I’d like to do a Moodle work-in where I get together with 2 or 3 faculty and test these modules with real course stuff to determine inclusion. Spend a week over May working with the test v1.6 on Macarius in the Faculty Development Lab.
Hey, I’m famous! Someone has actaully quoted a web page I created: Using Moodle: Sakai Vs. Moodle. I’m totally chuffed!
And I think that this statement from this post is revealing:
“The Sakai community tends to be software developers and instructional technologists rather than faculty. “
But this is also true:
“Rather than view the two development projects as competitive I believe we all can learn from experiences of both learning systems. Reports such as Joseph Cavanaugh’s “Teaching Online - A Time Comparison” and Kathy D. Munoz and Joan Van Duze’ report “Blackboard vs. Moodle: A Comparison of Satisfaction with Online Teaching and Learning Tools” are important to the effective use of any learning system.
elgg.org :: the learning landscape — this looks very interesting.
Martin Langhoff and compatriots in New Zealand are working on integrating Elgg with Moodle . Here’s how it could appeal:
“Immediately appealing are the ideas of being able to set journal / assignment type activites in Moodle to be accomplished in Elgg, so that learners can share their reflections with their peers rather than just their teachers, and to bring Elgg’s social tagging tools to Moodle resources and activities.”
Elgg Information
Elgg Development Archives
To Do — download and install on Macarius
Quotes and Testimonials - Elgg Information
“I use Elgg in both corporate and academic environments. I selected Elgg because it matches my focus of learning as a connection-forming process. Most technology learning tools I’ve encountered assume that learning happens through content consumption. I believe learning happens through the formation of connections, with social interactions playing a critical enabling process. Through the use of Elgg, I hope to create learning environments for my learners that are reflective of the types of challenges they will face in real life - where learning is often ‘fuzzy’ and nebulous, not static and structured.”
by Neal Baker
26 February 2006
Here are a few snapshot examples of how other institutions support technology in ways that differ from Earlham. In some instances, librarian roles have changed to various extents. In others, librarian roles remain the same. These snapshots are by no means intended to be exhaustive; they simply demonstrate a small range of technology support models. Others on this task force could undoubtedly supply additional models.
http://apps.carleton.edu/campus/its/support/acad/support/
Librarians possess the standard-issue superpowers of reference and library instruction but nothing more. However, the separate Information Technology Services unit has four Academic Computing Coordinators who are assigned a division (e.g. Sciences, Humanities). Each Academic Computing Coordinator is the personal and single point of contact for all computing needs in a division: computer delivery and setup, general computing assistance, computer training, instructional design, etc. Each Academic Computing Coordinator has a division-applicable academic background and experience in teaching and research. Each Academic Computing Coordinator works with a number of student Academic Computing Assistants.
http://www.grinnell.edu/offices/instructionaltechnologies/
Here too, librarians are “just” librarians. Faculty technology support resembles the Carleton model but is more project-oriented. Grinnell’s three Curricular Technology Specialists are not a single point of contact for their respective divisions, but are instead project-based technologists with a background in curricular development and pedagogy.
http://lbis.kenyon.edu/about/documents/
http://lbis.kenyon.edu/staff/reflibns/
Reference and Instruction Librarians at Kenyon have morphed into “Librarian and Technology Consultants” and are assigned liaison duties to departments for which they develop the collections, provide desktop computing support, and offer research instruction. The overall “Library and Information Services” unit has four departments that merge computing and the libraries:
http://www.lib.ku.edu/instruction/
http://www.lib.ku.edu/instruction/it/
Instruction Librarians and IT trainers merged into an Instructional Services unit within the Library. This umbrella training organization provides individual consulting for faculty and students and teaches everything from course-integrated research instruction to GIS, Flash, Mac OS X, Dreamweaver, creating video for instruction, etc. A representative position title is “Information Technology Trainer & Instructional Outreach Coordinator.” Reference Librarians also contribute to the workshop schedule.
(PowerPoint presentation attached)
Reference Librarians and Instructional Technologists are separate, but collaborate by focusing their attention on sophomore seminars, a College mission-statement-driven curricular development. The collaboration is called Hamilton Information and Learning Liaisons (HILLgroup), managed by four coordinators (two Reference Librarians and two Instructional Technologists) who rotate roles. With buy-in from the Dean and President, they work with faculty to produce large posters and video assignments in sophomore seminars (these are basically alternatives to the research paper).
http://www.bucknell.edu/Library_computing/About_ISR/index.html
Their ISR is like our IS, what I call a “federal” model where units retain functional autonomy but are coordinated at a higher-level à la Brussels, Strasbourg, and the European Union. However, Earlham’s ITAM functions are divided into two separate units at Bucknell: (1) “Instructional Technology Enhancing the Curriculum”; and (2) “Learning Spaces” which provides AV support AND manages computer labs and information commons-type areas. Consensus management is a hallmark of the ISR organization and forms part of their conference circuit dog-and-pony show. We could flex our marketing muscles and take our Quaker governance model on the road!
http://www.depauw.edu/it/itap/
http://www.depauw.edu/it/itap/projects.asp
Admittedly, this initiative does not involve librarians per se, but it is an interesting model for linking the liberal arts to technology support. Students undergo a highly-selective admissions process to become ITAP Associates, which involves a four-year rotation where they work with DePauw IT professionals and end up aiding the curriculum and the administration in various ways while receiving academic credit.
The move to MySQL backend has opened up a wealth of new modules/blocks that we can now employ. But we need to test them out.
New Module: Feedback downloaded to D:\markp\moodle modules\feedback.zip . Install and test
Updated release of Marginalia annotation for Moodle forums downlaoded to D:\markp\moodle modules\moodle16-annotation-20060225.tgz web site — Marginalia Web Annotation
Peer Review no code as yet. Last activity
Scott Turner: 19th Sept 05. I’ve placed a demo copy up on a public server so people can play with my peer review module. If you are interested, email me (it’s in my profile) and I’ll send you the needed info. It is still in the development stages, so I know there are interface problems, but most of the functionality should be there and working.
Michael Penney - Friday, 17 February 2006, 12:35 PM
We’re (Humboldt State) just about finished with Gallery2 integration, Mark is working on Backup and Restore now.
Should be ready in a week or so.
Slideshow module downloaded to D:\markp\moodle modules\slideshow.zip
Re: Slideshow module
by James Barrett - Friday, 17 February 2006, 04:53 AMThe module simply displays the contents of any selected directory containing images within the course files area, it doesn’t facilitate the uploading of files as such. I’ll try to create step-by-step instruction list to create a slideshow instance:
1: In the course files area, create a directory for your slideshow images, and upload your jpg files to it, either one by one or as a zip archive. Remember to unzip the archive if you do it this way.
2: Return to the main course area, turn editing on and add activity > JPG slideshow
3: Use the dropdown to select the directory you have prepared with your images. If you want captions to be visible, choose the appropriate option from the set of radio buttons.
4: If you have displayed captions, you will probably want to edit them, as the default captions are just the filenames. Click on “edit captions” and a page will appear showing thumbnails adjacent to form fields for captions. When you are happy with the captions, cick on “save changes” and you are done!
Also Using Images in the Moodle Virtual Learning Environment
New Podcasting module downloaded to D:\markp\moodle modules\ipodcast-v.25.zip
Current Functionality
1. Ability to create a per course podcast feed.
2. supports iTunes extended tags
3. Per media file view logging by user.
4. iTunes compatible media downloads from moodledata.
5. Student comments per podcast item.
6. Ability to uplad media files and select for podcast.
7. Adds duration tag from for mp3 files.
8. Dynamic on the fly per user rss feed.
9. Scheduled visibility window.
10. All iTunes tags are editable.
11. Default tags are loaded from course settings.My current todo list.
1. External reference for media files.
2. Finish Backuplibs
3. Finish Restorelibs
4. Add ffmpeg library support
5. Finish help files
6. many small interface fixes
7. Add some error checking
8. Add student posting ability(ie foreign language responses)Comments, bug reports, etc are welcome to further develop this module. currently testing on version 1.5.3 of moodle.
The only moodle file modified is the /lib/rsslib.php to provide some extended tags.Add this change to rsslib.php
Dmitry’s Attendance Block (v1.0.7) downloaded to d:\markp\ moodle modules\block_attendance.zip
dfwiki downloaded to d:\markp\ moodle modules\dfwiki_1.0_rev2006021401.zip
1. Download dfwiki zip from http://appserv.lsi.upc.es/palangana/moodle/course/view.php?id=15
2. Unzip it to a location on your machine. You will see 3 folders: course, lang and mod
3. Start up your ftp software, locate the three dfwiki folders you unzipped at step 2 on your machine
4. Connect to your moodle site
5. Access the
6. Upload the course folder to
7. Upload the lang folder to
8. Upload the mod folder to
9. Disconnect the ftp – well done you’=ve uploaded the dfwiki module, now you have to get it working
10. Login to your moodle site as an administrator and go to the “admin page”…dfwiki will start updating your database and giving green messages ( if they turn red … call for help )
11. Well done – dfwiki should now be available as an activity under the activity menu.
Importing data from 1.5 wiki…..
Add ons from Humbolt
HSU Faculty Guide to Moodle
HSU Student Introduction to Moodle
Using Moodle: Moodle and Dspace repository?
Our project, Mediterranean Virtual University , is only just beginning to look at a digital library to complement the learning enviroment (ie Moodle) so we don’t have any papers so far. The aim is to provide a central resource that can be referenced by individual Moodle courses providing mainly background material and readings, rather than packaged learning objects. In this context Dublin Core metadata is sufficient for our purposes (indeed there is a debate whether the way IEEE LOM is actually used in practice really adds much more than is already in the Dublin Core). However, the main thing is to manage the authentication so that access to materials can be restricted to the appropriate students.
Incidentally, we are also looking at setting up a handle server to manage and maintain links to external web resources. Course developers will then be able to reference a handle rather than a URL for a particular website secure in the knowledge that the handle will be kept up to date and pointing to the right resource even if its URL changes. In this case there is not much integration required with Moodle.
very interesting. Especially the ‘handle server’. “secure in the knowledge that the handle will be kept up to date and pointing to the right resource even if its URL changes.” — this is huge. We need this now!
Comments on CHANGING A CULTURAL ICON: the ACADEMIC LIBRARY AS A VIRTUAL DESTINATION
by Jerry D. Campbell
Educause Review Jan/Feb 2006. Download file
“The reality was that ease of access significantly affected users’ willingness to consult a particular source of information. This circumstance drove academic libraries to exploit every means available in the classroom or on the Web1 to teach students how to assess critically the Web-based information”
So, how does this happen at Earlham? What means are we using to teach students how to critically assess Web based information?
Thus, deep into the digital age, academic libraries have relinquished much of their fundamental and sustaining role. For most people, including academicians, the library—in its most basic function as a source of information—has become overwhelmingly a virtual destination.
This just about sums it up. Also note the enthusiastic and uncritical heralding of the GooglePrint project.
As libraries and other agencies continue to make information accessible via the Web, there will be considerable need within the academy for the development of portals, tools, and strategies customized for precision research on the vast Web.
YES! See comments in other blog entry
“proactively created educational guides and other helpful tools to inform scholars before questions arose. “
This function could still be very useful.
The author asserts that :
“the librarian-assisted, face to-face reference services—in all of their manifestations, including those that are technology-empowered—are realistically too limited in scope and speed to be the academy’s answer to providing assistance in the Web-based knowledge environment. In an environment increasingly characterized by information on demand and instant information gratification, the academic public has decreasing patience with reference services based on personal response, even if they are Web-delivered and asynchronous.”
I think that this is nonsense. Faculty in particular still desire one-on-one interactions of this sort. In a similar vien, when asked about ‘training’ a senior faculty replied that he had no desire for ‘training’; he just wanted to know the parts that were relevant for himself; that is, he wanted one-on-one instruction and he wnated it when he needed it (and not at times set by a training schedule). Moreover, the addendum “even if they are Web-delivered and asynchronous.” misses the point. Faculty want synchronous assistance - they want an answer to the question now before the class session and not by email several hours later. They need Just-In-Time assistance.
In the context of Moving the Library into Moodle have to think about:
“librarians risk being vilified as cultural barbarians by the general academic community as well as by some of their library colleagues.”
Hands up all Reference Librariians with Visigoth sympathies!
Excellent article.
1 For a good example, see Esther Grassian, “Thinking Critically about World Wide Web Resources” June 1995, updated September 6, 2000, <http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/help/critical/>.
Indiana University and University of Michigan
Receive Grant to Increase Visibility of the Invisible Web
“Indiana University, together with the University of Michigan as a subcontractor, requests $438,267 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a project to integrate access to library licensed digital content within Sakai. The project will run over an eighteen-month period from January 1, 2006 through June 30, 2007 and will provide funding for 3 additional FTE for project management, programming, interface design, and evaluation, as well as support for necessary travel, meetings, and computer hardware.”It costs that much and takes that long?
This should be the start of something bigger:
Moving the Library into Moodle
Universal access to information on the web and the provision of Library resources through a web interface is pushing the roles traditionally performed by the Library system to the periphery of academic life. For example, whereas the Humanities program at Earlham had an intentional bibliographic component, the new ES, IP & CP courses which replaced this do not necessarily have any formal Library input.
But the need for bibliographic skills, guidance from Reference Librarians and help in locating quality resources has grown rather than diminished.
So we want to move the library paradigm back into the centre of the teaching and research effort.
Note that Moodle is probably the most widely used central system by teaching faculty. So siting a Library focus within Moodle makes a lot of sense.
This could take the form of a Moodle block or some other object (perhaps a new ‘floating’ window) which could appear independently of the course but be closely linked to it.
For possible functionality — see later.
More from NeedToKnow mailing list by Dave Green on 17th Feb:
As social software theorist Danah Boyd seemed to be arguing
last year: don’t we all “remix” culture when, for instance, we
buy clothes or furniture and then combine them in a way that
isn’t exactly the same as depicted in the shop? What do you
mean, “No, not really”? Expect somewhat more pragmatic
insights at Rufus “Open Knowledge Foundation” Pollock’s FORUM
ON OPEN CONTENT (7pm, next Wed 2006-02-22, Stanhope Centre,
Marble Arch, London W2 2HH, free but pre-register if you can),
where Paula “iCommons” Le Dieu, Tom “Remix Reading” Chance,
Jennifer “BBC Creative Archive” Rigby, and Cory “DRM’s gonna
get ya!” Doctorow will be considering: Who will be producing
open content and how will it be funded? Does copyright hinder
the process, or help? And is the vibrant DJ culture of the UK
at least partly inspired by our culinary tradition of taking
boiled root vegetables, like the potato, then “mashing them
up” (perhaps with other tasty ingredients) to produce the
ideal accompaniment to a meal of sausages and baked beans?remix is active consumption not production
— and books: you can read the pages in any order you like!
Does Africa really need the $100 laptop?
- the end of this one’s got to be a joke though, surely?
From NeedToKnow mailing list by Dave Green on 17th Feb:
Even the most dedicated sports-hater can’t help but notice
that it’s an Olympic year, which - on recent evidence - means
it’s also time for one of those evenings where we grab a few
Brits who spoke at O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology conference,
then get them to (briefly) describe what they talked about -
and any other decent stuff they saw. This year, ETech runs
from March 6-9, and we’re just in the process of confirming a
lineup for a central London location on the evening of
Thursday 2006-03-23, so don’t say we never give you advance
notice or anything. Admittedly, most of the UK speakers we
recognise are from the London area, but we may be able to lure
the creators of social personal web archiving tool HANZO:WEB
over from Bristol as well - who describe their creation as
both “in public beta” and “the best bits of del.icio.us and
archive.org, rolled into a big sticky Katamari Damacy ball”.
http://wiki.oreillynet.com/etech/index.cgi?ConConUK
- like this, with (slightly) different people, and not in 2004
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/43/speakers.html
- Armitage! Bryant! Willison! Yoz! (mostly TBC at this stage)
http://hanzoweb.com/
So now we have:
The one I like best though is the Firefox extension called scrapbook. This captures a page and then lets you annotate it in a number of different ways. It’s dead brill and has a lot of potential pedagogical uses. Just imagine an assignment to capture a page from site x and then write comments inline, save and post to your Moodle wiki perhaps?