Low-Overhead Uses of Moodle - MUG Mailing #3

Topics:

• Low-Overhead Uses of Moodle
  • News Forums
  • Linking to a file
• Event duplication in the backup/restore process
• Scheduler

Low-Overhead Uses of Moodle
Here are two easy and effective ways to use Moodle.

News forums

• Posts to the news forums automatically send email copies to your students
• If students add the class, you can send them to the news forum to catch up on the announcements you have already made
• Automatically generated - all you have to do is click on "News Forum" at the top of your course page, then "add a new topic" and you're on your way

Linking to a file

• An easy, paperless way to distribute materials to your students - Word documents, pdfs, or images
• No risk of students loosing the paper
• Students have the option of printing it if they prefer reading printed material, but they can always get it again if they can't find their printed copy
•  No need to worry about printing something right before class and whether or not the printer is in use - just link to it on Moodle and then direct your students to it
• To link to a file, just do the following:
  • Go to the course page in Moodle
  • Turn editing on
  • Add a resource -> Link to a file or website
  • Enter a name
  • Click "Choose or upload a file" 
  • Click "Upload a file"
  • Click "Browse..." and find the desired file
  • Select it and click "Open"
  • Click "Upload this file"
  • Find the uploaded file in the list and click "Choose" on the far right.
  • Click "Save and return to course"

Duplicated course events from a backup/restore or import process
If you used backup/restore or import to copy information from an old course, you might notice in either your Moodle calendar or your Zimbra calendar that you now have two class times scheduled for each day.  There's no way to avoid this problem, but details on how to fix it are available at <https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/at/faq/?faq_id=554108>

Scheduler
Scheduler is an activity in Moodle that allows you to schedule one-on-one appointments with all your students. You specify the periods during which you (or TAs) are available to see the students and the length of each appointment. The students then book themselves into one of the available time slots.

• You can have students sign up for time slots outside of class instead of passing a sign-up sheet around
• Can be used for advising meetings as well - have an AT set up a course for you and your advisees

Remember to sign up for the MUG Mailing list at http://lists.carleton.edu/info/mug!!

We've all received emails from mailing lists (also called a list-serv) of some sort.  Most mailing lists have online archives that members of the list can use.  While they aren't always easy to search, list-serv archives can be really useful if you don't keep every message from list-servs in your mailbox. 

The Carleton list-serv system, named Sympa, has the same feature, and if you log in to https://lists.carleton.edu/ with a web browser, you can look at the archives for any Carleton mailing list.  That includes:

• all_campus emails
• faculty-all emails
• student-all emails
• staff-all emails
• course emails sent through the automatically created course email lists (eg., CAMS101-00-w09@lists.carleton.edu)
• any emails sent to an email address ending with @lists.carleton.edu.

Also on the topic of Sympa list-servs, people without Carleton accounts or otherwise unaffiliated with Carleton can be added to any of our mailing lists by the administrators for the list.  This can be a useful alternative to creating a Contact Group in Zimbra or your address book programs, so keep it in mind!

We are gathering information on how the recent server instability has affected your work and/or courses.  In particular, we are focusing on methods of efficiently communicating with you when we know of potential trouble with specific services.  If you have any feedback on these issues, we would be more than happy to hear it!

You can give us feedback either through the comment feature on this blog, or via email.

Also, if you are having any further troubles with connecting to Collab or other network folders, or printing, please let Rapid Response know at x5999. 

Moodle Gradebook users may be interested to know that the ATs will be having a Gradebook Clinic of sorts today until late this evening for any last minute grading issues that pop up.  We will be in our offices for the most part this afternoon, or available through our office phones.  Paula will be available until 10pm this evening as well; call her office phone to reach her for grading issues. As always, you can also email us in general at our group email at@carleton.edu.

Carly and Paula will also be around on Friday and happy to answer questions  about Moodle Gradebook for anyone who interested in using it next term or had other questions today that you didn't have time to call us about.

As comps season is wrapping up or ramping up for various departments, it is time to really start thinking about the new policy on digitizing and archiving comps.  There are a number of people working on the nuts and bolts of how this will work, and though there are still a number of wrinkles to iron out and questions left to be answered, we have high hopes for this project.  If you have any questions about the process, the instructions, the policy itself, or any concerns about this at all, please contact an AT, a Reference Librarian, or Carol Eyler!

The Carleton ContentDM collection reached 40,000 images this week, and continues to grow. If you haven't seen our digital image collection yet, you should take a look:  contentdm.carleton.edu

This year's Horizon Report from the New Media Consortium is now available.  The Horizon Report looks at the trends, challenges, and projected future of technology in education. 

Some highlights from the trends for 2009:

• More collaboration in our work and communication. 
• Collective intelligence is redefining how we think about ambiguity and imprecision.
• Using games as learning tools is becoming standard among the younger generations.
  
• Visualization tools are considered vital to making information more meaningful.
• Mobile phones are a center for massive innovation in learning and teaching.

For the full report, feel free to visit the NMC website!

The Moodle Museum is always looking for submissions, and as the term winds down, now is a great time to think about whether you want to donate any of your Moodle pages from this term to the Museum!  

Remember, submitting is easy.  Just fill out our form saying which course you want to donate and why, and we'll take care of the rest, like creating a copy of the course without any of the student information included.  Without your submissions, we won't have much of a museum, so please consider donating!

I found an interesting blog about Language Learning by Joe Dale, who appears to be in England. Here is his post about Boosting Confidence in Languages through the use of video and podcasting. Check out this video testimonial from TeacherTube:

Academic Technologies is putting together a series of Moodle Workshops surrouding the integration of Moodle and other visual and multimedia materials.  Topics include: Managing Moodle Resources, Digitizing Media, Basic Image Manipulation, Embedding Media into Moodle, and more!  Please check out our AT Events Calendar for more information and to register!