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Quickbytes
One hour quickbytes are presented by Richard Goddard of Learning Objectivity, who is well known in the world of technology enhanced learning and teaches all over the country. His sessions are not only informative and enlightening – they also aim to be entertaining!You can book three or more quickbytes (one hour each, with a 15 minute gap between them) at £90 per item (plus expenses) - up to six can be delivered in one (fairly long!) day. There is no limit to the number of people attending a quickbyte session, so long as there are sufficient computers (and space) for one shared between two - smaller group numbers - under ten if possible - tend to be more effective.
All the sessions are largely hands on – but there is no need to worry if staff are a bit nervous about using I.T. – they will work in pairs (so no more sitting there thinking “I don’t understand, but I’m too scared to ask….”) and nobody will be observing their abilities – we want to encourage them, not embarrass them.
Sessions currently available are:
Basic level
Moodle basics – adding content to courses (and making sure learners can use it!). This session covers uploading word documents, images and powerpoints, linking to websites and using labels. It includes a demonstration of EasyView, which allows every student to view the files you upload – even if they don’t have Microsoft Office at home.
Quizzes and assignments - evaluating learning (and teaching!). Moodle has numerous tools to help you and your learners to make formative assessment judgements. In this session we deal with a couple if the simplest tools – online assignment submissions and quizzes.
Collaborative learning - getting the learners involved. Discussion forums are a piece of cake in Moodle, and creating glossaries is easy too. Let your students communicate their knowledge and their learning to each other using these great tools – you can even mark submissions and record them in the gradebook if you want to!
Some useful tools
Understanding the grade book and how to analyse results. The Moodle gradebook system is very powerful, but most of us only use it in passing. Learn about how to set grading scales for your particular needs, how to categorise grades by type and how to export to Excel to produce great looking (and useful!) graphs.
Using games in Moodle can engage learners (and help assess them too!). Did you know that you can create all sorts of games in Moodle with hardly any effort at all? Using existing quizzes and glossaries you can give your students the opportunity to do crosswords, Sudoku, snakes and ladders, hangman and even “Who wants to be a miilonaire” games – and it takes about 20 seconds! Oh, and there’s always that game called “Can I have a P, Bob?”
What in the world is a wiki? Did you ever send your students off with flipchart and pens to research a topic and them present their finding back in the classroom? A Moodle wiki allows you to do the same thing, and to set the task as online homework if you prefer, but also allows you o see just who contributed what. No more guessing who did the research, who did the writing down, and who sat there and looked out of the window….
Student response in Moodle – without extra equipment! The student response systems (like Quizdom) are excellent tools for formative assessment and to reinforce learning. But did you know there’s a simple version available in Moodle itself? Build your powerpoint-like quiz and run it is any class where each student can sit in front of a computer, then see the magic – it’s quick, easy and effective, as you’ll see in this session.
Spice up your life Moodle course. Embedding images and video, and automatically changing content, can make your Moodle course a des-res for learners. If they come back more often because it’s somewhere they want to be, they’re more likely to use the learning you’ve embedded too. If they’re spending more time on Facebook than on your online course, we’ll show you some ways of getting their attention!
The Gadget Show – doing a lot for very little effort. Gadgets are free mini-addons which will work in most web pages. There are some great one which you can use in Moodle both to add functionality and just to add fun – just a minute or two. Online dictionaries, automatic translation tools, entertainment portals, youtube playlists. We’ll cover a number of likely gadgets, and during the session we’ll also ask you to find some more which might suit your particular needs.
For your Moodle team
New tools for old. Are the teachers you work with bored with the same old same old? We’ll look at some different ways of enhancing Moodle pages using recent additions to the Moodle armoury of tools. This will also be a chance to tell each other about ways teachers are using moodle to enhance learning.
Contact info@learningobjectivity.com for further information, including session aims and learning outcomes.