Monday 24 November 2008

ECDL course set up

Well my Moodle ECDL course for Unit 1 starts to take shape. I have my first proper class with the students who've shown an interest so far, so I have populated the ECDL course with a variety of content to keep their interest.

There's some lesson notes (a bit wordy but there's no way round it sadly) and a workbook for them to complete. In addition I've linked to some resources on the web with some definitions - always useful. To keep their interest I've linked to a fun game that tests their knowledge and a summative test for the end of the Lesson and I have set up a discussion forum for any of their questions which can be followed up outside the lesson. The whole 'chunk' is finished off with an evaluative 'Choice' in which I've asked what they thought of the pace of the lesson. I also like to add images and found a CC image showing computer systems from the 70's which I added as a label.

Such courses benefit from the use of underlined text labels to divide the 'Topic' content into themes, otherwise it can be a bit overwhelming for the student to see 10 'things' in a long list.

So I wait to see what the students think of it all tomorrow.

Wednesday 19 November 2008

"LO, LO what's all this then?"

I'm playing around more than I ever have before with SCORM compliant Learning Objects with a view to embedding them in my courses.

I was involved in some LO usability testing for the European Union a few years ago when I was lucky enough to participate in the CELEBRATE project. This was a little ahead of its time, in my opinion, but now with so many companies, like Birchfield Interactive providing disks with their wares in SCORM compliant format, such resources should be becoming ubiquitous.

I don't want to pepper my courses with LOs in an indiscriminate manner, so I hope to build a structure that allows LOs to be used well in context rather than as gimmicks.

I'm in the midst of creating the ECDL course for a blended learning approach and I'm hoping to use this as the testbed for the SCORM elements prior to encouraging the use of LOs on a more widespread basis across the VLE.

I'll be using the Birchfield Interactive content covering Hardware and Software in the first instance.

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Blended Learning

Currently working on the finalised content for the ECDL course for Year 12 students. The course will be a catch-all example of a Blended Learning course that runs parallel with an extra-curricular course that I'm running. The intention is to provide a course that can be followed in isolation by those who can't attend the after school sessions, whilst at the same time supporting those who can attend.

I am trying to make the content as interactive as possible whilst at the same time trying to ensure that the content isn't seen as patronising by the students taking the course.

My catchment group is diverse and I do not want to alienate those students who cannot attend the face-to-face sessions that I will be running.

To do list:
  1. Incorporate Hot Potatoes tests in the course
  2. Embed SCORM compliant units from other sources

Monday 17 November 2008

I say Mah-ara, You say Ma-hara....

I'm looking at implementing E-Portfolio capability to my Moodle - it's something I've been wanting to do for a while. I'm looking at Mahara which has excellent features and it functions seamlessly with Moodle. I'm particularly interested in the 'single sign on' feature which will aid usability in school.

Until now I've not felt ready to go this route but some recent events (namely pupils deleting important files to save hard disc space) have meant that I think the time is right to use such a facility.

I still have a few things to iron out but will, I'm sure, have a pilot E-Portfolio set up as soon as I can in order to look for advantages and disadvantages before rolling it out to all users.

Just found out that my plan for a 'Year 6 Spreadsheet Day' has gone down well and this will operate within the Moodle so I need to get cracking on that in order to show that at my next meeting with the Head of ICT in the Prep Department. Course design to follow.

SPAMSPAMSPAMSPAM

I've just done a much-needed purge of old user accounts only to find that I'd about 40 Spam accounts set up on the Moodle. They'd never been used but frustrating nonetheless. To avoid this I've set up an account with http://www.recaptcha.net/ (it's a FREE service) .You register with Recaptcha and once you type in the URL of your site you get a PRIVATE & a PUBLIC key. You then copy these strings into the appropriate places on the 'Manage Authentication' section of Moodle. Finally you need to embed the code into your webpage so the Recaptcha application appears. I will embed the necessary code on the front page later.


I want to still provide guest access to show off the work we do in the exemplar courses to guest users but I'm going to be more scrupulous about it so that I can be 100% confident about the VLE being a 'walled garden'.


A recent debate which came via Ian Usher showed that there is a call for the use of CRB clearance for guest users that access a VLE. This is clearly a thorny issue and one that I want to devote time and attention to prior to setting up some of the 'Hotseat' activities I have planned for the rest of the year.

Bulk upload of users

Having previously tried to upload a batch of users with no luck (the reason as yet undiscovered) I decided to try again as the school Maths department required that all school students have access to the course they are using as a portal to their web resources.

I created a .csv file by ensuring that the fieldnames were as specified in the Moodle documentation using school usernames for ease and I set up the passwords to automatically require the students to change them the first time they log in.

Although the making of a .csv file within Open Office Calc was easy if laborious, the exporting was slightly tricky for two reasons. Firstly, I had to ensure that the 'character set' was correct (there is a bewildering array of these) and had to pick 'Unicode UTF-8' before saving and ensure that the same format was dselected for uploading into Moodle. Secondly, Open Office Calc wanted to assign 'text delimiters' by using double quotation marks, but Moodle doesn't like these, so it took a while to realise that I needed to delete the double quotation marks in the 'text delimiter' box before saving.

Moodle allows you, at the outset, to specify the courses that you want students to follow, so that courses then appear pre-populated. Therefore I was able to specify the Maths Central portal as being a course to which students were all assigned. This is an easier process than teachers having to go through the whole list of students and assign them themselves which would be long-winded.

One problem that Dale helped me to get round (he's so FAB it's not true) was that despite the default user language being 'English' all student accounts were in Bulgarian (presumably as this was the first in the alphabetical list of language packs available to users). We couldn't account for why Merapolis should have ignored the default setting of English, but eventually - when the optional language packs were disabled - English was set up as the new language for all users -phew!

Now that students are all set up hopefully all will go smoothly as students are introduced to the course.

Next on To Do list:

  1. Investigating E-Portfolio System
  2. Complete the setting up of ECDL Blended Learning course
  3. Work on a new theme & colour scheme
  4. Streamline user list by removing old and guest user accounts
  5. Ensure old courses are backed up as exemplars
  6. Update 'Popular Websites' block on main page