Thing 11: Whatsa Moodle?

Oodles of Moodles. Moodles of Noodles? Noodles of Oodles? Hm. I'm lost. Are we talking about Ramen, here?


Moodle is an open source (read: free) e-learning software. Here's a video from the Moodle people showing "what Moodle is all about". Schools across the world (from elementary to college) are using Moodle. The only thing one would need to run Moodle is a server that can hold the program. Our district (SWC833) has a Moodle server, so we are set to go!

Many of the things that you have already learned about (wikis, blogs) and things you will soon be learning about (online collaboration, surveys, and more) are integrated into Moodle. If you have ever wished for:
○ Online quizzes (scored automatically)
○ Online activities for students to access anywhere via the internet
○ Online notes/PowerPoint presentations for students to access as study resources
○ Forums for shared student thought/discussions
○ "Paperless" assignments (created online or uploaded by each student) with easy integrated grading

Then you might want to check out Moodle. Moodle is a simple, yet truly robust software that is available to increase web 2.0 usage and efficiency. (In the next "Thing" you'll have a chance to try out a Moodle demo course and also set up your own Moodle shell.)

Discovery Exercise
1. Watch the very short (about 2 minutes) video about "What is Moodle".
2. Watch the video about Moodle in the Classroom, featuring middle school teacher, Molly Tipton.
3. Blog about your thoughts about Moodle thus far. (If you're at a loss, check out some blog prompt ideas below.)

Discovery Resources
• One teacher talks about Moodle and the use in education, the use in his classroom and the "ups and downs".
• His example class of Moodle for you to check out.

Blog Prompts
• What do you think the strengths/weaknesses of using "hybrid" (online and classroom) courses are?
• What ideas do you have for the use of Moodle in your area?
• From what you know so far, If you could implement just one thing in Moodle, what would you be sure to do?

Challenge (optional) (these continue in the next "thing" as well)
• E-mail Gary Blok (if you're a member of district 833) and ask him to set you up with a class in Moodle for one of your classes. And then read this: Getting Started for Teachers
• If you already have a Moodle class, try one new thing that Molly Tipton talked about in the "Moodle in the Classroom" video. Or check out the "tips" in Getting Started for Teachers.
• Check out the "Teaching Do's" (like "encourage students to learn together") and "Teaching Don'ts" (like "Don't get overwhelmed by Moodle") .

Thing 10: My Own Wiki

Blogs and wikis can easily be used to set up a web presence for you, your family, and your students. The options are limitless. Take a look at some of the resources and cook up some ideas of how you might use a wiki (with/without/for your students).

Discovery Resources

1. describing the why and how of wikis in education.
2. some links to research on wikis in education
3. a collaborative wiki on using wikis in education
4. a blog post about common struggles teachers have when introducing wikis
5. List of examples of educational wikis:
6. Hints for creating a really positive experience for your students on your wiki
7. What are you going to do with your wiki? Here are a couple ideas
8. A wiki example from Westwood High School:
9. A literature wiki example
10. A math wiki example

Discovery Exercise:

1. Explore 3-5 (or more!) of the resources above and let your mind simmer with ideas.
2. Blog about ideas you or others might be able to use for wikis (or add them here, on our wiki)!
3. Create your own wiki for personal, class, or educational use through either wikispaces or pbwiki.
4. Blog about the experience of setting it up as well as what your wiki is (if you don't mind sharing-we'd love to come and visit!) and what you're wiki-ing about!

Thing 9: Practice Wiki

"Sandbox" is the term that wikis often use to describe the area of the website that should be used for pure play. For this discovery and exploration exercise, we’ve set up a whole SWC23 wiki that’s for nothing but play!

For this “explore-and-play-with-wikis” exercise, you are asked to add an entry or two to the Wikispaces SWC23 wiki. The theme of this wiki is simply “Favorites” : Favorite books, favorite vacation spots, favorite restaurants, favorite anything …all you need to do is play and add your thoughts. To mark your adventure on this site, you should add your blog to the Favorite Blogs page.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Access the SWC23 Wiki and create a login account for yourself.
2. Add your blog to the Favorite Blogs page. That's how we'll know that you've been there. It’s easy to do if you follow these simple steps:
   
   Example:
   
   
   • Title of blog.
   • Highlight the Title of Blog
   • Click on the world with the chain link button
   • Click on "external web address" and type (or copy and paste) it in!

OPTIONAL: Add a favorite or two to a few other pages (Favorite books, favorite vacation spot, etc). And, if you feel up to the challenge, you might even want to create a separate page for book review or short travel essay and link up to that.

3. Create a post in your blog about the experience. (For ideas if you're stuck, try the blog prompts below.)

Blog Prompts

1. What was easy/hard about working with the wiki?
2. What ideas do you have for how wikis might be used in education?
3. What ideas do you have for wikis and you? (foreshadowing, perhaps??)

* NOTE: The SWC23 Wiki was created using the free version of Wikispaces, a tool that lets you create webpages that anyone can edit. PBWiki is another great site for free educational wikis.

Thing 8: Wiki, Wiki, Whack!

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and likely the most well known of these knowledge-sharing tools. Wikis have many benefits, are easy to use, and have many applications.
Some of the benefits of wikis:

• Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.
• Tracking tools allow you to easily keep up on what has been changed and by whom.
• Earlier versions of a page can be rolled back and viewed when needed.
• Users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or add and edit content.

Schools and educators all over the country have begun to use wikis to collaborate and share knowledge. Among their applications are pathfinder or subject guide wikis, book review wikis, staff handbook wikis, and best practices wikis. As you can/will see when you view the wikis in the list below, the content of a wiki depends on the knowledge and commitment of participants.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Watch this Common Craft Video on Wikis. It is a great (quick and easy) introduction to wikis. (If you prefer reading to watching, check out the resources section below.)
   
2. Take a look at some wikis. Here are a few examples to get you started (and then find some on your own!):
3. Create a blog post about your findings. (If you're stuck on what to blog about, check out the prompt ideas below.)
   

• Moving Forward A huge list of fantastic educator examples of wikis
• Using Wiki in Education a wiki (about a book) for educators
• Web 2.0 wiki A primer for these fantastic Web 2.0 tools: wiki-style.
• The Chauncy School supplements textbook learning by adding resources, quizzes and notes to their wiki. It’s a great idea to create a new page for each unit and attach classroom handouts making them accessible from anywhere (from pbwiki "Educator examples")
• Professor Nana high school class uses PBwiki to build an online course guide. The syllabus is posted online and students are encouraged to share class notes, post questions, and build on each other’s work. The result is a fully formed analysis of course sections, and a great study guide for the final exam. (from pbwiki "Educator examples")
• Book Lovers Wiki - developed by the Princeton Public Library.

Here are some Minnesota wikis:

• Educational Heritage Project, a wiki from Minnesota Literacy Council
• Minnewiki from Minnesota Public Radio
• Beekeeping in MN wiki
• MN 150 wiki from Minnesota Historical Society

Resources

Use these resources to learn more about wikis:

• Using Wikis to Create Online Communities – a good overview of what a wiki is and how it can be used in libraries.
• Wikis: A Beginner’s Look – an excellent short slide presentation that offers a short introduction and examples.
• What is a Wiki? – Library Success wiki presentation.

Blog Prompts

• What did you find interesting about the wiki concept?
• What types of applications within schools might work well with a wiki?
• Many teachers/faculty "ban" Wikipedia as a source for student research. What do you think of the practice of limiting information by format?

Thing 7: Digg and Stumble

In the "olden days," people would scan the headlines in local and national news sources for the latest in breaking news, government reports, celebrity scandals, or new and cool information in an effort to be knowledgeable. Today we might use RSS to streamline that process... for the sites and sources we already know... but there are thousands of "new" news sources--not only mainstream media online, but Internet-only news/scandal sources, blogs, chats and more--to keep up with. What's a person to do?

One way to see what people are interested in is to check out what's popular on social media sites that allow users to nominate and then “vote” for news and other items they find interesting. There are many of these sites—and everyone from mainstream media (for example, The New York Times, slate.com, and the Washington Post) to blogs and Web sites includes links so readers can recommend content from these sites to other readers. Look for boxes labeled “Share” or “Article Tools” on news sites, blogs, and Web pages to find links for sharing the article. These are examples:


Here are some of the popular sites:
Digg “is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web...You won’t find editors at [Digg]… provide[s] a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online.”
StumbleUpon is similar to Digg, but solves that eternal question of "How would I have ever found such a great resource if I hadn't been mindlessly surfing the web for hours?". You can sign up under categories of interest and click "Stumble!" in your toolbar… and it will bring you to sites you would probably think are pretty neat and never otherwise know about. Your own tagging and bookmarking help others find the things they might like as well. Careful: This one is dangerously addictive.
Reddit is a “source for what's new and popular on the web…We want to democratize the traditional model by giving editorial control to the people who use the site, not those who run it.”
Newsvine lets “you...read stories from established media organizations…as well as individual contributors ... Placement of stories is determined by a multitude of factors including freshness, popularity, and reputation... editorial judgement (sic) is in the hands of the community.”
Mixx “is your link to the web content that really matters. There's a lot of information out there… And who knows better than you what informs you, what makes you think, what makes you laugh? So why should some faceless editor get to decide what's important?”
See a theme here? No editors to decide what information is important, user-generated content, reader recommendations/sharing, and you and others get to vote on what makes the top lists—the very definition of Web 2.0.

And it can affect educators—top stories/recommendations will drive questions from students and colleagues. Love it or hate, it pays to be in the know.

In this Thing, learn more about the five social media sites mentioned. Then read an article and recommend it to others via the site you choose to use.

Discovery Exercise
1. Explore the sites above to see how each is organized and operates.
Mixx Home Page
Mixx Tour
Digg Home Page
Digg Tour
StumbleUpon Home Page
StumbleUpon Tour
Newsvine Home Page
Newsvine Welcome
Reddit Home Page
Reddit Intro
2. Read one or more stories on a news/information site (for example, New York Times, Washington Post, BBC News, or another site) and then recommend it via the Share tools.
3. Blog about your thoughts! (If you're at a loss for blogging ideas, see the prompt ideas below)

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Del.ic.ious offer this sort of news/site recommendation, too.

Blog Prompts
How do you think you can use these tools in your classroom or at home?
Do these tools seem to be a productivity enhancer or a productivity detractor?
Have you ever read a story/item as a result of seeing it on one of these sites?

Challenge (optional)
Dig deeper into these social media sites by creating an account in one or more of them. Each site offers suites of tools that allow you to comment, chat, create your own news column, and more. Having an account lets you be a participatory member of that community.
1. Create the account(s) and explore the tools.
2. Blog about the various tools and any uses you see for your school or classroom. Let us know what you do!

Thing 6: Social Bookmarking

Tagging & social bookmarking in Del.icio.us

Tagging is an open and informal method of categorizing that allows users to associate keywords with online content (webpages, pictures & posts). Unlike library subject cataloging, which follows a strict set of guidelines (i.e.Library of Congress subject headings), tagging is completely unstructured and freeform, allowing users to create connections between data anyway they want.

This week, we want to take a look at a popular social bookmarking site called Del.icio.us (typed in as http://del.icio.us/).

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking manager which allows you to bookmark a web page and add tags to categorize your bookmarks.

Many users find that the real power of Del.icio.us is in the social network aspect, which allows you to see how other users have tagged similar links and also discover other websites that may be of interest to you. You can think of it as peering into another user's filing cabinet, but with this powerful bookmarking tool, each user's filing cabinet helps to build an expansive knowledge network.

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at Del.icio.us and learn about this popular bookmarking tool.

Discovery Resources:
Common Craft Video on social tagging
Otter Group Del.icio.us tutorial (8 min video) - Highly recommended!!!
Us.ef.ul: A beginners guide to Del.icio.us

Discovery Exercise:

1. View the Common Craft Video to get an idea of its features. (Or read Delicious in Education or Us.ef.ul: A beginners guide to Del.icio.us)
   
   
2. Take a look around Del.icio.us using the SWC23 account that was created for this exercise. Note: In this account you will find lots of resources that have been highlighted or used throughout the course of the Learning 2.0 program.


3. Explore the site options and try clicking on a bookmark that has also been bookmarked by a lot of other users. Can you see the comments they added about this bookmark or the tags that they used to categorize this reference?


4. Create a blog post about your experience and thoughts about this tool. Can you see the potential of this tool for education and lifelong learning? Or just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere?

OPTIONAL: If you’re up to the challenge (see below), create a Del.icio.us account for yourself and discover how this useful bookmarking tool can replace your traditional browser bookmark list. You might even want to explore Del.icio.us’ latest addition, a network badge. (Psst! see it over there at the end of the navigation sidebar)

Note: If you do setup a Del.icio.us account, here’s a quick word about the Del.icio.us Buttons. On PCs that have the toolbars locked down, these will install as options in your browser bookmarks. Use the “Post to my Del.icio.us” link to add the current webpage to your account (you may need to log in). Use the “My Del.icio.us” link to view your online account.

Challenges (optional)

1. Watch the 8 minute delicious tutorial from the Otter group and set up your own account!


2. Explore Furl, another social bookmarking site that lets you organize your bookmarks. Compare its features with Del.icio.us.


3. Pagekeeper is a similar service aimed at teachers--it is an ad-free site that lets you create a list of Web sites for student access. Try the bookmarking features of Pagekeeper and compare them to del.icio.us and/or Furl. Pagekeeper is maintained by Teaching Matters, a non-profit that promotes technology integration in education.