We have been experimenting with Moodle and so far the results are impressive.

1) It is easy to put quizzes and tests online and collect in the marks automatically. (Yes I know quizzes and tests are the same thing, but don't you dare tell my pupils

2) It is easy to put resources online so pupils can access them at home or in the town library.

3) Pupils enjoy using forums. To start off with there were some off-topic postings but they seem to have subsided after I told one or two miscreants their fortune. I was very interested that year 8 pupils did far fewer off-topic postings than year 7. And the forums have started some really interesting discussions beginning with "What do you find exciting and interesting about ICT?" and "What do you find difficult about ICT?" and working from there. Pupils are very keen to make their own web pages.

Anybody else had experience of Moodle?

Sounds good, but all these things are achievable without Moodle or its nasty template look .
I also dislike the proliferation of such sites hidden behind passwords

Is there any attempt to allow the pupils to create blogs on their learning experience in the school?

Moodle is very popular among language teachers, not least because of the availability of its interface in a large number of different languages. EUROCALL conferences have featured presentations and workshops on Moodle: http://www.eurocall-languages.org

The Moodle for Language Teaching forum is accessible at http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=31
I am not a Moodle user myself, but I often browse the forum and make contributions.

The Moodle forum includes hints and tips on incorporating audio files into Moodle, special scripts, etc.

Andy is, of course, right. You can achieve all of what Derek describes without using a Virtual Learning Environment (or whatever the fashionable term is for it) such as Moodle.

Having experimented with a couple of VLEs, this does seem to be the one students actually like to use.

If it encourages collaborative learning and motivates students - great.

Thanks for all the replies.

I have not made use of blogs with pupils as yet but it would be a logical extension of what we are doing now. Outside school a lot of pupils make use of http://www.livejournal.com (open source) and www.blogger.com. Livejournal seems to be plagued with adverts - the reason I moved away from using www.tripod.com.

There is a restriction on most free sites that users have to be over 13 but I assume most parents are over 13 and taking an interest in your child's website is no bad thing

I will look into the idea of browsing the site anonymously because I don't see any reason why people shouldn't be able to do that. As this is a West Sussex experiment we don't have full administrative control over it.

The power of the internet is that it allows creative teachers to share and inquisitive students to learn proactively.
VLE's (moodle and the expensive ones ) encourage teachers to hide their work and ideas behind a password and point students to deliberately restricted functionality.... it is not surprising that bureaucratic organizations like them.

The idea of the whole word communicating and collaborating via the Web is a great idea. It was part of the vision of the creator of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, who wrote: "The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information."

Unfortunately, this is a dream. Although the world is populated mainly by nice people, there are enough nutters out there who can create havoc. We used to have what we called a Bulletin Board at the ICT4LT site at http://www.ict4lt.org. However, we had to shut it down as it was abused by time-wasters, nutcases, spammers and - worst of all - credit card fraudsters. This was because we allowed absolutely anyone to contribute and didn't have any kind of automatic or manual filtering system in place. At the same time our email addresses were attacked by spammers, resulting in hundreds of spam emails per day hitting our mailbox for a period of around three months. Now we bounce all mail addressed directly to the ICT4LT mailbox. We have a feedback form at the ICT4LT site instead that uses the generic (free) FormMail CGI script. I filter incoming emails sent to me via the feedback form. The form is very effective at keeping out spam, but I still get emails from nutcases and people who can't be bothered to read what the ICT4LT site is all about. I guess you shouldn't have such problems if you only allow your own students access. But once you open up blogs or fora to the public at large you are asking for trouble.

This is where a blog site is useful - i.e. you get someone else to do the filtering for you, as at the TES ICT Blog site:
http://www.tes.co.uk/blogs/
I have noticed, however, that the TES ICT Blog site now requires contributors to register first. I guess that they must have had problems operating a completely open system.

Andy is well aware of the problems that one particular individual, hiding under various pseudonyms, created in this forum for a while. This is why passwords and closed systems are essential under some circumstances. It's not a case of "hiding" behind a passowrd. It's to avoid the kind of chaos that can arise from operating a completely open system.

BTW, using a pseudonym does not protect you if you make libellous remarks in a blog or forum. The courts can force the administrator of the blog or forum to reveal the identify of the originator of a libellous remark. See the story of the lecturer who sent a message to a blog calling a politician a "lard brain" and a "Nazi". The poltician successfully sued her, winning damages of over £10,000 plus costs of £7200:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/story/0,,1737445,00.html
Other cases (in the USA) are documented on the Web.

Indeed.
However my points about platforms like Moodle is that they often lack functionality to engage pupils, stifle any urge on the part of teachers to "create their own" online stuff or learn how to, hide resources away within an institution's password, and finally tend to end up with a drab corporate image.
You can see my own VLE as a classic case in point!
http://school-portal.co.uk/Grouphomepage.asp?GroupId=21393

No au contraire, Moodle has encouraged us to create our own material, to engage pupils in forums, facilitate out of lesson learning and many other wonderful things.

I am still seeking to facilitate anonymous login but like I said West Sussex (god bless 'em) control that aspect of it so it might take a while. Moodle does have the facility to allow guests to log in and this would be a good idea. The only people who can add to forums are pupils and teachers at the school and that seems reasonable - maybe TAs should be included too but none has expressed an interest so far.

I run the (moderated) mailing lists for the Teachers' Campaign for a New Workers' Party and the Socialist Party Teachers. We have had to kick off people for totally off-topic and indeed incomprehensible messages and someone who was trying to promote a dating service. Comrades are expected to organise such things for themselves.

No really.

All within moodle templates and restrictions no doubt.
Once a teacher knows how to use the VLE have they cracked e-learning?
How much of your VLE is is open for the others to see and use?

You're welcome to see mine, Andy. http://class.ws ... My three groups -- 9th Grade World History, Regional Studies and 20th Century Topics -- are all guest access. I've only really worked at keeping the 9th Grade and 20th Century Topics up-to-date. The Regional Stduies one is on my list of resolutions for next year... I suppose I like Moodle specifically because I haven't "cracked e-learning". I'm a very old dog and it takes me a long time to master new tricks. I find preparing and teaching a full load, after-school activities and paperwork take up around 12-14 hours a day and I'm just too tired to do any more...

I haven't even scratched the surface of Moodle and some of the ways I use it are, apparently, not kosher to the purist. However, the kids enjoy it, and I've been especially pleased with the responses to the 9th Grade forum discussions to which more than half of the kids in the class contributed -- including some it's very difficult to persuade to join in discussions in class.

I wish I had the time and energy to learn html or whatever and to design and maintain my own website, but I don't. With something simple like Moodle and the support of the school techy, I can just about keep my head above water...

It is very impressive. Are your students grateful? I particularly liked this illustration.

As you can see from the forum section, the 9th Grade use it a lot and read almost everything I put up. Around half the 11th Grade (20th Century Topics) visit regularly, but hardly any of the 12th Grade even log on... You can lead a horse to water, etc..

I think Derek is absolutely right when he says:


My impression - from browsing the language teaching section is that this is indeed what many teachers are doing. There's an excellent tutorial too on creating audio materials using the Audacity software. See my previous posting:


Moodle can be used for both open and closed systems. The above forum is accessible to the public (guest login) and many of the materials and links contained within it are also accessible to the public.

However, you don't necessarily need a VLE to achieve all this. It can be achieved with a well-managed website - but then you probably need a higher level of expertise or a very amenable webmaster to set it up.

The thing about Moodle is that it's open source. Bits and pieces are constantly being added on to develop it further and make it far less restrictive than VLEs such as WebCT and Blackboard: v. the COVCELL project that is being discussed in the above Moodle forum. COVCELL = Cohort Oriented Virtual Campus for Effective Language Learning (COVCELL) an EU funded initiative to develop new Moodle modules for collaborative language learning.

Andy asks:


It depends on what you mean by e-learning. To most people e-learning is associated with online and/or distance learning, but our Department for Education and Skills (DfES) says something quite different. I have recently been employed as a consultant by the Standards Unit of the DfES to assist with the production of a so-called "E-learning Toolkit" for language teachers in adult education. It consists of a CD-ROM and an accompanying book. The DfES's definition of e-learning that we have to work with is a catch-all defintion, ranging from using a word-processor for producing printed handouts to a full-blown VLE. A large part of the E-learning Toolkit focuses on the imaginative use of a word-processor and producing PowerPoint presentations for use on an interactive whiteboard. We hardly mention VLEs - which are rarely accessible to teachers in adult education, many of whom teach just a couple of evening classes each week in church halls and school classrooms in the twilight hours. There is just a short definition of a VLE in the Glossary. We do, however, say quite a bit about Web resources in general. The E-Learning Toolkit Glossary contains the following definition of e-learning, as approved by the DfES:

"E-learning is learning facilitated and supported through the use of information and communications technology. It may involve the use of, for example, computers, interactive whiteboards, digital cameras, the internet, the college intranet, virtual learning environments and electronic communication tools such as email, discussion boards, chat facilities and video conferencing.

The DfES consultative document ‘Towards a unified e-learning strategy’, says the following:

‘E-learning exploits interactive technologies and communication systems to improve the learning experience. It has the potential to transform the way we teach and learn across the board… It cannot replace teachers and lecturers, but alongside existing methods it can enhance the quality and reach of their teaching.’ " DfES, 2003

Well I will continue to nag them about guest access because Andy is right about that (now there's a phrase I don't often use!)

I will post on here as soon as I get it.

Any restrictive system has the advantage that novices can use it easily (we are all novices) and then get irritated with the restrictions and seek to remove them. Since it is open source it is not beyond the bounds of possibility to mould it closer to the heart's desire after all.

http://literacy.wsgfl.org.uk/login/index.php does use a guest login and provides an example of what can be done.

Thank you comrade
I hear that by 2008 the government are going to require all schools to provide for their pupils remote access to their school work. This could be achieved through an extranet like Moodle or any of the other commercial tools for the job.

http://learning.sackville.w-sussex.sch.uk/login/index.php

now has guest access for the year 7 course which I am involved with. It's a start.

Good Stuff

In the past “Virtual Learning Environments” were regarded with suspicion by teachers as a sci fi concept in which teachers are replaced with computers. After attending Moodlemoot ’06 at the Open University, I can honestly say that Moodle is actually whatever the teacher wants it to be.

The course seminars included teachers from diverse disciplines from Science to English to Music and of course ICT who all used Moodle to teach in the way which suited them.

Although the system is based on a social constructivist model of education, teachers frequently start out using it to replicate traditional classroom activities like essay-writing, feedback and redrafting or quizzes/tests with the slight difference that these are self-marking and pupils get instant feedback. Teachers only then go on to some of the more unusual features of Moodle like Wikis, blogs, asynchronous discussion groups and podcasting.

And because it is Open Source free software, teachers can contribute to the future design of Moodle without some acquisitive corporations we could mention seeking to block them under the pretext of “business secrets”.

Moodle is now used by over 100000 registered users, including the Open University. It is free to download and use and many schools and local authorities who have poured hundreds of thousands of pounds into the coffers of Microsoft are keen to find free software.

If you want to find out more there is a website which talks about the conference and demonstrates the program at the same time. It is called http://moodlemoot.org/ and all of the conference is available as audio or video files. I recommend the audio file because the video quality will depend on the quality of your computer.

There is an active group of teachers of foreign languages who use Moodle - although it should be emphasised that most of them are EFL/ESOL teachers rather than teachers of French, German Spanish, Japanese, Chinese etc.

EUROCALL conferences in recent years have featured Moodle presentations and workshops. There will will be Moodle presentations at this year's EUROCALL conference in Granada, Spain.
http://www.eurocall-languages.org

There is an active Moodle for Language Teaching forum is at
http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=31

However, I must say that I am disappointed with what I have seen so far in VLEs, especially for foreign languages. A good deal of the learning materials are hardly an advance on the multiple-choice and gap-filling quizzes that we were producing on the BBC Micro in the 1980s. But just because these quizzes are on the Web they are greeted with more enthusiasm than they deserve. Creating good learning materials in a VLE is just as difficult as creating good materials in an offline environment, using established authoring tools, with the added problem that we (as teachers of foreign languages) still haven't cracked the problem of setting up interactive pronunciation and oral role-play exercises (e.g. as found in the EuroTalk and Auralog series of CD-ROMs), i.e. listen / respond / playback activities. Read the Moodle forum correspondence on the above page and you'll see that this topic keeps coming up and no one appears to have offered a foolproof solution.

The Open University has it's own VLE, Lyceum, which is used for audio conferencing with registered OU students. It seems to work well. See:
Hampel R. & Hauck M. (2004) "Towards an effective use of audio conferencing in distance language courses", Language Learning and Technology 8, 1: 66-82. Available at: http://llt.msu.edu/vol8num1/hampel/default.html
The OU, of course, uses online deilvery only as a backup to the materials it delivers by other means - which is probably the most sensible approach.

Yes this is to be a requirement.

Alas it seems that for many the preferred option is a Micro$oft derivative (free for the first year blah blah cf British Gas) so the tie-in to that particular corporation gets larger, and once there hard-pressed school budgets will be required to find something like £10,000pa (depending on whose estimates you hear) to fund said arrangement.

As far as Moodle etc go, it is fairly user-friendly and a half-way house between Teacher-developed websites and no ICT. All VLE's are limited in this way and of course, as Andy has regularly said above, a means to hide info behind a password. It is worth remembering that schools want this protection in the present conditions for a variety of understandable (if flawed) reasons. This is less to do with intellectual property rights than it is to do with paranoia about internet abuse. Ideally we'd all like to have a series of websites that the VLEs 'point to' that we could all share (amongst ourselves and amongst our students).

For some teachers, who have the necessary skills, this is possible. Sadly, for the majority putting a word document on a VLE for students to download and/or interact with is still quite a challenge. In this context, a VLE can provide a useful stepping stone. The difficulty is moving teachers from this stone to a more effective (global?) place from which to organise ICT-related learning.

This is my fourth year that I've been teaching with moodle. My network manager had the foresight to realise its potential.

We started all our courses with enrolment keys/passwords in the thought that that was the best way. Over time, we realised it was a false economy - we kept having to share/enrol interested parties to show what we were doing. The site is now key-free (near enough) www.qehs.net/moodle

Only times it needs a key is if you have a chat/forum that lets guests in. Choas prevails if you don't (and the students use it like an inhouse MSN!) We have nothing (much) to hide.

we use journals as blogs - just for student and teacher. THe kids love them (better than a MS Word diary etc. Great for detailing coursework development/issues etc. Reflecting on lessons learnt etc etc. Working really well (years 9 - 11).

As others say, kids love it, technophobe teachers can master the basics, it is free and the support network is immense - who can knock free upgrades for life?

I liked it so much I've set up my own 'teachers of ICT' support forum using it - probably not the best tool, but it is so easy to use and no problems (so far). I got bored with their being little or no support for AQA/Edexcel/KS3 work - the only UK board who did anything were OCR.

Check it out - www.eboardtalk.net

It looks like I'll be including Moodle in the package of course materials in the spring. I'm attracted to the idea of being able to upload podcasts easily, and we're using a plug-in called Gong, which allows for audio inputs to a discussion forum. If I can think of a good way it can be used, I'll use that too.

If you want to take a look at the skeleton course I've put together so far (no time …), you can go to http://moodle.hbv.hik.se and take a look at the course called English 1-10p, a1 Spring Term 2007. There's a guest access and the key is ENG107.

I'm still no fan of LMSs, but I'm adding Moodle to the repertoire this spring as an experiment, to see if Moodle can be used in collaboration with all the other teacher and student inputs on the course.

BTW, we're hosting an interesting talk in a couple of weeks time about what comes after LMSs. Here's the blurb:

Nästa föreläsning:
29 nov
Thinking beyond the LMS
Michael Hotrum (University of Alberta, Canada) talks about communities and ideas about the future of LMSs

Time: 16.30-18.00 (Central European Time - one hour ahead of UK time)
Place: Högskolan i Kalmar, Distance Studio, Library
and Marratech (http://artemis.hik.se:8080 in the virtual room ”Chico”).

Societal needs are changing, education is evolving and student needs are changing. But the architecture and pedagogy of the LMS - the traditional distance education technology - is still confined to the paradigm of the electronic classroom. This session will examine where we are, propose where we should be as providers of distance education, and suggest how the LMS must change. We will identify the opportunities afforded by educational social software, how it can be used to expand the pedagogy of the LMS, and how it is now being used to design and deliver learning outside the walls of the traditional classroom paradigm.

Visit Michaels blog at http://choicelearning.blogspot.com

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Marratech is a desktop video conference system. In order to participate, you'll need to download the client software from http://www.marratech.com