Teaching with Moodle and Mahara

Moodle and Mahara in the classroom

View more presentations from Pete Potter

#Ulearn was awesome last week there is not one other time in the year where I see so many friends from across NZ. To have so many like minded people in one space at one time creates a buzz and the highlight is definitely those connections. I received great feedback on my Moodle and Mahara in the Classroom workshop it was nice to hear that it was hard to get a place and also that users at very different stages in their journey got something from it. There were Moodle users, Mahara users and people who used both. It takes you through my journey of using eportfolios and websites in my teaching and through the evolution of using Moodle and Mahara together and how it is shaping up for the future. Let me know if you have any questions.

NZ MoodleinSchools Hub

The NZ Moodleinschools community is a project that provides a tested and up to date Moodle instance for NZ schools. It means that schools can download Moodle or chose to have it hosted by a Ministry Partner with the assurance that it is tested and safe. As it is community driven you will see that the website has contributions from schools who share their resources, stories, experience and direct its future.
One of the new developments this year that is new to the community and to Moodle 2 is the idea of a central hub. This means that Moodle sites can be linked to a central repository or 'hub' . Moodle.org have their own hub called Mooch. The idea of the NZ moodleinschools hub is for NZ schools to collaborate and share courses through the hub. This has not been forthcoming through schools getting up to date with Moodle 2, this being a trial (with 6 schools) and teacher training, but I'm sure term 4 will be a good time to remind lots of schools of the advantages. As a teacher this does flip my switches!
I linked my moodle instance to the hub (with help from Kristina - again!) and found it 5 minutes with of admin work and once a teacher has created a course it takes them less than a minute to upload or search for a course from the hub, as the video shows.

How Kiwi educators are using MyPortfolio

Above is a document that has been created by the Myportfolio community. Myportfolio is the NZ Mahara instance that is used by over 800 NZ schools and has over 40,000 users (September 2011). It has been shared as a public page in Myportfolio and also through Twitter. Anyone can add to the document and reading through the posts there are some varied ways that it is being used. Have a look through and add to it if you are a user...

Moodle App

The long awaited Moodle App finally hit the App Store this week with around 90 seconds of changing some admin settings (--> instructions here) Moodle 2.1 has enabled web services and added the functionality of an App! The Android one is yet to be released so I went and installed it on my Ipod and made the changes in my Moodle. The installation was easy just prompting me for web address/username/password and we are in and met with the dashboard.

The great thing about the app is that it is not just a mobile UI for moodle it opens up the functionality of the mobile device allowing users to create and upload images, video and sound files straight from their device in to their Private Files area. In my opinion this bridges the gap between moodle and use in the learning space where demonstrations of learning and multimedia can be uploaded quickly and easily with the handheld device that most user have at their disposal. It takes moodle into the classroom and can be planned in courses as part of the learning experience.
From the dashboard you can also view Participants in the courses that you are in and communicate with them with their moodle Profile Details and also add them straight to you contacts in iOS.




Overall - Excellent. Making use of moodle and the mobile device that the app is installed on.

MaharaDroid 1.7

Recently downloaded the MaharaDroid app for Android phone. I'm new to Android and wanted to try this for a while. As usual I tried to set it up with no help and after 10 minutes of working out where the token went I looked for some help. I knew Kristina was a fan of this and found some help in the MyPortfolio forums. The attached video (courtesy of Kristina) made it easy.

The app makes it easy to upload images and videos that you have taken on you phone. You can create folders to upload them to and also wait until you are in a wifi area to upload the artefact. The app also enables you to provide descriptions and tags from within the app which then follow it into your Mahara instance.

This allows students (and teachers!) to upload anything to Mahara that can be shared on their phone. It saves downloading to computers then uploading to Mahara, it makes the process simple. I'm a big fan already!

Single Sign On (SSO)

IAM for Schools: Presentation to ICT Services Working Group

View more presentations from Paul Seiler

Attended a seminar today organised by friends at the Ministry of Education's Managed Learning Environment Team. I'd encouraged people to attend that I work with as I'd recommended using SSO after explaining that it wont matter if students change their username and password in moodle, google apps, myportfolio, you tube etc and as users we will only have to log in once to have access to everything. It sounds too good to be true doesn't it?
There was a good example from John Creighton at Burnside too who has developed their moodle with myportfolio, google apps, and etv inside. He explained that this was important that staff saw it as one thing rather than introducing them to many. They used SSO that students and staff only logged into their moodle and then had access to everything that was inside. As users we know this important as we try to fumble through our different combinations of passwords when we log in, but to get the trust and buy in of teachers this is essential.

MyPortfolio Tasters

I've been running MyPortfolio Taster Sessions this term and sharing the Teaching with MyPortfolio page. The page is a great resource and I refer to it in the session as the 'guts of MyPortfolio'. Really if you can do those things then you can use it in the classroom. I tried to keep them all less than 90 seconds, but creating a page was just too much.
The sessions have been well received and it was great to catch up with Heath Sawyer earlier this term to swap ideas as there has been lots of primary interest this term. Primary teachers seem to be more cyber savvy on the whole and pick it up quickly.
Sessions are Ministry funded for the rest of the year and can be booked here