Is Moodle worth the trouble?

[Pádraig Ó Dubhaigh]

At the risk of infuriating Moodle diehards and drawing all kinds of wrath upon myself, I ask a simple question "Is Moodle worth the trouble?"

From this & other Discussion Groups, I notice many posts about Moodle, from problems with Blocks to problems with V 2.0 and it has me wondering if admin & maintenance is an issue. 

I don't regularly use Moodle, my school doesn't have a VLE (other than Google Apps, which is different....) and I'd like to be convinced that it IS worth it. There are many members of this CESI-List who are Moodle fanatics (Hi Clare ;-) ) but it would be great to hear from new users who are enjoying the benefits and who unreservedly recommend it 

--
Le meas,

Pádraig Ó Dubhaigh

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[Imogen Bertin]

Good post. I was an enthusiastic user of Moodle in 2010 but am out of
date now for exactly this reason - don't have time to keep sorting out
Moodle upgrades/issues.

Am hoping to get time to watch Mark Glynn's Moodle seminars over the
summer. This year I came to the conclusion that Wordpress microsites
and facebook groups do a better job of engaging students unless you
need quiz/gradebook functions. However, I have been teaching at third
level where such options are a lot more feasible than in schools...
for many reasons.

My bottom line: VLEs are still too hard to use for both teachers and
students (don't get me started on Blackboard Coursesites... I tried to
do the Curt Bonk MOOC but it was a nightmare!). I realise this is not
a mainstream opinion and am looking forward to catching up on what
I've missed or misunderstood at the ILTA conference this Thursday and
Friday in Maynooth.

Imogen

[Jos Flores]

Hey Pádraig,

a personal opinion on this: It's not really about the tool but about
how you use it.

Moodle is supposed to support a social constructivist approach to
learning (http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Philosophy), if you can exploit
that, then it's worth it.
If you are going to use it as an administrative tool for stuff such as
uploading handouts or getting metrics about your students, then it's
probably not worth the trouble, especially if you already use Google
apps.

cheers,
José

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[Mark Glynn]

I'm what Padraig referred to as a Moodle fanatic - I've been called worse over the years :)


I agree with Jose wholeheartedly. Moodle is a tool, just like any other tool available, if used correctly and to its full potential will result in huge benefits. Thanks for the plug on the webinars Imogen, all of the recordings are now available - http://www.linireland.com/events/moodle-webinars.html I would particularly recommend the session by my fellow "Moodle fanatic" Clare Wallace - her session on "Databases and Glossaries" will illustrate some of the power of moodle. Specifically referring to Imogens point on Moodle being "difficult" in 2010. Yes it was but significant improvements have been made to change that. Here is a sneak preview of a poster that I will be presenting at the Edtech conference this week. This poster highlights the recent changes in moodle 2. After Friday please feel free to cut, paste, plagiarise or harvest - whatever your preferred term - and use the poster as you need. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2265966/Moodle%20resources/MG%20poster%20%20Whats%20new%20in%20moodle%202%20Edtech%202012.pptx

Like a lot of technology though you need to invest time and energy into them in order to see the benefits - I was lucky enough to be able to have the time to put into Moodle and both myself and my students are now reaping the benefits. If anybody has any questions on moodle please visit my blog (http://enhancingteaching.com) or mail me off-list - both are free :)

Kind regards

Mark

[Bije Barrett]

I'm new to the community. I've been receiving your e-.mails for about 2 weeks now and I've been picking up a great deal of knowledge. I'm a teacher in a secondary school with a daily rising passion to deliver the junior cert programme  and leaving cert programme in a virtual school environment.  I have very little experience of using moodle ( I have uploaded a word document course to my TY students only) but it would appear to me that it is the tool that could deliver a state run virtual schooling programme (South Carolina and Utah style). What really attracts me to moodle is its tracking of student participation and the recorded assessments of online tests

For the last year I've been using an e-learning package called Articulate to convert the leaving cert biology course into an  interactive learning programme. In my humble opinion, the government drive to deliver  technology to education has been teacher centered. It is time to focus on a student centered approach.

I know there are many e-learning packages out there but I have found Articulate  to be very user friendly. It can deliver voice over lessons with pictures and diagrams  on topics. Engage students with frequently asked questions from past paper on topics, with speed and ease. Engage students in learning diagrams and deliver instant feedback with online tests, which are not just word based. It can also offer easy revision with a flash card facility, which is also brilliant in delivering definitions many students need on topics. So it is quite a good package.

 

Having made the interactive lessons and published them in flash, I now would like to upload them to Moodle for next year. I intend to download the moodle package to a web site. It would appear that Moodle 2 is the package I should download? Do any of you experts out there see a problem in uploading flash delivered lessons to moodle?

 

Other questions I have are

 

 

If I upload this interactive biology course on moodle, can my moodle site be made available to a number of schools, where the teachers in those schools can administer and track their own students participation in it, without they having to upload the course themselves, on their own moodle site. 


In moodle if you input questions for an on line assessment, can it have a large data base of questions and only a small number be tested each time. e.g. 100 questions but only 25 each time and can they be different each time. If yes, can the selection be predetermined or is it at random.

Is there courses, on how to use Moodle, I can attend over the summer?

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Best Regards,

Bije Barrett

[JP Smith]

Hi folks,
 
I am currently using Windows Live Moviemaker. It is very limited in so far as overlaying images and organising music/ voice over etc. Do you have any recommendations for a more advanced program. Preferably free...
 
JP

[hetty c Murphy]

http://www.desktop-video-guide.com/top-5-free-video-editing-software-review.html

above is alink to recommendations havent tried wax it looks interesting -

also corel have anumber of trials on their site: http://www.corel.com

I found windows movie maker limited too.

Have used ulead studio not sure if you can get a trial.

Regards, Hetty Murphy

 

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[john marshall]

Pinnacle are far and a way the best for video editing in my opinion. You could make a blockbuster with avid. free 30 day triail: http://apps.avid.com/Studio_trial/?cmpid=ST-PA-P151 

 

John A Marshall

Cork

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JOHN A. MARSHALL

[Cormac Cahill]

Not free but I've been using iMovie on the Mac for the past few years to edit videos. I'm a primary teacher and even kids as young as 7 have been using it to edit videos. Very intuitive when it comes to adding music or narration. If you have a backing track and are recording a VoiceOver it will automatically drop the level of the backing track for you. Also easy to create nice transitions and add effects including using green screen to add in backgrounds. 

Not too sure about free versions. I definitely think you get what you pay for and while the Mac is more expensive you get all the software you need included as standard. If you do use video a lot in the classroom it's definitely a great option to look at. 

Cormac

Seolta ó mo iPhone

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[Simon Lewis]

Agree with Cormac. I find iMovie really easy to use. It took me only 15 minutes (outside of uploading/downloading time) to edit 6 Teachmeet videos of about 1 hour in total footage. The drag/drop nature of the program is excellent.

S
-------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Lewis               
http://about.me/anseo
---------------------------------------------------
Anseo.net - http://www.anseo.net
Try Mash, the new web site for primary teachers - http://www.mash.ie

[Hilary Mc Loughlin]

Another vote for iMovie! It's the main reason I stick with mac! A doddle to teach kids to use and it offers a very fine set of tools which allow for frame by frame accuracy - unlike Windows Movie Maker

Hilary

Hilary Mc Loughlin

[Greg Ashe]

And remember there is iMovie for the iPad and iPhone now.

GA 

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+ 353 61 386443

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[Pádraig Ó Dubhaigh]

Thanks for the replies to this. 

Interesting. 

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Pádraig Ó Dubhaigh

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[John Hennessy]

Hi All.

Apologies for length but I haven't posted for a very long time ... 

About Moodle ...

I returned to teaching mainstream second level classes 3 years ago.

I use Moodle throughout as the:

class learning thread (digital textbook replacement)

aggregator all resources

way to assign and mark homework

record of student work (on and offline)

record of student discussion (online)

record of teacher and student feedback

main record of work done by the class

main support for teacher self reflection

I don't use it as a filestore but in second level teaching some such resources are needed.

Files are now being linked or embedded from repositories (like Google Apps or Dropbox).

A very sensible solution which avoids file sprawl when many courses are developed.

It dovetails with student use of Google Apps for assignments.

I TRY to achieve a balance of ASSIGNMENTS and online ACTIVITIES:

forums, glossaries, quizzes (questioning), hot potatoes, games, quizlets, etc

Almost all work is gathered together in the gradebook.

Can I unreservedly recommend Moodle?

YES! :)

With experience and a lot of work, using Moodle can be very rewarding.

Students have no difficulty in accessing or using Moodle now on mobiles, iPads, computers or other devices

Moodle has the capacity to provide an institutional or even national framework for all the work of school related to teaching and learning. Yet each teacher can have freedom in how they use it for their own classes and most internet facilities can be incorporated. With the proposed new Junior Cert it is something which should be evaluated at the highest level since it could help address many of the issues rightly raised by teachers. It is the solid Moodle framework which makes it so potentially useful and attractive to teachers with its familiar model of courses containing resources tasks and grades.

BUT ... NO ... :(

Teachers work very hard when they see clear benefits to their students and themselves.

But in the fragmented context of ICT in education in Ireland enthusiastic individuals who embrace ICT and its possibilities adopt any tools they feel they can themselves use with their students to good effect. There is now a plethora of such tools available. Some could be adopted for whole school use but we need to explore how this might sit in the broader context.

I think Moodle is more a choice to be made by an institution or system although some individual teachers who set up their own Moodle do benefit hugely (but then need to be aware of issues of upgrade, security, etc). Once an institution does adopt Moodle it is then a huge task to bring the majority of teachers on board. I suggest that that is not simply down to Moodle. The real question is how can effective student use of ICT be developed with the majority of teachers? And that brings us to our current second level system and why change is so clearly essential.

All the best

[Peter Lydon]

This is nice. http://uk.fronter.info/product/
PL

[Piotr Korta]

Hi Pádraig,

Moodle can be a very effective system, once deployed properly. Like any system of that kind, it has its quirks, but depending on one's skill, the learning curve for the staff / students can be reduced dramatically by introducing appropriate extensions.

After I installed moodle for the first time, demonstrated it to our staff, and allowed them to use it for a few months, I'd notice that some people get instantly comfortable with it, while others seem a little baffled on how the whole thing works. So I kept on working on making the experience easier and easier. In its current form, people have folders on their computers, where they drop documents, and the background system does the renaming, delivery and publication automatically. Since the introduction of that stuff, I get practically zero questions of the "How do I ..." kind.

So yes, it has a lot of advantages. And the disadvantages it has, can be circumvented with sufficient effort. And I have to admit, our place would not function that well without moodle.

Regards

Piotr Korta

On Wednesday, 30 May 2012 11:38:20 UTC+1, Pádraig Ó Dubhaigh wrote: