Elgg is the open source(free) social networking system you can host. It is ideal for eportfolios and has many advantages over other such systems. Number 1 it's free and fully customizable. You can choose themes, design themes, and give it your own branding. It is also extremely easy to use. Have students start by filling out their profile. Then they can add files, pictures, videos, audio, or whatever. They can also keep a personal blog, add friends, start and join communities, and even keep and view their own RSS feeds. It's pretty much MySpace for education.
A lot of work is being done presently to have full integration with Moodle so that students can send their Moodle activities over to their portfolio with one click. Together Elgg and the more traditional LMS (Learning Management System) will provide students with structured and guided activities as well as the freedom to experiment and create in their own virtual space. Now we will no longer have to choose betwenn traditional evaluation and assessment and the more holistic kind. We can have both working together, supplementing each other, and in harmony.
5/11/2007
5/06/2007
Item Analysis in LMS(Moodle)
Ever wonder which questions students are getting wrong over and over again? Sure you can grade your quizzes by hand and count everything out or you can just have your students take the quiz online and instantly get a report. Moodle and perhaps other LMSs lets you see a breakdown of all the questions.
How does this make your teaching better? Well for one, you may have writtena bad questions which isn't very fair to your students. For two, at least you know what your students don't know. All of this instantaneously.
How does this make your teaching better? Well for one, you may have writtena bad questions which isn't very fair to your students. For two, at least you know what your students don't know. All of this instantaneously.
5/02/2007
Wiki and Collaborative Learning
How's this for using the Wiki. First I broke my Moodle class into groups, easily done in Moodle. Then I added a Wiki activity and separated groups so that each group could work on their own. Then in class I had them make study guides based on questions in the text. It went so well I found myself suddenly and eerily obsolete.
Students were able to collaborate and share information so effectively using this system there was little room for my boring lectures and even for helping with questions. Teaching an ESL Geography and World History class, one would think an instructor would be needed but simply dividing the class into groups electronically, giving them study questions, and having them work on creating a study guide together, one that was editable online, that saved all drafts, that would always be there for reference, put me into the facilitator's role and of course, I was there for tech support.
Try having your class make a Wiki, with Moodle, Wikipedia, or any other flavors of WIki. You will be amazed at the ease and effectiveness of the digital collaborative approach.
Students were able to collaborate and share information so effectively using this system there was little room for my boring lectures and even for helping with questions. Teaching an ESL Geography and World History class, one would think an instructor would be needed but simply dividing the class into groups electronically, giving them study questions, and having them work on creating a study guide together, one that was editable online, that saved all drafts, that would always be there for reference, put me into the facilitator's role and of course, I was there for tech support.
Try having your class make a Wiki, with Moodle, Wikipedia, or any other flavors of WIki. You will be amazed at the ease and effectiveness of the digital collaborative approach.
4/29/2007
Create your own RSS Feed with Wordpress
RSS feeds are headlines that update themselves every so often. These headlines can be posted on websites, Moodle, or wherever. They can also be subscribed too so readers always get the latest news. If you are are running a blog for your class, using Wordpress, or Blogger for example, feeds are automatically created and you can find the links in the menu are at the bottom of the site. With these links you can post anywhere you want.
Just to give you an idea I am running a Wordpress blog about the best place to eat breakfast in Honolulu. Students post to this blog once a week. I wanted to make a feed with these postings. This was in fact automatically done with Wordpress under the meta options. I then added this feed to the front page of our Moodle site. Now my student are making their own headline news. Not bad for an ESL-College Prep class. You can also follow RSS Feeds for comments to blogs.
Just to give you an idea I am running a Wordpress blog about the best place to eat breakfast in Honolulu. Students post to this blog once a week. I wanted to make a feed with these postings. This was in fact automatically done with Wordpress under the meta options. I then added this feed to the front page of our Moodle site. Now my student are making their own headline news. Not bad for an ESL-College Prep class. You can also follow RSS Feeds for comments to blogs.
4/25/2007
How to import Hot Potato Questions to Moodle
This how to explains how to import Hot Potato Questions to Moodle for adding to Moodle quizzes.
(Not to be confused with simply importing the Hot Potato Quiz, which also may serve your purpose).
1. Log in, go to your course, turn editing on, and add quiz.
2. Fill out all the fields for your new quiz and hit save.
3. Go to the Category tab and add category.(This step is optional but makes it easier for you later on-trust me)
4. Next hit the import tab and choose the category you want to import the questions into. Be sure to click the box marked "from file" and be sure the file format is "HOT Potato". You should see your questions appear on screen.
5. Finally, under the quiz edit choose your category, or the default if you didn't make one and move the questions over from the right to left to make your quiz.
I know it was quick and dirty. Let me know if you have any problems. Usually simply importing a Hot Potato Quiz will do, but if you want questions in the bank for reusing(in my case I will use questions for midterms and finals) then importing the questions is ideal.
(Not to be confused with simply importing the Hot Potato Quiz, which also may serve your purpose).
1. Log in, go to your course, turn editing on, and add quiz.
2. Fill out all the fields for your new quiz and hit save.
3. Go to the Category tab and add category.(This step is optional but makes it easier for you later on-trust me)
4. Next hit the import tab and choose the category you want to import the questions into. Be sure to click the box marked "from file" and be sure the file format is "HOT Potato". You should see your questions appear on screen.
5. Finally, under the quiz edit choose your category, or the default if you didn't make one and move the questions over from the right to left to make your quiz.
I know it was quick and dirty. Let me know if you have any problems. Usually simply importing a Hot Potato Quiz will do, but if you want questions in the bank for reusing(in my case I will use questions for midterms and finals) then importing the questions is ideal.
4/24/2007
Moodle and the Glossary
Yet another great block to add to courses is the Glossary block. You can add terms to the glossary and set it to display random, or most recent, plus some other options. Basically, every time a student goes to the Moodle course they will see the glossary term or key concept. It's like setting them up to learn by osmosis.
Obviously ESL and language courses can benefit tremendously form this feature, but anyone that ha key concepts can apply. I like it because students can get fresh content every time the page loads and they can effortlessly learn vocabulary, jargon, and the like. They may of course, also go into the glossary and look up the other words, perhaps to study for a quiz.
Obviously ESL and language courses can benefit tremendously form this feature, but anyone that ha key concepts can apply. I like it because students can get fresh content every time the page loads and they can effortlessly learn vocabulary, jargon, and the like. They may of course, also go into the glossary and look up the other words, perhaps to study for a quiz.
RSS and Moodle (or your website, blog, etc.)
Another great option for Moodle and anything web-based is RSS. Using RSS, you can basically post headlines in Moodle courses or on your website, blog, whatever, that update themselves.
In a Geography course for international students I posted the National Geographic RSS and my students really got excited. The headline took them to a photo of a crocodile with a man's hand in its mouth. Talk about a conversation topic. I am also using it to post the daily local news.
If you are really ambitious you can create your own RSS, google it, and go for it. All I know is that this is an amazing technology that let's us stay up-to-date on virtually any topic (I use the surf report). For Moodlers, it's easy, just add an RSS block in your courses.
In a Geography course for international students I posted the National Geographic RSS and my students really got excited. The headline took them to a photo of a crocodile with a man's hand in its mouth. Talk about a conversation topic. I am also using it to post the daily local news.
If you are really ambitious you can create your own RSS, google it, and go for it. All I know is that this is an amazing technology that let's us stay up-to-date on virtually any topic (I use the surf report). For Moodlers, it's easy, just add an RSS block in your courses.
Hot Potato and Moodle, a pefect match
Hot Potato and Moodle work great together. You can quickly make quizzes in Hot Potato and import them to Moodle, check it out. You can also import the questions from Hot Potato to Moodle and add them to Moodle quizzes from there. Either way, these two pieces of software make quizzes easy as pie. Oh yeah and Moodle grades them for you too.
Audacity- the free, high-tech mp3 recorder
Just what the title says. You can have your students prepare presentations, practice pronunciation, record your own lectures, and make podcasts (assuming you have a place to post) all with the free, wonderful open source software Audacity. Whoever is behind this, thank you.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
In my case, our ESL department is toying with speaking homework and recorded pronunciation practice. I've heard others speak of a spoken journal. Now there is a free, and easy way to give students speaking homework. Look's like spoken word and oral histories are back.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
In my case, our ESL department is toying with speaking homework and recorded pronunciation practice. I've heard others speak of a spoken journal. Now there is a free, and easy way to give students speaking homework. Look's like spoken word and oral histories are back.
4/23/2007
Show off student work with Wordpress
One of my latest and greatest projects involves using Wordpress, the open source blogware, for featuring student work. Wordpress is extremely easy to use and set up, has beautiful templates, and will even host your blog for free if you don't have the resources to get it going. As an excuse to regularly take my class for breakfast, I created a blog called Honolulu Breakfast and Malasada so international students could post their reviews of local breakfast spots in English.
A link was put on the school's homepage, and just like that, a schoolwide blog, open to the public was born discussing breakfast, and who doesn't like breakfast. Wordpress opens up all kinds of possibilities, as does all blogware including Blogger, google's free one.
A link was put on the school's homepage, and just like that, a schoolwide blog, open to the public was born discussing breakfast, and who doesn't like breakfast. Wordpress opens up all kinds of possibilities, as does all blogware including Blogger, google's free one.
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