I am hopeful that Moodle here at bromley College will begin to fulfil a commercial role following an enquiry the other day from company who required a course in Website Design for one of their employees. I have been running a very successful self financing course “HTML and JavaScript for Website Designers” for some time now, however it does require a minimum of 12 students to be viable, with the next one likely to start in January. This timescale was however too long, and I was asked if it could be run as a distance learning package, well maybe if I ran it through Moodle. As this will effectively be a trial, I have given the course for free in return for a comprehensive feedback and review. In fact when the boss came along to lookover the set-up, he signed himself up as well. The course can now run at the pace of the students, they will provide me feedback via the Journal, have access to resources using Block Folders, submit completed exercises as Assignments and keep in touch using Forums and Chat. Hey I may even be able to use Second-Life!!! I’ll let you know how it goes.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/11/podcast-or-videocast-which-do-y

Do you podcast you lectures? . I have started this in a small way but from the system logs the results were not encouraging. Anyway I started to give the whole idea some serious thought recently. From my own perspective, if am driving or travelling on public transport, then yes I would listen to a podcast, however if was sat in front of a computer, then I would appreciate something more visual. The feasibility of videoing and editing a whole lecture on a regular basis would for me be unrealistic. But do you really need the whole lecture, well no, and all I record usually are selected parts in audio using my PDA. Anyway I decided to pop one of my audio tracks into one of CrazyTalks avatars, the result, good, judging from the Moodle logs, the media is definitely getting a better response. If you would like to take a look just click here. Please feel free to feedback on your own experiences by posting to this blog.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/11/free-learning-resources-from-ou

free and open educational resources
If like myself you are always on the lookout for some quality e-Learning materials, then you simply have to take a look at the Open Universities Moodle site OpenLearn. The resources here are free to use and are of an excellent quality, well done OU.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/11/time-for-second-life.html

Just recently I decided that the time had come to put my money where my enthusiasm was, so I upgraded my membership in Second Life and bought some land and see how it could be used in conjunction with my work on Moodle. In fact I bought a small island from diddster.com, these are really nice properties and the company extremely helpful. In fact the whole experience was a bit surreal, as I had to leave my wife cruising around Diddsters Daydream island complex, made more stressful for her as she had not used Second life before, looking for a vacant plot and making the purchase. While all this was happening I was watching through a colleague’s avatar at work (Whoops), keep that bit to yourself. Anyway Jinxster of Diddster turned up and gave some very timely advice and we all had an extremely useful three way conversation. I have since acquired a building for my island (Shimmer Island) and begun accumulating some tools; whiteboard and media player, both of which were actually free. If you click on my island thumb nail at the top of this post, you will get a bigger picture.
Anyway I am off to my alternative reality now, but do stay tuned to see how things go.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/11/value-added-moodle.html

Keen as I always am to make use of our vle for course delivery, I am also very keen to find evidence on its effectiveness with regard to student outcomes. One of the courses that see particularly heavy use of the vle here at Bromley is my BTEC National Software Development. Just the other day I am informed that it has attracted highest Value Added in the country for this course, wow. How much of that is due to the vle, difficult to say, but I was asked to put my views in writing; 50 words! Anyway here is my response. We have an experienced subject specialist team delivering a wide range of software technologies that include VBA, VB6, C, Java, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP and SQL, and find attracts motivated students with an ambition for Software Development.
Our adoption and increasing use of the Moodle vle has further allowed us to explore a variety of teaching methods, that facilitate our students the opportunity for personalisation, to extend their learning beyond the traditional physical boundaries and time constraints of class based lectures.A bit Just a tad more that 50.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/10/second-life-from-dartmouth.html

I have just looged out of the first Second Life conference for teachers, I think. I got into the conference from a French restaurant in Dartmouth via rather a weak wifi signal, in fact I am Blogging from here still. There were plenty of people and some interesting proposals for future projects, its all looking extremely promising, all in all a great show. Well done Optimus Paul.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/10/google-for-educators.html

This week, I guess with no great surprise, I find that those people at Google, who no doubt have been keeping a watchful eye on our surfing habits, have made an encouraging response by launching Google for Educators. My first impression is that this has the makings of a powerful and valuable resource that already features a growing repository of materials, tools, ideas and stories. I was particularly taken by the invitation that we can upload video clips, a timely offer, given that I have spoken to a few people recently who are showing some concern as to where they can place such materials given the limits that seem to exist for storage in some institutes.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/09/social-networking-so-far.html

I have some satisfaction and surprises reviewing the way in which my plans for introducing a social networking forum are working out with the courses this year. I have given the rounded figures in the table.

A couple of points come to mind for me: 1 by far the most active group is the BTEC National General, but this is a year 2 group, so they already know each other well by now. 2 Though the HND group seem to have shown more activity than the BTEC National Software, in fact less then half, 9/23, of the HND have yet to actually post their own details, does age make you more cautious in these forums?

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/09/podcasting.html

Last week I decided to start using a podcast approach as part of my regular Moodle material. I have incorporated these as part of my level 4 groups work in Object Oriented Design. The course is delivered as a series of lectures accompanied by detailed course notes and assessed using a portfolio approach of exercises. It’s the presentation in class of these exercises that I have decided to make available as mp3’s. I have installed them all into their own folder and students access them through Moodles Add a resource/Display a directory feature. I decided against the usually highly mobile podcast approach, as I know very few of the students actually own one. I shall be sure to report on their popularity and utility in due course

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/09/tell-and-post.html

I started three new level 3 groups today and as a first exercise decided they should begin to make use of Moodle by posting lifestyle styles and ambitions to a forum. Postings could include links, particularly if they had Myspace, some did. I then asked them to reply to at least 2 postings, but not if they were already friends; I encourage this in support of the need to establish a virtual presence, after all given the diminishing requirement of funding bodies, students are only actually at College 2.5 days a week, so what happens the rest of the week? Well maybe it can be virtual, lets shall see. A significant proportion of postings were as I anticipated in youth code; medium is the message! I am reassured however given recent finding by Bev Plester and Claire Wood at Coventry Uni. Its early days but be assured I shall be collecting and posting feedback from the groups on these and other online activities.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/09/myspace-induction.html

The HND course officially started today with an induction. I had an hour to present myself and courses to them. This year has been really different though rather than explain courses in detail with references to handouts, assignments and grading, I talked almost exclusively about the part Moodle would play as a delivery platform in support of the collaborative leaning framework and assessment strategies that proved successful in last year’s trial. Upon ending the presentation rather than give out advice on pre-start of courses reading, I asked them to get a Myspace account, fill out all the categories and be sure to post comments to at least two from others. My plans are that the Social networking aspects of Myspace will not only form the first point for an ongoing trend of collaboration but be the foundation in forming an online presence and identity.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/09/save-n-forget.html

Things Moodle-wise here at Bromley are looking OK for the start of the coming academic year. The new vle is up and running and the old version for 0506 is now only available to staff. Just the other day I found that I am to be teaching on the OO Development and OO Applications courses (that’s all about objects to us programming nerds). The courses uses Java and so I decided to begin populating Moodle with some of my Java CourseGenie materials, but was unsure where they were, home, work, CD, usb? Then I remembered that I had uploaded all that stuff to our DSpace content repository, great, logged in found them straight away no problems, of courses no folders to navigate, because there are none, meta-data discovery is the way. Uploaded the content as a Moodle Scorm Activity, finished, isn’t this the way it should be though?

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/08/xbox-on-syllabus.html

I have a sense or resurgent enthusiasm again with regard to the place of games in teaching: re my posting to this blog on 3DML and Robocode, when today I read that Microsoft are to offer XNA Game Studio Express, a free consumer version of Xbox tools that will run on a PC. In fact my interest in games has taken an upward leap after discovering the Sleeper Curve in Steven Johnson’s book ‘Everything bad is good for you’ ( I can recommend it). The suggestion is that our pop cultures game playing has contributed to our ability in managing rising complexity and cognitive demands. I wonder what impact the mention of xbox programming would have on the syllabus?

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/08/coalescing-virtually.html

I have been working on plans to encourage students to adopt the idea of virtual learning communities for the coming academic year. But to be realistic there has to be some sense of virtual value! It occurs to me, that the usual start of course ice breakers of ‘who I am, where I’ve been, going, gone wish I hadn’t and wish I had’ , type soon forgotten presentations, are evolved out by a dynamic, sustained and even organic online presence through myspace accounts, accessed from the vle. I naturally intend being part of all this as you can see here. In developing an on-line presence, I have some confidence the social networking aspects will act as a mechanism promoting the emergence of groups to eventually coalesce into virtual communities; eventually, though according to Rena Palloff they can happen almost instantaneously. Interesting times ahead.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/07/interactive-white-boards-for-fr

I discovered a really promising web based application the other day that was promoted as an interactive whiteboard, not surprisingly it’s called Virtual White Board. I registered for an account and though you do not at this stage get all the fancy clipart and sound clips etc; its still in beta, I was impressed with the functionality. Here at college interactive white-boards, probably due to the cost just do not seem to have happened, though all our computing rooms do all have a master PC and projector. Using Virtual-whiteboard you can include text, images, files and notes, freehand drawing plus some symbols and clipart. Users i.e. students, can be invited in and authenticated via their email address; if they are remote, then chat is also available. Sessions can be saved, printed or exported as an image . My impressions at the moment are that Virtual White Board will be a nice compliment to the various tools that I am currently deploying through Moodle and intend trialling it in the coming academic year. If you decide to give Virtual White Board a try yourself please feel free to get back and make a comment for us all.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/07/elgging.html

In the last few weeks I have been taking a close look at elgg and trying to decide whether to promote it as part of my courses in the coming year. I set-up my account and began trawling through the various options and facilities, and came to the conclusion that it will be ideal for creating a personalised learning space. While on this subject, there is a whole debate going on it seems around personalised learning at the moment, so if you are interested in getting clarification you may like to browse this standards site; complete with quotes from David Miliband who started the whole thing, well almost. I don’t know about you, but with certain people, whenever I get into discussions on this one, the whole session seems to drift into customisation, which in turn takes you up the road of accessibility, definitely not the same thing. Anyway things could get even more interesting with elgg from my perspective, because it will also facilitate my ambitions for learning communities, which brings it very much into my sights regarding the JISC bid. So with that all said elgg is on.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/07/nine-mystery-guests.html

Well the JISC bid event with our partner colleges went really well, and now I am looking forward to seeing the whole project hopefully come to life in the New Year. The web-cast also worked and our network manager informs me that we had 10 IP addresses connected, though one of those was him, so I guess that leaves 9. Following my request for the web-cast to be set-up, a first for Bromley College I must say, it was reassuring to have evidence of it actually being used, and given the technical issues that had to be overcome, its top marks and thanks to the network team for that. While you may be thinking that this blog is likely to go quite given it’s the end of the academic year, I will now have the task of helping to write the actual bid and on a completely separate tack, preparing for a new venture as we develop our plans in forming a partnership with a commercial company in the deployment of the Moodle VLE beyond our more usual FE and HE sectors.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/07/change-of-stream.html

Just a last minute change to our streaming of the JISC bid proposal here at Bromley College this afternoon, the address is now http://keyhole.bromley.ac.uk please feel free to drop in.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/07/live-stream.html

Tomorrow we shall be presenting our proposal details to partner colleges for the JISC bid along the lines of ‘access to online content, and tools to support collaborative working and personalised learning experiences’. The network team have been working hard getting my request for streaming to work and this afternoon I saw it in action. If you are interested in looking in on the event, then click here between 2 and 5 gmt. If you do manage to view the webcast I would be interested in any feedback to this blog, for now I have a few finishing touches to the presentations to get on with, so I’ll sign off.

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by John Isner.  

Don, I got the idea from you when I saw your car at Moodle Moot NE in June 2006. I applied for mine as soon as I got home.

I think we need a forum "Flex Your Moodles". Then we won't be upsetting Art by invading his conference space.

I was just thinking that. We really should get back on topic

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by John Isner.  

I would come, but Charleston would probably draw a bigger crowd. In my opinion, Charleston is the most beautiful city in America.

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=244&parent=589

by Laura Dewis.  

MSG instant messenging has been introduced to the LearningSpace to help you connect with other learners. Registered learners who are logged-in to OpenLearn will appear as a flag on the map of the world - showing who is online and where they are located.  By interacting with the map, learners can see who is online from any country - even city - in the world and start a text conversation.

Alex Little, a developer working on MSG said: "We hope it helps learners support each other's learning. Some subjects - like the unit on the Brighton Pavilion - have a geographical context and it may help learners to connect with people living in the locality of the subject."

Learners can use MSG to form local connections and establish face-to-face study groups. Alternatively they can connect with people from around the world to debate issues from a variety of perspectives and experiences based on learner's locations.

The location shown on the map is based on the details learners give in their profile when they register on OpenLearn. Once on the map, learners can only change their location through the options in MSG. Learners can opt-in to use the MSG service when they register on OpenLearn and can opt-in or out at any time by editing the options in their profile.

To find out more about MSG see the Quickstart guide and the video we've posted to YouTube.

To give feedback and ideas for how we could develop MSG leave a message for Alex in the forums.

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72929&parent=32

by Peter Sereinigg.  

13rd/14th Sept. 2007 4th International Moodle Conference in Austria, Campus 02 in Graz

• Please download the Call for papers and upload it until 30th June 2007
  We are looking for best practice examples and offer you a possibility to present your papers "virtually". You may do this from your "home office" if you prefer it! We accept German and English papers.


• Call for Papers in german
  Call for Papers in englisch
  


• More informations


• Participation is free!
  

Additional acitivities

• 12th Sept. 2007 Coordination meeting: "Moodle Privacy und Data Protection"
  Austria, Graz, Campus 02
  We will discuss the different positions of Middle European german speaking countries.
  The meeting will be organised by the Humbold University of Berlin.
  discuss and register here!
  


• 12th Sept. 2007 Coordination meeting: "eLearningcertificate".
  This meeting is organised by the Austrian Society of Computing.
  Its an ePortfoliobased method, which will integrate "Moodle-Certificate" with other topics in an international certificate for "eLearning - Teachers"
  More Informations is coming soon!
  


• 10th -11th Sept. 2007 or10th - 12th Sept.2007 Moodle - Developertraining
  Leader: Petr Skoda, Security Office of moodle.org/moodle.com
  More Informations is coming soon!
  

Sunny greetings from Stryia, the green heart of Austria, Peter Sereinigg

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72746&parent=32

by Art Lader.  

Yes, it really is worth a visit.

I will be visiting family in Charleston next week (two professors at local colleges) and I will ask them for a little advice.

We will need a main room and rooms for break-out sessions, right?

Gosh, we might even be able to do it at a local high school.

-- Art