New build 1.9

There is a new reasonably stable release of moodle out called 1.9. I want to test run it on the Los Alamos site. I'll back everything up first.

Any objections?

Oh bugger - Themes issue

I have just installed the 'Funky' theme on Los Alamos and the damn thing disables all buttons, so I can't change it back!

Looking around the site, it appears that no courses were harmed and I will sort this out soon. sorry about the tacky theme guys, normal service will be resumed shortly...

Oh. My. God. I've solved it! It's REAL!

I just mentioned in passing this morning to a friend that I had been up late last night trying to work out how to download videos and she said that she had worked it out last night herself, totally independently.

Get this.

It's THIS easy....

Download the latest version of Realplayer, install it, and go to youtube.

In youtube, once you've found a video that you want to see like this one



or this one



just hover over the video and realplayer gives you the option to download the video!!!!!!!!!

and just for effect....

!!!!!!!!!

and you know what's even cooler?

You don't even have to go to youtube, it works on the embedded videos like erm... this one



Try it!

It's only 10:30 on saturday morning and I already feel like I've solved a small amount of the worlds problems.

Video Library issues - legal and technical issues

The first concern is legal, but I have covered this by mentioning that the site is only going to be for teachers to access the videos, and perhaps to make them available to the pupils to download for learning. I believe that this shouldn't cause too much trouble.

Technically I have already encountered the first issue with the use of a video library. The maximum upload is set by default at 8mb and the server I currently have is not going to be big enough if we start to upload a lot of videos. For a real video library to work I will need to splash a bit more cash out and go for the package one or two steps up from the one I have.

I can change the maximum upload size and retain the maximum upload size for pupils as is, so that isn't a problem. I will change the maximum upload size on Los Alamos now to try and accomodate the extra space needed for video and we'll see if this works.

NOTE TO SELF FOR LATER: Ensure that the setting for the main site is changed to accomodate files larger than the present 8mb limit.

Well bite me - I've nearly worked out how to get around our youtube issue!

I've been poking around on the net for a way to circumvent our 1985 mytube system. A simple search done by typing in "Youtube Downloader" into The Answer Machine turned up this little beauty

http://vixy.net/

Yes it DOES deserve it's own line. In theory, this little baby does exactly what we've been after all year. It takes a youtube video and converts it into a MP4 for playback on Windows Media Player and I-pods!!!!! I have had trouble with the AVI converter, and MP4 doesn't play as standard on windows media player I think, so we'll have to check it out on the school computers before we can safely say that we have kicked the arse of this particular beast, so there are still some gaps that need to be filled before we can go into a class and not f*ck around waiting for 40 minutes for that precious 50 second video in class while the class sits laughing at your apparent IT incompetence.

I've been trying it out with this tasty guitar solo piece by the little Korean Funtwo and now my ears ache after having converted this to MP4, MP3 and various other formats and blasting my brains out with guitar madness!!!

Enjoy...

A KS3 Scheme of Work in development

Following the appointment of our new KS3 Coordinator, I have been thinking about how to use moodle to facilitate the planning and coordination of KS3.

So far, I have created the Years 7 and 8 courses as they are and have uploaded all teh files onto the courses, so if you look in the back of the courses, all the files are ready to go and be imported to wherever the new scheme says they should.

I have in mind an entirely electronic version of the scheme of work, which has all the lessons planned and ready to go, purely as a teacher reference guide.

The planned outlay will be a Main electronic scheme of work in the topic zero which hyperlinks to every lesson in the unit, through which the teacher can open any lesson and any worksheet required, with alternate routes for differentiation etc.

I will be creating an example of one course scheme for you to see soon. Watch that space

The library

Rafa, you mentioned that the library would be interested in any potential VLE applications.

Any ideas on this? I am thinking the database module here, but I still don't know what it does

Video Archive as an external library

My vision is that the video archive is actually external to the science site and that all teachers have access to it, as some videos may well be of benefit to a large number of subjects. I hope that this will then easily make the system accessible to external departments (and in turn we can nick some of theirs...)

Obviously there will be some copyright issues, but this is an entirely closed system and no-one else can access this without password.

We need to find out how to get this youtube downloader too

A video archive

It struck me today on the way home that we have a massive issue with the videos in the department and I thought that, on top of giving myself the whole of KS3 Quizstar to do I might as well set up another major digitisation project/computing shiftover.

The issue is this: At present the science department has a bunch of videos on VHS (Yes it IS 1985) and we have this really quaint cabinet that gets wheeled around. The kids laugh their heads off when we get this thing out and some of us get a nice retro feeling (embarrassment actually) in our stomachs.

The solution? Well erm...we have these bloody huge white boards in the front of every classroom. You might have seen them. Apparently they replaced blackboards some time in the future. And APPARENTLY they are interactive! *Gasp* It's like the mythical "Answer Machine" that was predicted on paleo-future!



Now call me naive but I see a glaring solution here. Rather than having to wheel around this big fuck-off TV and VHS thing, I think it's time we did away with the whole thing, digitised the lot and put it on...yes you guessed it... moodle!

The benefits are obvious. No more lost/knackered out tapes, everyone can use the resource at once and download the video directly to the local computer before the lesson, the pupils can watch the video at home, etc etc, I don't even need to go on.

So erm.. onto the "how" bit. Well I'm happy to do it on one condition.

The school coughs up the money for the kit and I get to take it home and run it.

There, I've said it. Finally some money should change hands for a change.

If this is done that is a HUGE benefit for the school and a MASSIVE investment in the future. Will they stump up? Let's see...

Marking and the gradebook

In order to facilitate a useful and meaningful markbook on moodle I have found that I have had to change my marking tactic from an A-E grade to a 1-10 grade. This means that the marks fall more in line with the final test marks. The reason I say this is because the default marking numbers are out of 100 and if this is put into the markbook the pupils will have an unnaturally skewed mark, leaning very heavily towards classwork at the end of a unit. If perhaps we had 8 exercises of 10 marks then the end unit test of 30 marks then at least the pupils have a fair chance all roundánd the markbook doesn't look all funny if ya know what I mean

Major trouble with year 10 to year 10 cross course importing

Any ideas on how to resolve import issues from one live year 10 course to another would be greatly appreciated.

It's getting as far as zipping the file for export then stopping, Is starting to annoy me a bit now.

Marking workload and choice

It's 22:43 and I am STILL marking stuff, both on moodle and in books and I've realised a big issue here that, in my opinion will determine the success of a VLE.

I was talking to Brian earlier and he said that when a job is set on moodle, pupils need to be given CHOICE of whether to submit the job on moodle or in a book. I agreeed with him, but tonight after marking some moodle, some books, it seems that the moodle benefits are effectively negated by such a large number of book submissions. I find myself having to flip between the two to try and figure out who has submitted where and all the benefits of quick marking evaporate. In fact the whole thing has been bloody confusing and it's only because I am very aware of the system that I am putting up with it.

My conclusion from tonights all night marking bender is this

If we are to move onto a moodle work submission system, I think it must be made explicit that the pupils are to submit on moodle or die. I think that the pupils should be allowed writing up time and submission time in class and if they genuinely have no computer at home then some provision MUST be made by the school in the form of a computer suite for use at lunch times and break times that the pupils can access.

As long as this school continues to provide substandard computing facilities I wonder if a VLE is viable. I think that the fact that all the kids SHOULD have computers at home really makes online submission in principle at least, a doddle, but so far it hasn't done the job it was intended to do, which is to cut my marking load significantly.

Import problems

It's Sunday night and I'm trying to import files for the new 10D course I've created from the 10X course and it's getting as far as backing up the 10X files but dying thereafter. Have looked into privileges and nothing seems to be working

AAAAARGH!

Template change in the new year

In January I think I will change the main live site template to use the "autumn" template that the los alamos site uses cos it looks nice. Also it allows anyone, like Brian, who is currently using the Los Alamos site for development to easily create resources to introduce their pupils to the site in the new year as it looks the same.

Any objections?

One for the chemistry types

Here's a list of pretty much every question ever written in multi-choice for chemsistry types. I'm going to start putting some into a hot potatoes format.

Any suggestions on multi-choice banks of physics questions much appreciated

Wimba Word development tool

Here's that wimba thing I was talking about earlier Rafa. The guy at the conference swoer by it and I could see why, it seemed to generate content bloody fast!

Alternative Open Source VLEs

I was originally going to call this post "How to save money AND not get the IT department to cock up our learning environment" but I thought that would be a bit harsh.

In trying to avoid what I see as the inevitable balls-up that is the IT department sticking their nose in and getting a crap VLE, I have started to look through the alternatives myself and stumbled across this white paper from the EPIC blended learning people on the top five Open Source VLEs.

That should make happy bedtime reading and hopefully will help me to sleep peacefully through the nightmares of IT-department takeover that I am having far too often these days.

Filters enabled on both sites

I have enabled algebra filter and glossary linking filter as well as TeX notation filter on science heaven moodle to enable writing maths equations and have also enabled swf filter.

Parental access to VLE and MIS

After the ECIS conference on Friday I came away with a couple of insights.

Firstly we do not have a Management Information System (MIS) that is in any way helping us as teachers in the school. I have previously used one called ePortal. provided by a company called SERCO and it was excellent and I will be trying to twist some arms in management to get this installed. Me and Rafa have already discussed on moodle my hopes and fears on this one.

At the moment I am looking into using something called FREEMIS, which is presently used in one or two schools in the UK. BECTA has recently discussed the importance of a decent MIS in schools and it is vital we get this right first time. My money is on the SERCO product actually.

However, their VLE is crap.

Anyway, after looking at some VLEs on the market and also at some MIS's I realised that we were missing one thing.

We were missing the parental link, which both SERCO and a VLE called studywiz provide.

I wonder if there is any way to include parents into this loop and if so, I think that a presentation to interested parents would serve much better than a letter home, or both should be considered in series. I would be happy to present, and I presume that you Rafa would be translating/presenting.

How do you feel on this issue Rafa?

Resubmission of work

One thing came up from todays e-lesson. When a pupil submits work and it's graded it is impossible for them to resubmit a piece of work for regrading, so the benefits of getting it in early are lost.

I looked this up on moodles help site and it seems that this is not an unknown issue. I will be looking to install a fix on los alamos soon.