Group Projects

http://hiltstar.com/moodle/MoodleDemo.html

Moodle is one of the most popular open-source learning management systems (LMS). There are many examples of Moodle is use. One example is the Moodle demonstration site. This site is meant to display the features of the newest version of Moodle. This is a good example since the site takes the users through a demonstration of all the available features from the perspective of multiple users. One can access the site as an administrator, teacher, or student.

The site also includes a features demo that includes a short description of each type of activity that can be added. This also includes an example activity for each feature as well. This makes the demo site a great resource for anyone new to Moodle.

Moodle.org itself is another great example of how Moodle can be used. Nearly the entire site is built in Moodle. This site demonstrates the ability of Moodle users to go outside the limitations of a typical LMS. In this case, Moodle may be described as an LCMS, a Learning Content Management System. In this case, Moodle not only provides the ability to provide access to learning, track scores, and manage courses; it also provides the users with the ability to locate resources, collaborate, and store documents and files. Moodle.org shows demonstrates how these aspects can be accomplished. Schools and businesses can use Moodle to manage learning content, knowledge resources, documents, and several types of informal and social learning content.

Both sites demonstrate how it is possible to customize Moodle in many ways. Moodle will allow the user to add or edit HTML pages or use WYSIWYG boxes to edit the look and content displayed on the page. Moodle.org makes use of these features throughout the site. It also relies heavily on the forums and the discussion board features to provide support for Moodle users.

There are sections for news that makes use of the news feature available in Moodle. This demonstrates how schools and businesses can extend the capabilities of their LMS beyond the traditional limits.

Moodle.org demonstrates how a course developer can uses the features to add new elements to learning programs. This will help to increase the meaningful interactivity of the courses. By using the discussion boards, chats, and workshops, the course developer can harness social and informal learning methods that are able to reach people in the way they learn naturally.

Another aspect of Moodle that helps to increase the usefulness is the fact that Moodle is designed on an open source platform. This not only allows schools and businesses to use Moodle for free, but it also allows companies to build add-ons and plug-ins that increase the functionality or expand one’s ability to customize the platform.

Joomdle is an example of this. Joomla! is a popular open source content management system. Joomdle is a combination of Joomla! and Moodle. As the site demonstrates, the functionality of both platforms can be dramatically expanded to allow a user to create an integrated learning community. Joomdle has an impressive feature set and the example site demonstrates how these features can be used to education, training, and social learning to the next level. Learners even have the ability to add friends, groups, photos, and videos. It would be surprising to a Facebook plug-in in the near future. The Joomdle site has a collection of courses that allow users to view an actual working site.

Although these different sites are built for demonstration purposes, they are great examples of how Moodle (and Joomdle) can be used in a live environment.

When using Moodle to create mLearning, there are several problems or issues that users are facing, the largest of those being navigation.  Because opening new documents or topics in Moodle requires a new popup window to be displayed, these popup windows will not me displayed on a mobile device.  There are ways to work around this issue such as making the viewing screen larger or for the user to scroll horizontally to view all of the content, however it still creates issues with developers. There are also other things that are normally utilized for other learning courses that have been developed with Moodle, that are absent with mLearning such as the use of a mouse for navigation or interactability, or a keyboard to type in answers to a quiz. Typically, when developing a course on Moodle you have the choice of choosing or setting a theme, however when viewed in mLearning these themes may not be activated. To ensure that the chosen theme works properly in a mobile device, the user can insert “orangewhitepda” into the link.  Just like when using Moodle on a regular mac or PC, when used on a mobile device Moodle will provide you with the ability to add/remove courses, and will provide the user with the ability to track their progress and courses.

After clicking a few links and signing up, you can view a recording by Tom Kuhlmann, VP of Community at Articulate, demoing Articulate Storyline.

Enjoy!

Overall, Xerte is a great tool with many advantages and only a few disadvantages.  Below is a list of some of them.

Advantages –

FREE

Allows someone with minimal IT and no website development skills to prepare a website for e-learning.

Easy to learn.

Can incorporate images, swf files.

Provides collaboration and repository tools

Professional quality product

Ability to create interaction within a project with minimal scripting skills

Xerte supports popular media formats such as.jpg,gif,png,swf,flv, and.mp3.

Capable of producing hot spots and drag and drop interactive activities.

Jmol viewer built in.

Many useful templates available including ones for:  quizzes, charts and drawing.

Disadvantages –

Only supports videos files must be  flv or swf files, doesn’t support .wmv, .mov, .avi, and .mpg, but you can link to a YouTube video.

Not supported by iPad.

Imported sound files limited to mp3

Image editing is limited within the program.  It is best to edit images before importing.

Structure is linear.  There are no options for more sophisticated navigation.

Moodle is a free way for individuals to collaboratively and globally share information, code, and obtain support.  Just like many other online learning platforms, Moodle allows online tests/quizzes and grading of same.  There are various ways of utilizing the grading features so that learners can be given letter grades, view grades on a scale, or show reports.  Online discussions can also be established, and the downloading and submitting of files for assignments is permitted.  Within the platform, there are also settings to control all of these features, such as language, location, and time settings.  Something that sets Moodle apart from other elearning platforms however, is that it supports many types of plug ins, making this platform more interactive. Instead of just having true/false questions on a quiz, more diverse activities can be created.

The official Moodle mobile application for iPhone designed to work with your Moodle learning management system has been released. In the spirit of a personalised and user-centred learning environment, the app has been named ‘My Moodle’. The app is not intended as a replacement for the standard Moodle interface, but rather, it provides some new tools for user generated media and promotes learning that can be mobile and social.

Requirements

Your Moodle site must be running version 2.1 or later, the ‘xmlrpc’ extension for PHP must be installed and enabled and your LMS administrator must enable mobile web services via: Front page > Settings > Site administration > Plugins > Web services > External services. Check ‘Enable mobile web services’.

Getting started

1. Using your iPhone, navigate to the App Store and search for the ‘My Moodle’ app.

2. Install the app to your iPhone then launch it. You will be prompted to add your Moodle site URL, username and password.

3. It is possible to add multiple Moodle sites and multiple users for the same site. This function enables you to select from various user profiles managed by you across multiple moodle sites.

Address to an introduction to Xerte

http://www.screencast.com/users/sraysor/folders/Default/media/d85af946-8faf-4fa8-8112-1dd942aed00d

Stencylworks2.0 has a very flexible pricing structure, ranging from absolutely free to 199$ per year for the ultimate package. The free package allows users to create games but they will have an advertising splash screen, cannot have custom pre-loaders, and are unable to be exported as standalone desktop games. The Stencyl Pro package (79$/yr) allows users to do all of the things they could not do in the free version but they cannot publish games to the app store, in HTML5, or receive priority customer support. The iOS PRO package (149$/yr) allows you to do everything the other versions can do AND export your games for iOS devices as well as windows and mac devices. The STENCYL STUDIO (199$/yr) is simply a combination of the PRO and iOS PRO packages.

-Christopher Cutno

Stencylworks was designed allow people to created highly interactive games that will run on iOS and devices/operating systems hat can run flash/html5. With such a wide range of capable devices, the game offerings are equally varied in both scope and execution.  If you visit the official site and click on “showcase” you can see many examples of games people have created using Stencylworks. I chose to check out the game entitled “Making Monkeys” by Greg Sergeant. The game is an interesting plat forming type game in which the goal is to maneuver your monkey character to the goal (cup of coffee). The game is absolutely gorgeous to look at and controls very fluidly without being too loose or sacrificing accuracy in the controls. The creator of the game stated that Stencylworks was a wonderful tool that helped him organize his work flow and be more productive.  After playing the game, it is certainly easy to see how a good designer/artist could put out an A+ quality level product using Stencylworks 2.0.

-Christopher Cutno