Over the pass few weeks, away from the day to day role of being an Assistant Headteacher, I have been Moodling. Most of my spare time has been spent writing Moodle courses, learning and applying the new features in Moodle 2.03+ and contributing to the Quality Assurance testing procedures on the test site. Despite my lack of experience in software development, the team at Moodle HQ were encouraging and supportive and I am pleased to say that I was able to ‘pass’ at least a few tests and contribute to the overall QA process.
I have also been learning more about the new admin features in Moodle 2 and settings as well. I attended a very positive Moodle 2.0 training day with Perins School, lead by the fantastically enthused Mary Cooch and look forward to taking a little more control over the learning flow using course completion, conditional activities.
I have installed my first plugin (Book Modules) and successfully conducted my very first Moodle update (Moodle 2.02 to 2.03+). I am in the process of moving to Moodle 2.1 and waiting for the php upgrade required by my hosting company to run it. All new learning for me. One advantage of taking part in the QA was the availability of the new features, the quiz engine looks impressive but I not sure where or how often I will use the activity cloning tool. One area I am particularly interested in is assignment submission and the notifications between facilitator and students, again improved in Moodle 2.1.
I have written and road tested a ‘Course Design 101‘ training course for Moodle that applies the ‘Connect, Activate, Demonstrate, Consolidate, Broadcast and Badge’ learning model and role models effective course design. Feel free to experiment. Next on the agenda, more Moodle course design.