Who says Twitter isn't useful?

I've been a bit busy and haven't been checking the tweets but this evening I gave myself some time to catch up (after posting a little known fact about Delaware, where I am from and which has hit the news again with a raving tea party nutter running for the senate.  Apologies, I digress).  I found a gold mine through the ever wonderful tweets of Dave Foord, giving the link to http://moodle.blogs.wesleyan.edu/home/.  The lovely people at Wesleyan College in the States, have produced something called 'Moodle in 15 minutes' - 15 x 1 minute screen casts of the Moodle interface, plus FAQs and other information for their staff as they move from Blackboard to Moodle.  I'm so excited to have found something which will help me, help explain Moodle to the other early adaptors in the college and just take my level of anxiety down a notch.

I do think we really need to have a Learning Technologist/Web designer on board at college to facilitate the implementation of Moodle, and keep it up to date and looking good.  This is on tomorrow's to do list since we intended to get a post advertised and then it went quiet.

Where we are now - 1. We're just rolling out the Moodle as the first window after login.  This is a big responsibility (I do care about how things look and that they are accessible and usable by the majority), hence the need to push again for the learning technologist.  2. The MIS system is nearly ready to talk to the Personal Development Plan aka eILP as the e-registers are now mostly accurate and being used.   3. We have a 2 day staff development window in October before half term to draw together these activities and meet up with people to demonstrate what's possible via Moodle/Mahara and the PDP.

Forest of Dean sculpture trail walk during a Technology Exemplar Meeting

It's all about Blackboard now

As we set up the e-ILP, we're still busy supporting staff to use their Blackboard sites to keep students' materials, resources and weblinks together in one place.  For those of you thinking of making the transition, moving from one to another does need a considerable amount of planning and time to do it.

And now I have attended an online seminiar about Moodle 2.0 which makes me wonder if we should stick with Blackboard until that is implemented rather than having to deal with two major transitions.  Is technology moving faster or am I slowing down?  Luckily I don't have to make a decision about this for another few weeks, and by then I may have had some quiet time to do the serious thinking that this takes.

I may be worrying for nothing - it's clear that overall our staff are better equipped to work online, have more confidence and are probably younger and more in tune with technology than ever before.   I can hope, can't I?

From the JISC Learner Experience of e-Learning Resources

Stuck at the next level

The front page of our installation is about to go live.  It has a welcoming message and photo from the Principal, the personal learning plan looks good and logins seem to be going smoothly.  But the welcoming quiz - How did you get to college today - is not working and I don't know why.  Do I ring ULCC?  Is it a setting that I don't know about?  I am under the impression that it was working and it seems easier to delete the quiz and try to do another one then add it to the list of the hundreds of small questions I have.

I know that I'll find out, but it is the next level of learning and I'm in grumpy student mode.  Luckily, the students are in happy mode so they won't mind very, very simple.

New term - Day 3

The students are coming in and we haven't quite got the back MIS system to talk to the ULCC Moodle.  ULCC told us that we had an ambitious timetable to get this up and running and of course, they were right.  However, I don't think we're too far away from having everything working.  There are a number of serious people working on it and everyone is committed to the idea and feeling quite positive about the value it will offer students and staff.  This has to be one of the better ways of starting the term!

Communication is good so that we can say to people that xxx isn't ready yet but that it should be ok by xxx.  I think not knowing something is much harder to cope with than a known delay.  Of course the other thing to remember is that at the start of the term, students can't possibly remember everything they are told so the fact that something will change, or isn't quite ready, isn't as big a problem as it might be.  We also know that when it is ready, we will be offering them something which is of a high quality.

I've almost finished the ULCC Online Moodle course, which was very good.  Sharing information worked well and it was an incredibly useful way to remember what it feels like to be ignorant and to gain knowledge slowly.  Looking at well designed Moodle courses and comparing them to less well designed courses helps to clarify thoughts.  I am a bit overwhelmed by how many people are willing to share their Moodle courses.  This is so helpful!  For example, there is an excellent e-safety course that the the JISC RSC-SE have put together - link here.

By the way, I am really looking forward to learning to use Mahara better.  I think it's even better than Moodle for students!

The old start menu