I have just finished reading Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques by Susan  Smith Nash with William Rice and published by Packt as one of their Moodle book series. I confess to having a sentimental attachment to this book as its original version was both the first book on Moodle I ever read (and I never thought I would end up writing one myself!) and the first book I reviewed in my first  blog post on this blog. The book has been updated for Moodle 1.9 – you  might wish to read my original review first.  I had initially planned to deal with it as a brand new book and review it as such – but certain aspects prevented that, as I will outline later on.

Susan Smith Nash is an expert in online course development  -indeed, she is the e-learning queen -  and what I liked about her update was the way she blended her ideas and suggestions both theoretical and practical with William Rice’s original “solutions”. This is not a book for beginners in Moodle, although it does give some step by step instructions. What it does that makes it different from many software books is that it gives a pedagogical background to what is done in Moodle: you aren’t just making forums or choices because they are there – you get explanations as to why and how they will help your students develop their skills or knowledge and examples of Best Practice.

Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques follows a very methodical structure, starting  the reader off with  the fairly simple forum  and leaving him empowered at the end having gained an understanding of the Lesson module and Workshop module, two of the most (I think) challenging modules to set up. On the way we investigate chat, quizzes, choice, wikis and glossaries , learning ways to use them where are students are “in charge” and we are the facilitators. (One slight point of issue by the way – I am not sure you can use  the “single simple discussion” forum type with separate groups in the way suggested here as a method of students and teachers having their own private communication area; I don’t think this works?) Likewise, there seems to be an assumption that the reader has an admin role rather than a regular teacher role – the reader is shown how to override student permissions for example to prevent them starting new forum threads but this is not normally available to a teacher unless admin allows it – a possible source of confusion?

Susan Smith Nash has added an extra chapter to the original, building on William’s solutions for the workshop module where she offers ideas for using it as a portfolio/gallery where students can showcase work, collaborate and comment on each others’ items all within a positive and encouraging environment. Susan has also elaborated more on the detailed instructions for setting up Lessons and workshops, which I think readers will appreciate as they are so complex. Indeed, the workshop in 1.9 is actually not recommended for use – although I use it! – as it has been totally revamped and simplifed ready for Moodle 2.0. Many people will still be using Moodle 1.9 for a long time yet and so this will be helpful to them.

Different versions of Moodle (and indeed books) is something I will come back to now. I mentioned at the start I had planned to deal with this book entirely separately from its original version, published in 2007 but am unable to. Much of this book is the same as my first copy back then -which is fine as the activities and pedagogy still apply – but I was puzzled a few times by the screenshots which didn’t tie in with my own Moodle – until I realised that the gradebook used in this book is actually a Moodle 1.8 gradebook and not the current one. This is disappointing, as using the gradebook is such a vital part of Moodle and it has undergone a number of enhancements during Moodle 1.9 which simply aren’t reflected in the screenshots of this book.  Readers not used to the gradebook might be confused by this.

Overall then – and with the above mentioned caveats – this is a” teaching solutions” book, a book to spark off inspiration, rather than  a how to Moodle book – and if you are competent with Moodle and lacking in ideas – perhaps this is a book for you!

A frequent call for help on the forums of moodle.org I have done it myself – you paste some code like javascript (or even that nasty MS Word code) into a topic summary, save it and discover you can’t then click on the edit icon anymore to go back and make alterations. I did a post earlier this year explaining how you can get into  the edit screen of a label if it’s a label that’s been corrupted – here it is – but the process for a topic summary is slightly different so I made a new screencast below. I stress: I am not a coder and so I don’t know any “correct” way of going about these things, but by trial and error (mainly the latter !) I have worked out how you can access the editing screen of your topic summary even though the pen and the hand icon is completely stuck. Watch the video below – if youtube is banned in your place as it is in mine, I have put step by step instructions underneath.

How to get into a topic summary when the icon is “stuck”:

• turn on the editing in your course
• click on the “hand and pen” icon of a topic summary that DOES work
• Go up to the url at the top of your screen – look at the number at the very end  in the address bar
• It will probably be something like http://YOURMOODLESITE.com/course/editsection.php?id=12
• The last number is the topic summary number that you are in at present. Type in different numbers near that one until you get to the topic summary that has been corrupted (don’t worry if you end up in a totally different course – just keep changing the number at the end until you get to your “broken” summary.) If you’re lucky it might only be a digit away. If you are even luckier and you only recently edited (broke!) the summary, its url might still be saved in your address bar.
• When you get to it, delete everything by clicking on the code view icon, rather than doing it in the WYSIWYG editor. Save changes – and you should then have a working topic summary with an edit icon you can click on.

Ian Wild, author of Moodle Course Conversion, has written a book for Mathematics teachers called Moodle 1.9 Math(s) Well, actually he missed the “s” off for the American market but, try as I might, as a native English English speaker, I just can’t bring myself to do the same! I received my review copy yesterday and am  happy to pass on my thoughts today. A slight confession – this isn’t the first time I’ve seen it, as I was asked to be a tech reviewer for the book back in the New Year.  You can see an outline of the chapter content on the publisher’s website  and also a sample chapter here on Quizzes. What impresses me most is the step by step approach and measured progression throughout the book. While Ian assumes the reader has some experience of Moodle, he nonetheless starts at the very beginning with two simple but highly useful tasks: uploading a past exam paper and setting up a discussion forum. By the end of the book, the reader has learned how to include in a Moodle course complex mathematical notation,graphs, charts, interactive geometry and algebra, self-marking quizzes, multimedia screencasts.. and more! He also devotes some time to science teachers whose needs are often similar to those of math(s!) teachers,  explaining additonally how the scientists can represent chemical structures in their courses using Jmol.  Some of the activities dealt with in the book require Administrator rights; Ian always makes sure to include information for Moodle admins wherever required, and in a way that does not detract from the easy flow of the book and focus on teaching tools.  Also included are useful links to teaching resources. For myself, I particularly liked the more creative elements  of  Chapters 3 and 4, where we read how to enhance our teaching with multimedia presentations, screencasts, Flash games and even DIY Scorm. Would I recommend this book? Yes of course, with Ian’s own caveat that if you are a total newbie you might first  want  to read his own Moodle Course Conversion or my ownMoodle 1.9 For Teaching 7-14 Year Olds. After that -this book will add Magic to your Moodle Mathematics!

One of the problems with teachers uploading PowerPoints to Moodle -or indeed any VLE/LMS – is that not all their students have MS Office at home.  Even if they do, they might have an earlier version and therefore not be able to open their teachers’s 2007  masterpiece. While there are many workarounds – offer Powerpoint Viewer or (better) use OpenOffice, another solution is to convert to Flash. This can be done easily in OpenOffice but if your presentation is – perish the thought!- full of whizzy animations and transitions then they won’t transfer.  Enter iSpring free - a free Powerpoint to Flash converter that converts your slideshows with animations  -with sound -with video -  and even with your exploding text if you really have to… It’s been used and recommended amongst the Moodle community for over a year now. It’s been mentioned in several Moodle books from Packt and by  other Moodle bloggers such as Ian Usher. But the other day a county ICT advisor alerted me to the fact that he’d been refused permission to use iSpring free on his Moodle. The terms and conditions state that iSpring free is for personal use only, such as in blogs and websites. I  – and I daresay many other happy Moodlers -had assumed personal use meant an individual  teacher could put on a iSpring version of their lesson’s Powerpoint for their own individual class within Moodle (or Frog, or Fronter..) But no. When I double-checked the response I got was – quote:

iSpring Free is for personal non-commercial use only. It cannot be used for creating public presentations of any kind, even for educational purposes. I am sorry about that. …We are glad to provide educational establishments representatives with a 25% discount in case of purchasing a single license of iSpring Pro, a great tool for elearning courses authoring. The original price of the product is $249. Considering your academic status, the price will be $186.75.

Sadly, my school is unwilling to pay the  reduced $186.75 and so I am on the lookout for alternatives.   For my part, I shall suggest to the company that their make the terms of usage for the free version much clearer, particularly with the prevalence of VLEs and the need to find a suitable way to make presentations viewable by all users. For your part, Dear Readers – if  you have iSpring free on your class pages – take them off! Or else, of course,  buy the pro version and get a licence. And if you have that sort of money perhaps you might like to buy one for me too…

“Peer Assessment” – buzz phrase in education – is an activity to which Moodle lends itself beautifully. I have used the Moodle workshop module in the past for peer assessment  (see here) It can be set up  in many different ways and at levels from basic to advanced. However,  its complexity dissuades some from trying  it. The “new, improved” Workshop for Moodle 2 which can  be tested here is much more user-friendly and I await its arrival eagerly.

In the meantime, and if you only want a quick, very simple peer assessment task, it is possible to tweak a Moodle forum to do the job. The following screencast shows one way to do this. If you scroll down below the screencast, there are instructions how to set up your forum to achieve this.

The key to making a forum a place for students to peer assess is to enable ratings and then give them the permission to rate each others’ submissions. (What they submit might be text or an attachment such as an image, slideshow, movie/sound file)

1. In the settings for your forum, in “grade”, choose how you want the ratings to work. I chose “average”. All students must grade(rate) each others’ submissions and then each classmate will have an average mark.
2. I kept to the numbers scale for simplicity but you can use customised scales if you wish
3. In course admin>assign roles, click on the “override permissions” tab. (If you are a teacher and you don’t see this tab then ask your Moodle admin to give you the rights to “override permissions”)
4. Click on “student” and scroll down to the forum section
5. To allow them to rate/grade each others’ submissions click the “allow ” button for “rate posts”
6. If you don’t want them to be able to see  who has given which grade to whom , then click the “prevent” buttons for “view any rating” and “view rating”.

When I was approached, in the summer of 2008 by David Barnes of Packt to write Moodle 1.19 for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds, we discussed subject matter, and I suggested basing it on Language teaching as I am an MFL teacher by qualification. David told me there was already a Moodle languages book in the pipeline, so we settled for some fun Geography instead, but since then I have been awaiting with eager anticipation the Moodle book on a subject dear to my heart. Well today it arrived – Moodle 1.9 For Second Language Teaching by Jeff Stanford – and what an admirable tome it is! Respect to that man for making it so comprehensive! It goes thoroughly through the four skills of language teaching – Speaking, Listening Reading and Writing, with a plethora of common sense and inspired suggestions for delivering learning via Moodle. There is a sample chapter on the Packt website here The first two chapters deal with why you should use Moodle and the mechanics of setting up Moodle for Language Teaching, while the subsequent chapters deal with language- specific issues such as vocabulary learning, grammar practice and assessment. As if he hadn’t given us enough in the printed book, there are also two further chapters available on the Packt website, covering the layout of your course (highly important to grab and keep your students) and introducing Moodle to your classes. While the book is based on teaching English to non-native speakers, all the suggestions transfer perfectly to modern foreign language teachers such as myself. As he says in Chapter one, the book is “firmly rooted in a communicative approach to language learning” and I appreciated the way Jeff set out the Key Features of CILT versus Moodle Features supporting CILT.

Some random thoughts and observations:

To get the most of this book’s suggestions you’d need either to be admin or have an admin with ftp access to your server to add non-standard modules. Jeff makes heavy use of Nanogong (which fortuitously has just been added as an assignment type this week) , Inwicast Mediacenter and modules such as Questionnaire, OU Blog/Wiki (more powerful than Moodle’s) and Webquest. However, if you don’t have access to these, there are plenty of activities using Moodle’s Glossary, Quiz or HotPotatoes which will serve you well. He also provides instructions and ideas for using the free software Audacity for making sound recordings.
The book’s strong point –its huge range of activities – could possibly be daunting at first to a complete Moodle novice. If you are at all frightened of Moodle I suggest you test the waters first with Moodle 1.9 for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds (even if your students are older) as it assumes no knowledge whatsoever short of being able to turn on your computer. After that,or if you are already  relatively happy with Moodle and computer skills,  I would go straight to Chapter 3 and savour the delicious variety of “recipes” which Jeff serves up. For each task he provides an Aim (Help students identify grammar points) the Moodle module required (Lesson) any extra programs (Audacity/youtube) and a starred system for ease of use (***) I think this is very useful. It means the book can lend itself to teachers browsing for ideas – looking at different activities – checking their Moodle has those modules and they have the skill level required – and going for it!
Moodle 1.9 For Second Language Teaching is available from the Moodle books section of the Packt website. I could write a lot more but I suggest you read it for yourselves!

Moodle has a new basic assignment type, thanks to Dan Poltawski of LUNS and CLEO land here in the NW of England. Similar to the “upload a single file” type where students can browse and send you their work for marking , the nanogong assignment presents them with a little sound recorder into which they can record themselves , play back to check and then send to you. Nanogong’s been around and popular for a while but now it’s in an easy-to-operate assignment . Below is a simple screencast showing how to install (if you have admin rights) and how to use it with your students. It has been a big hit for us in Modern languages because it’s an excellent way of setting speaking homeworks – but it has advantages also for those students who might find writing/typing difficult and who would  be happy to speak their responses instead of worry about spelling. They can have a choice now – speak or type!

Although Moodle HQ  is physically based in Perth Western Australia, it has remote  outposts thousands of miles away in the Northern Hemisphere and last week I was privileged to  meet Helen Foster Moodle Community Manager and c0-author of Using Moodle  2nd Ed who’s based in Bonheiden, Belgium. We spent a lovely few hours together over dinner and a view of the runway of Brussels airport, talking about everything from the ins and outs of moodle.org and moodle.com to the linguistic nuances of Flemish v Dutch v German ( once a linguist, always a linguist!). I look forward to meeting Helen again if I can somehow get back onto mainland Europe – especially as one of her revelations was how lovely German (and ex-Midland) Moodler Stephan Rinkeis 

..or “How to let teachers see a block but not students” – a request often asked over on the forums at moodle.orgIf you have Moodle 1.9 you can control whether guests (non-logged in users) can see blocks or not. It is also possible, with some role and permisson editing, to allow a certain group of people access to a block while preventing others. The video below shows how to do it – but if, like me, you can’t get youtube in your area – there are instructions beneath the video!

1. Make your block!
2. With the editing turned on, click on the “assign roles” icon and then click on “override permissions” You need to click guest and change the button to prevent (viewblock) When you have saved the changes, non-logged in users will not be able to see this block
3. If you only want your teachers (or a certain group of users to see it) you need first to create a new role. (Just because your teachers are teachers in the Real World, Moodle won’t recognise them as such on your front page and so you need to specify who precisely is allowed to view this block.)
4. In site admistration>users>permissions>define roles, go to the bottom of the screen and click “add a new role”
5. Make a new , plain, basic role – call it what you like – teacher block viewer, for example.
6. Save this role and then go back to your front page block and click the “assign roles” icon again
7. You need to define who can view this block by assigning them the role of “teacher block viewer” in this block
8. Click the blue words for your role (teacher block viewer) and select from the box on the right the people you want to allow to see the block. Move them with the arrow to the box on the left.
9. Click the override permissions tab (as you did for the student) For the teacher block viewer, press the allow button and for the authenticated user press the prevent button.
10. Some people have their default front page role as student – if this is you, then in override permissions, click prevent for the student role.
11. Try it out!

I’ve noticed a trend, as the new term approaches in many Moodle-using countries, that questions are asked on the Moodle.org forums regarding installation, enrolment of students and the best way to “share” courses between several teachers with different classes without everyone getting in each others’ way. This latter query has appeared several  times in the last couple of weeks. Personally I don’t have a problem with everyone seeing everyone else’s activities. (The students will never see their classmates’ work anyway, and if teachers can view what their colleagues are doing, surely that’s a Good Thing in terms of collaboration and self-evaluation?) But there have been various workarounds suggested, from each teacher and class having their own Moodle course to  the setting up of  metcourses.  However, in Moodle 1.9 onwards, there is another way: Groupings. Groupings act a bit like the Harry Potter Invisibility Cloak and give you the power to make certain tasks invisible from some classes (groups) but available to others, all within a single Moodle course. So  if you don’t want Mr Jones’ class to see what Mrs Smith’s class is doing – or if you want your set 4 not to have access to your set 1 work -and you are absolutely sure that’s a good idea – then this video shows you how: