Moodle Admin Map

Here's a great 'underground-style' map to the location of all the Moodle 2.1 Admin tools:

"Moodle 2.1 is here and now… so is the Moodle 2.1 Administration Map!  Such was the success of the original version we couldn’t go without updating the map to include the new features of 2.1, most notably the addition of Mobile devices.."

Moodle: export to portfolio

As online learning platforms mature and develop, interoperability and mash-ups become increasingly important. As LMSs (learning management systems) develop areas of strength, no one single system will be able to do everything an organisation wants it to. A good example is Moodle: excellent as a teacher-directed, assessment for learning tool that allows students to collaborate on a task and demonstrate to their teacher what they do and don't know about a topic. But the e-portfolio features of Moodle are not as well-developed as something like Mahara, so when a student finishes a piece of work inside Moodle, they should be able to easily and quickly push that evidence of learning through to an e-portfolio (which, of course, they can).

Moodle 2.0 offers site admins the ability to connect portfolios to their Moodle site so that users can push content through. We've got our one set up for Mahara (http://myportfolio.school.nz) and this video shows you how easy it is for students to push content through.

Moodle 2.0 - conditional activities

Moodle 2.0 has been a long time coming: it's been two years in development, 70% of the code has been re-written and some great new features have been added.
One of the most transformational is what they're calling 'conditional activities'. There has been a bit of debate over whether conditional activities should be added to Moodle because some believe that every student should have access to all learning activities at all times (a viewpoint that has considerable merit) but I'm in favour of conditional activities because it gives educators the ability to reconfigure the learning management system depending on the needs of the learner. In short: Moodle becomes a personalised learning environment.
Image a situation whereby a student gets 100% in the diagnostic assessment at the start of a unit of work, while another gets 20%. These two students need dramatically different pathways through the topic ahead, but traditionally they have had the same materials available to them from this point on. Using conditional activities, a teacher could say "If a student receives 80% or higher in this quiz, then reveal to them these further activities, but if a student receives 20% or lower, allow them to see these activities..." Teachers can set any criteria they like around turning these activities on or off, but used well, this has the power to put the right learning activity in front of the right learner at just the right time. I can't wait to start using them with my students...

Two-minute Moodles

No it's not a typo, two-minute Moodles is a collection of screencast how-to videos put together by Tomaz Lasic. It's a really useful site for people who want a little bit of help, or who want to build their Moodle skills. Thanks Tabitha for the tip.

"What is Moodle" explained with Lego (full version) from Tomaz Lasic on Vimeo.

It's a shame these were recorded on a Windows computer (which means they can't be put into the public domain) but they're a fantastic help nevertheless. I'll be putting my staff onto them next week.