mOOdle_ation[s]

How to make a clickable Moodle page...

Videofile is a Moodle 2.4+ resource plugin intended to provide teachers with easy handling of cross-browser compatible videos using Video.js. In most cases it should be enough to add .mp4 video files which will then play in an html5 player in modern browsers and in a flash player in older browsers.

Videofile and Video.js also supports WebVTT captions as well as a poster image that displays before the video is started. It works well with responsive themes.

WIth MindMap Course, Moodle becomes a first LMS which allows students for using courses through interactive, personalized mindmap. Additionally, it provides features unavailable in standard Moodle so far, which are: 1) graphical presentation of conditional dependencies and 2) distinction of modules where student have problems (and which are near deadline). Map files can be downloaded, they are compatible with Freemind software.

Map is interactive. Users can enter course elements (like sections, modules, lesson and book pages) directly from map. Elements which were not visited by user are distincted with bold font. There are displayed arrows, which describe conditional activity dependencies. Modules, where a particular student has problems, and available time is running out, are appropriately highligthted as well.

Map files can be downloaded and opened in Freemind software, what gives teachers additional features. For example, to create a task for students teacher downloads a map and change it, for example move some elements, add invalid elements, create (or not) a list with elements possible for using. Students task will be getting map to the correct content.

This app requires Java and Flash to work.

Moodle (acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is an open source Learning Management System (LMS ) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE ). It is rising in popularity among the educators around the world, as a tool for creating dynamic websites for students. It is open source, since it is customizable, has no contracts or user costs to pay and is widely available for free use. It can be efficiently integrated with your management system and allows you to support personalized learning, which is effective even outside the classroom and encourages the involvement of the broader community of the institution.

Moodle has constantly maintained its top spot among the LMS tools and has been ranked 11th overall among the top 100 tools for learning in 2013 . Many factors have contributed to Moodle being highly successful. On top of being a great LMS, it is also free to use. Teachers can teach their own online courses using this and find it stable and easy to use and being customizable, it fits to its user’s needs with ease.

 Moodle has several advantages over other LMSs, here’s the list of a few:

- It is an open source learning platform, which is utilized by millions of people worldwide. This open source nature allows anybody to tinker with its code or add new things. Users can share changes with the Moodle community for others to use for free. All this leads to the extension and reformation of the software.

- It makes use of simple technologies, as a result of which its developers are easy to find.

- It is built on some of the most reliable technologies, such as PHP, MySQL, Apache.

- It has a fully cooperative development model which offers constant scope for improvement by allowing many high quality contributions to acquire new modules, features and enhancements.

- It makes use of the more advanced programming approach, the object-oriented programming which makes its functionality all the more efficient and allows users to proceed at their own pace, as well as customize it according to their needs.

- It focuses on making the learning and teaching experience constructivist. This process encourages the involvement of learners in the learning process, rather than letting them receive knowledge passively. The learning environment becomes more democratic with interactive and student-centered activities.

- It is convenient for educational institutions and organizations for learning and course management.

- It can be quickly deployed in your organization, without the requirement of any extra efforts.

- It is highly cost-effective, since it has a low risk startup and a low initial investment.

- It provides you with fast and reliable updates of information.

- It provides you with regular support, all the time you use it. Its support feature is active twenty four hours a day, seven days a week and addresses to its developers, members and users.

Moodle’s External Link resource is one of the most flexible in the educator’s/course creator’s tool belt. To date we’ve been using IMS Global’s LTI 1.1 standard to provide access from Moodle to an assortment of 3rd party tools(or even other Moodle sites). The value is an uncomplicated SSO system that provides the minimum amount of data required to allow students to work on a 3rd party system to interact, socialize, or even take a test. In other LMSes it’s called bLTI (b as in “basic”).

Vital Source Technologies (perhaps known to you through their ebook service or recent acquisition of CourseSmart) is proposaing to upgrade Moodle’s LTI capabilities to the 2.0 specification available through IMS Global: http://www.imsglobal.org/blog/?p=184.

What’s the benefit? In short the process of setting up an External Tool should be much simpler to the end user and the supporting features more robust. According to the blog post at IMS Global announcing LTI 2 (in late 2012),

The latest release of Moodle took 6 months, 104 developers and resolved over 500 issues. It’s been interesting to hear about first the implementation of automated testing and now visualize the growth since 2.5. If you’re interested in Moodle 2.7 Development by the Numbers check out Michael de Raadt’s post here or the image below.

PE teacher at St. Andrews College in New Zealand and their use of SOLO taxonomy using Moodle - interesting for where we want to go! (@NixRichards look where your work ends up!

Tim Hunt‘s posted a great synopsis of a few usability changes to the Quiz module in the Moodle Forums and now is asking for feedback (votes) through either the forum or the tracker for those who are interested. The improvements aim to remove some of the interstitial clicks required to start a quiz, to make relevant information (whether the quiz has a password, time limit, limited attempts) earlier in the work flow and overall to remove some of the extra clicking that’s required to navigate to start, within, and once a student has completed a quiz.

There are 7 total UI tweaks part of the Epic tracking improvements. You can find a link to them all and see their progress here: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-46090.

If you’re looking to weigh in or ask a question, join the forum discussion here: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=262467

As Moodle mobile themes and apps have advanced over the past few years, so has Moodle as an engine for Mobile Learning. Mark Aberdour, the author has created a new text with Packt Publishing which ...

What are the most important LMS features for you? We’ve listed out 15+ most popular features that are critical in your learning management system comparison.

From Moodle to Edmodo to Inquisiq r3, there's a lot of tools you can use to manage, track, and deliver courses and training programs in your school. They're called Learning Management Solutions (LMS) or sometimes Learning Management Systems. Either way, how do you pick which is the best?

Key Takeaways

- The LMS industry is now a billion dollar plus industry.

- There are hundreds of LMS solutions out there.

- Moodle, Edmodo, and Blackboard are the big names in the industry.

- The most popular tool is not the most popular on social media. See: Edmodo vs Moodle

- Scroll down to the bottom to see the difference between who follows these companies on different social networks. View the LinkedIn stats in particular.

Authors:

Minjuan Wang, Yong Chen, and Muhammad Jahanzaib Khan 

Mobile cloud learning, a combination of mobile learning and cloud computing, is a relatively new concept that holds considerable promise for future development and delivery in the education sectors. Cloud computing helps mobile learning overcome obstacles related to mobile computing. The main focus of this paper is to explore how cloud computing changes traditional mobile learning. A case study of the usage of Moodle in the cloud via mobile learning in Khalifa University was conducted.

Published in: The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning

As usual Moodle HQ and our incredible community have brought together work from all corners of the globe to this release. Scalable, responsive and private, Moodle 2.7 is our best release yet. Here are some highlights of this release.

Full details of the release, with technical information, can be found in the Moodle 2.7 Release notes - http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_2.7_release_notes