Virtual Learning Environments

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Open Source Software

• Virtual Learning Environments

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What is a Virtual Learning Environment?

• An online vehicle for teaching and learning

• Controlled access to curriculum modules
• Modules can be separately assessed and recorded
• Tracking of student activity and achievement
• Activities to facilitate, guide and monitor
  learning
• Access to learning resources and assessments
• Communication between the learners and
  teachers/facilitators, and between peer groups

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Virtual Learning Environments

• Buy a VLE
• Digital Brain
• Blackboard
• WebCT
• VTLE (RM)
• BT Learning Centre
• Learning Gateway (MS)

• Free VLEs
• ATutor
• Moodle
• Claroline
• COSE

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Why bother?

• An online vehicle for teaching and learning

• 24/7 Access to resources and information
• Extends the learning environment beyond the
  school to the home
• Encourages parental involvement and home
  learning
• Safe, secure and focused learning environment
• Tailored to the needs of your students
• Supports individual needs
• Encourages group learning activities

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Why bother?

• An online vehicle for teaching and learning

• Develops a community, where information and
  discussions can be shared.
• Storage of work of students and teachers
• Students progress can be tracked and needs
  identified more clearly.
• A virtual storage cabinet of resources for all
  teachers
• Provides a global focus for education resources
  and support for global issues and global
  citizenship

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Why bother?

• Frequently Asked Questions
• (FAQ)

• How can I find the time for all this?
• It is not the way I work. Why should I try it?
• Will I need specialist knowledge?
• Will it raise standards?
• How can it save time?
• Will I need access to computers for my whole
  class?
• How often will I need access?
• Is work secure and safe?

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Why bother?

• Frequently Asked Questions
• (FAQ)

• Can I integrate this into my normal course?
• Can I use it as a complete course?
• Can I use online assessments and quiz ?
• Can I upload any file?
• Can I upload past papers?
• Can a student access the work of others??
• How is feedback provided to students?
• What happens if the site goes down?
• Why host it on the internet not an intranet?

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Are there alternatives to Virtual Learning
Environments?
Bloggers! (Web log) Entries made from home or
at work Point-and-click operation from a
browser Upload files for others to download Open
Access for all users Link to our bloggers
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What is Open Source Software?
Open source software is software whose source
code is open to public review. It is free to
download, free to modify, free to redistribute.
Links Open Source Definition Open Source
Licenses GNU General Public License More examples
of OS Software
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Advantages of using Open Source Software
Software evolves and improvements can happen
with far greater speed than proprietary software.
Bugs can be fixed, improvements and new
developments can be made available to
all.. Freely available, with a global support
community. Free to obtain, modify and
redistribute High quality, stable, secure
software available to all Wonderful gifts for
the educational community!
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Open Source Software in Education

• Total cost of ownership is reduced,
• Freedom from being tied to particular products
• Lower costs for home-school communities
• Customise to fit your needs.
• Can be used on older computer systems.
• Allows productivity to increase for small outlay
• Saves money for cash-strapped schools
• Flexibility and adaptability to with changing
  needs
• Examples of Open Source Software?
• Apache webserver
• Squirrelmail webmail system
• sendmail, the most widely used email transport
  software
• Python programming language

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Proceed with caution
Do your homework first!

• What are our strengths?
• What do we need?
• What can a VLE offer?
• What is available?
• What are the teaching and learning
  opportunities?
• Do they match our requirements?
• What flexibility is provided?
• What other issues need to be considered?

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Information and Guidance?

• FERL Further Education Resources for Learning.
  An Internet based information service for
  lecturers and other practitioners in Further
  Education colleges funded by the FEFC and managed
  by BECTa. Links to guidance/help pages
• Why have a VLE?
• Evaluating Learning Platforms
• Purchasing a VLEStaff Development
• Piloting a VLE
• Mainstreaming a VLE
• Administration
• Case Studies
• How to Get it all Wrong
• List of Case Studies

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Information and Guidance?

• JISC Joint Information Systems Committee.An
  independent advisory body that works with further
  and higher education by providing strategic
  guidance, advice and opportunities use to use ICT
  to support learning, teaching, research and
  administration.
• Useful documents
• MLEs and VLEs explained

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Open Source Case Study 1

• A challenge
• What else can we be doing to
• support our students?

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Case Study 1 Providing more support
Initial Ideas

• More Individual support within lessons
• Additional support at lunchtimes and after
  school
• Individual programmes of study
• Exploring new teaching methods and learning
  styles
• Increase number and range of choices
• Home/School links
• Parental involvement

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Case Study 1 Providing more support
Constraints

• Making it all fit into scheduled lessons
• Commitments of staff and students outside of
  scheduled lessons
• Mismatch between timetables between teachers and
  students for additional support.

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Case Study 1 Providing more support
VLE Initial questions

• What are our needs?
• What new opportunities for teaching and learning
  can a VLE provide?
• Can we match our requirements with a VLE?
• Is it flexible enough to change with us!
• What INSET is required?
• Is 24/7 access available?
• Can a VLE be applied and used in context with our
  courses?
• Do we have the infrastructure to make it
  accessible to all students
• How much will it cost?

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Case Study 1 Providing more support
VLE Why Open Source?

• Open Source
• No ties
• Flexible
• Meets our requirements
• Easy to install and backup
• Easy to create, change, modify courses
• Select range of facilities
• Ability to save our courses
• Overall costs are low
• Provides a range of new teaching opportunities
  and learning styles

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Case Study 1 An Open Source solution
Moodle it!

MOODLE is an acronym for. Modular
Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment
It is also a verb that describes the process
of lazily meandering through something,
doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an
enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight
and creativity ..
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Case Study 1 An Open Source solution
Moodle it!

MOODLE is an acronym for. Modular
Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment
It is also a verb that describes the process
of lazily meandering through something,
doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an
enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight
and creativity ..
22
Case Study 1 An Open Source solution
Moodle it!

MOODLE is an acronym for. Modular
Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment
It is also a verb that describes the process
of lazily meandering through something,
doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an
enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight
and creativity ..
23
Case Study 1 An Open Source solution
Moodle it!

MOODLE is an acronym for. Modular
Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment
It is also a verb that describes the process
of lazily meandering through something,
doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an
enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight
and creativity ..
24
Case Study 2 A Teachers Support Facility

http//www.scienceblog.org/support/

• Upload or download your work.
• Share work with colleagues.
• Have access to your work on a 24/7 basis,
• Never lose work again.
• Share ideas, thoughts with colleagues.
• Go to the Online Library of resources.
• Work together, according to your schedule
• Learn how to develop new learning resources
• Embark on a global educational adventure!

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Case Study 2 A Teachers Support Facility

A place to save and share resources. Access from
home or at school
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What is Moodle?

• A software package designed to help educators
  create quality online courses.
• A course management system (CMS) or Learning
  Management Systems (LMS) or Virtual Learning
  Environment (VLE).
• Supports social constructionist pedagogy
• Open Source software
• FREE to download it, use it, modify it and
  distribute it ( GNU General Public License).
• Supports a range of platforms Unix, Linux,
  Windows, Mac OS X, Netware and any other system
  that supports PHP, including most webhost
  providers.
• Data is stored in a single database such as
  MySQL and PostgreSQL. Can also be used with
  Oracle, Access, Interbase, ODBC and others.
• Available in 34 languages

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Who created Moodle?

• Martin Dougiamas created Moodle
• Martin is Australian, living in Perth.
• Moodle started out as a hobby for Martin,
• and grew into the subject of his PhD thesis
• "The use of Open Source software to support a
  social
• constructionist epistemology of teaching and
  learning
• within Internet-based communities of reflective
  inquiry",
• Moodle is now being used in many schools,
• universities and other educational
• communities.

Martin Dougiamas
More Information is available from Using
Learning Communities to Create an Open Source
Course Management System Moodles Home
28
Who uses Moodle?

• There are almost 700 sites which have registered,
• in over 67 countries! (January 2004)
• Albania Argentina Australia Austria
  Belgium Bolivia Brazil
• Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica
  Croatia (Hrvatska)
• Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Dominican
  Republic Ecuador
• Finland France Germany Greece Guatemala
  Honduras Hong
• Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia
  Iran (Islamic Republic of)
• Ireland Italy Japan Korea Republic of
  Lithuania Malaysia
• Mexico Morocco Nepal Netherlands New
  Zealand Nicaragua
• Norway Pakistan Peru Philippines Poland
  Portugal Romania
• Russian Federation Saudi Arabia Singapore
  Slovakia (Slovak
• Republic) South Africa Spain Sweden
  Switzerland Taiwan
• Thailand Trinidad and Tobago Turkey Ukraine
  United Arab
• Emirates United Kingdom United States of
  America Uruguay
• Venezuela ..
• Download your Moodle now!

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Who uses Moodle?

• North Chadderton School

Coolwebschools Moodle
Openschools Moodle
Supporting 21st Century Science
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Teacher to Facilitator?

• Moodle supports a change of role from teacher
  to a facilitator
• A change from source of knowledge' to being an
  influencer and role model of class culture,
• Facilitator connects with students by -
  addresses individual learning needs, -
  moderating discussions and activities -
  collectively leads students towards the learning
  goals of the class.
• The future developments of Moodle provide more
  support for this approach

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The Philosophy ?

• Social constructionist pedagogy
• A social group in which the focus is on
  both group and individual activities

Constructing Collaborating
Creating Sharing
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Moodle Site Management

• An administrator Control of the site is by an
  administrator user defined during setup
• Plug-in "themes" The administrator can
  customise the site colours, fonts, layout etc to
  suit local needs
• Plug-in activity modules These can be added to
  existing Moodle installations
• Plug-in language packs Currently there are
  language packs for over 34 languages. These can
  be edited using a built-in web-based editor.

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Moodle Course Management (1)

• A teacher administrator has full control over all
  settings for a course, including restricting
  other teachers
• Choice of course formats such as by week, by
  topic or a discussion-focused social format
• Flexible array of course activities Forums,
  Journals, Quizzes, Resources, Choices, Surveys,
  Assignments, Chats, Workshops
• Display recent changes to the course since the
  last login can be displayed on the course home
  page
• Easy editing of text for resources, forum
  postings, journal entries using an embedded
  WYSIWYG HTML editor

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Moodle Course Management (2)

• Grades for Forums, Journals, Quizzes and
  Assignments can be viewed on one page (and
  downloaded as a spreadsheet file)
• User logging and tracking full activity
  reports for each student are available with
  graphs and details about each module. Also a
  detailed review of each students involvement
  including postings, journal entries etc
• Mail integration copies of forum posts,
  teacher feedback etc can be mailed in HTML or
  plain text.
• Custom scales teachers can define their own
  scales to be used for grading forums, assignments
  and journals
• Courses can be packaged
• as a single zip file using the Backup function.
  These can be restored on any Moodle server.

35
Moodle Course structure

• Weekly formatEach week consists of activities.
  Some might have deadlines, others might be
  open.
• Topics formatPresented and organised into
  topics. A topic is not restricted to any time
  limit.
• Social formatAll activities are presented and
  organised into a single forum. Could also be
  used as noticeboards

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Moodle Course structure

• Weekly formatEach week consists of activities.
  Some might have deadlines, others might be
  open.
• Topics formatPresented and organised into
  topics. A topic is not restricted to any time
  limit.
• Social formatAll activities are presented and
  organised into a single forum. Could also be
  used as noticeboards

37
Moodle Modules
Modules available for Moodle

• Assignment
• Attendance
• Chat
• Choice
• Dialogue
• Exercise
• Forum
• Glossary
• Journal

• Quiz
• Resource
• Survey
• WebQuest
• Webwork
• Workshop

More details
38
Moodle Assignment Module

• Can be specified with a due date and a maximum
  grade.
• Students can upload assignments They are
  date-stamped. Different file formats are
  allowed
• Late assignments are allowedThe amount of
  lateness is shown clearly to the teacher
• Whole-class assessment Grades and comments
  provided for each assignment, on one page in one
  form. Viewable by assigned teachers
• Teacher feedback This is appended to the
  assignment page for each student. Notification
  is sent by e-mail
• Resubmission of assignments This can be allowed
  by teachers after grading (for re-grading)

39
Moodle Forum Module

• Different types of forums are available,teacher-
  only,course news, open-to-all,
  one-thread-per-user.
• All postings have the authors photo attached.
• Discussions can be viewed as nested, flat,
  threaded, oldest or newest first
• Every registered user can join, or the teacher
  can force subscription for all
• The teacher can choose not to allow replies
• Discussion threads can be easily moved between
  forums
• Attached images are shown inline

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Moodle Journal Module

• Journals are private between student and teacher.
  
• Each journal entry can be directed by an open
  question.
• The whole class can be assessed on one page in
  one form
• Teacher feedback is appended to the journal entry
  page, and notification is mailed out.

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MoodleQuiz Module (1)

• Teachers can define a database of questions for
  re-use in different quizzes
• Questions can be stored in categories for easy
  access, and these categories can be "published"
  to make them accessible from any course on the
  site.
• Quizzes are automatically graded, and can be
  re-graded if questions are modified
• Quizzes can have a limited time window outside of
  which they are not available
• At the teacher's option, quizzes can be attempted
  multiple times, and can show feedback and/or
  correct answers
• Quiz questions and quiz answers can be shuffled
  (randomised) to reduce cheating
• Questions allow HTML and images

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MoodleQuiz Module (2)

• Multiple-choice questions single or multiple
  answers
• Short Answer questions words or phrases
• True-False questions
• Matching questions
• Random questions
• Numerical questions (with allowable ranges)
• Embedded-answer questions (cloze style)
• Embedded descriptive text and graphics

Administration Panels
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Moodle Assignment Module

• .
• Assignments can be viewed online, or downloaded
• Teacher can attach feedback comments
• Notification is sent out by e-mail
• Resubmission can be granted for assignments, for
  re-grading

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Moodle Assignment Module

• Assignments can be specified with a due date and
  a maximum grade.
• Students can upload their assignments (any file
  format) to the server - they are date-stamped.
• Late assignments are allowed, but the amount of
  lateness is shown clearly to the teacher
• For each particular assignment, the whole class
  can be assessed (grade and comment) on one page
  in one form.

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Installing Moodle

• Fantastico!

http//www.webschool.org.uk/science/powerpoint/moo
dleinstall.ppt
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Installation requirements

• Choose a hosting company which provides a MySQL
  (open source database) and PHP (embedded
  scripting language)
• Make sure they offer Fantastico.
• No special technical knowledge is required for
  the installation of Moodle
• It is all controlled using 'point and click'
  operations.
• Once installed, you can build your own Virtual
  Learning Environment, to suit the needs of your
  school.

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Installing Moodle Using Fantastico
Fantastico! is usually installed on Linux hosting
accounts with CPanel

• 1. Logon to the Control Panel
• Use the username and password supplied with
  Welcome Mail!

bse33ugo

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Installing Moodle Using Fantastico
Select Fantastico! From the Control
Panel
49
Installing Moodle Using Fantastico
50
Installing Moodle Using Fantastico
51
Installing Moodle Using Fantastico
supportme
52
Installing Moodle Using Fantastico
53
Installing Moodle Using Fantastico
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Installing Moodle License Information
Agree to the terms of the GPL License
55
Installing Moodle Version Information
Current version of Moodle is displayed..
56
Installing Moodle Release Notes
Notes about the current version No input
required here . just continue with the
installation
57
Installing Moodle Database Tables
58
Installing Moodle Database Upgrade
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Installing Moodle Configuration
Specify the configuration variables A few are
shown here. The default settings usually work
! They can be changed at any time by the
Administrator
60
Installing Moodle Site Format
Configure the site format presented to visitors
61
Installing Moodle Admin. Profile
Set the User Profile for the Administrator A few
items are shown here. They can be changed at any
time
62
Moodle Ready to go!
Moodle has been installed and configured. Courses
can now be added.
63
Science Support Websites
Image Galleries www.supportscience.org/cgi-bin/im
agefolio/imageFolio.cgi www.webucation.org/gallery
/ Virtual Learning Environment
Websites www.coolwebschool.org/moodle/ www.opensch
ool.org.uk/support/ 21st Century Support
Sites www.21stcenturyscience.org.uk/support/ www.
scienceblog.org/community/index.php Blogging
User Logon www.webschool.org.uk/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi

• North Chadderton School Home
• www.webschool.org.uk
• Community Websites
• www.mywebschool.org/postnuke/
• www.scibase.org/
• http//www.scigallery.org/blogger/modules/news
• http//www.scigallery.org/blogger/modules/news/
• Databases ( for KS3 and Science Links)
• These were originally developed for the ASE
• www.scilinks.org.uk/
• www.scishop.org

North Chadderton School Websites Constructed
using Open Source Software