You know, Moodle 2.0 will have a much easier way to bring Web 2.0 into the ‘walled garden’ and push content out as well. Speaking of which, our primary goal as teachers is to make it a garden, open when it is appropriate to do so. But, as you and I who have work on the ground and with kids know, it is a matter of leverage and being wise, creative and prudent in the use of these tools. You will enjoy Mark’s presentation http://www.slideshare.net/mark.drechsler/web-20-tools-and-techniques

Hundred times ‘yes’ to your words about the obstacles in our heads!

Cheers.

The App Store for Moodle is essential what Tomaz is creating. Keep at it; I hope to be able to add a couple of recipes soon.

Moodle can and will likely become less dead when devices to access it become ubiquitous in classrooms. Of course, this is essentially the chicken and egg question – do we want a chicken first or an egg?

This may sound antithetical to a ‘true Moodler’ but it would help if we started thinking ‘it’ as more than a VLE. It is also a potential standardized assessment tool – see http://thejournal.com/Articles/2010/03/29/State-Leaders-Weigh-In-on-Open-Source-Assessment.aspx?Page=2. There’s some heavy weight commercial competitors in that group.

Moodle is also a tool to help assess teacher performance, something that no one I know of is really very good at, but everybody thinks they know how to do; just ask any parent watching a 1st grader at the park. We could actually use the Workshop Module to assess each others lessons. the obstacles here are in our own heads.

Keep up the great work, Tomaz. Tell your nephew this is what I think about him, “Vi ste veliki voditelj.”

I have to throw my hat in the ring here too…

“(The LMS) is dead. (The LMS) remains dead. And we have killed (it). How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” – butchered from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_dead as Nietzsche spins in his grave…

My point in misquoting Nietzsche is that the only way for the ‘traditional’ LMS to be dead is if we stop believing in it, if we stop needing it. For better or worse, nothing I have seen in the last two years travelling the country to all manner of Universities, TAFEs and other learning institutions (acknowledging that I don’t deal with many schools) has shown me that the need and hence belief in the concept of an LMS is appreciably diminishing. Granted, I do see innovators using more ‘cool tools’ a-la Hans’ presentation, but in my experience these are still in the overwhelming minority. The majority still fail to utilise Moodle and the many tools which can be used in teaching and prefer to remain with the ‘download a file, upload an assignment’ model, which is nicely served by having a tightly controlled LMS to operate within.

Whenever I run Moodle training sessions I feel that I am on a bit of a razor’s edge between showing educators how to do in Moodle what they’ve always done elsewhere, and attempting to throw in new tricks that are little to do with Moodle and far more to do with extending an educator’s toolkit from a teaching perspective, with Moodle simply being the vehicle that can make these new tricks a little easier to achieve. This is, in agreement with your post, far easier when I can have pedagogical specialists in the room to take that role and let me focus on how Moodle works, but its generally a challenge.

One thing that I have tried to pull together is the Masterclass at this year’s Australian Moot. I didn’t consciously use the TPACK model, but I did start out with the frustration that Moodle shown in isolation from pedadogy is somewhat pointless, and then came up with the idea of getting two ‘big names’ in both Moodle knowledge and progressive pedagogy together to run the Masterclass. What we came up with was Julian “Moodleman” Ridden and Curtis Bonk, who I can’t wait to see in action together.

The missing link is the content, which is something we’re still working on to pull together some generic enough content that everyone in the session can consider themselves as somewhat of an expert. The concept then is to see if we can spend a day strumming all three of these strings at the same time to see if we can make something that sounds vaguely musical.

Will it work? Ask me after the Moot. But it seems worth a try.

I so agree with you about an LMS and the “-ists”. OK my LMS is CE6 not Moodle because this is what our Dept of Training here in Western Australia provides for TAFE (Voc Ed). I don’t want to get drawn into the Moodle/Other LMS debate at this time because I have no “working with students” experience in Moodle. However with respect to the general LMS is dead/rubbish debate I do have quite strong opinions. I find the tendency of many of my colleagues to use it or any LMS simply as a repository for assignments, Word docs etc to be one of the things which gives LMSs a bad name. Getting CE6 to dance to your particular tune requires some degree of html knowledge. I use few ot the inbuilt Learning Module/SCORM type options. However because I work with Literacy/Numeracy students I do use the inbuilt Assessment development tools because scaffolding and stepping through process is important for my students in terms of ensuring that they don’t jump straight to assignments and set themselves up to fail. Many of the resources I use are external links to terrific resources available across the web, but I do this through structured html docs or folders not just a mass of unexplained links.

A thought re the way most people use LMS – for many it is a substitute for conventional distance delivery through text based/printed materials. Others use it to supplement traditional face to face or correspondence. Very few use it, as I am doing at the moment, as the major component of their delivery. I am currently delivering Literacy/Numeracy and Study Skills (to regional/remote students) about 90% through LMS supplemented with virtual classroom sessions and use of email. It focuses the mind wonderfully! No two students have identical computer systems, some are on dial-up and many have low computer literacy. Yes I still have a few Word docs (where students need to complete templates, send me a copy and keep one for themselves. I re-format at need for those who cannot open Word docs.

Sorry have just realised that this is getting far too long as usual I have got carried away – maybe I should have made it a blog post

Jo