Office Add-in for Moodle

 Just stumbled across this... what a fab idea? Does this mean we can now author some simple  (interactive)  learning objects (i.e. drag & drop) in MS Office & bang them directly up to Moodle?  Or is that a bad idea? Puts the terminology "rapid elearning" in a whole new light :OD

The Microsoft Education Labs team have just launched the Office Add-in for Moodle (or should it be the Moodle Add-in for Office?). This launch builds upon the success of the availability of the Microsoft Live Services Plug-in for Moodle which launched last July.  The idea behind the add-in is simple. Now, when you got to Open or Save a file in Office 2003 or 2007, you can select to ‘Open from Moodle’ or ‘Save to Moodle’ directly. This makes it easier for your users to use Moodle natively, and hopefully will encourage them to make better use of your Moodle installation. (If you have a SharePoint-based learning platform, you get similar functionality in Office 2010) The “Office Add-in for Moodle” Uploading files to Moodle is now much easier.  The Office Add-in for Moodle (OAM) is an add-in for Microsoft Office (versions 2003 and 2007) that allows teachers to open and save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents to a Moodle website. Today, teachers who use Office and Moodle have to switch back and forth between their web browser and Office applications.  With the OAM, teachers can create, open, edit, and save Moodle documents from within the Office applications.  You no longer need to use your web browser when working with Office documents stored in Moodle. So what do you need in order to start using the add-in?  OAM does not require anything to be installed on the Moodle server (note we only tested against Moodle versions 1.8-1.9).  Anyone who is the teacher or owner of a Moodle course can install the add-in and access their documents.  Once installed, the add-in adds two menu items to your File menu (Office 2003) or the Office Button menu: Open from Moodle and Save to Moodle.  In order to browse course files on your Moodle you will need to first tell the add-in the address of your Moodle and the credentials you use to log in.  Once added you can view the list of courses you are enrolled in.  Naturally, students and others can access the content directly from Moodle as they normally would. We focused on teachers and content specialists first, since we know most documents posted to Moodles come from teachers. We’ve gotten some requests already about adding support for students and assignments, but we want to hear from you.  So check it out, and let the EducationLabs team know what you think and if there’s anything you want them to work on.  In order to get this beta tool in your hands right away and to get feedback before this gets fully locked down, we decided to roll this out before embarking on synchronization with other add-ins and other Moodle functionality.  It’s worth browsing on the Education Labs site for other projects recently released www.educationlabs.com Find out more about, and download, the free Moodle add-in Read other posts on Moodle on this blog

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Maharan

Are you a Maharan?  For those n00bs, who are wholly unaware of the parlance I've broken into, a "Maharan" is a dedicated follower/user of the Mahara eportfolio platform. Mahara is another best of breed Open Source learning platform (like Moodle), that has been developed in Australia/New Zealand.  Mahara has experienced meteoric rise to fame (again similar to Moodle) across the globe, due to its relative ease of use, ability to integrate into other systems (Mahoodle or MaGoogle), and the growing acceptance of personalised of learning.  The reason why I'm telling you this, is that I've just reviewed a very good book that's just been published by a good friend of mine Derrin Kent, and his dedicated team at UK Bewdley based TDM ltd.  Derrin is an all round good guy and is very experienced at levering ILT/e-learning solutions for Work Based Learning, Colleges and local companies using Moodle or Mahara for teaching or training.

That experience Derrin has amassed is precisely where the scenarios that support each chapter of Mahara 1.2 ePortfolios are drawn from.  Derrin and his colleagues at TDM, have really gone out of their way to make this book appeal to all levels of interest and experiences, not just with eportfolios, but ILT in general.  It is written in a relaxed, yet informative style which draws the reader into trying out the bite-sized exercises, which form the lion's share of the book. At every step each chapter builds confidence, gives clear illustrations, and positively reinforces the theory by real world scenarios. The reader is constantly encouraged to "have a go hero", buy jumping online to a Mahara sandpit, to learn by doing.  Each step is explained and the chapters check learning, fully explaining the jargon and provide good examples of exactly why and how Mahara could (and should) be used.

The first chapter, really set the scene explaining eportfolios in general, and the final chapters move into more tutor and administrator levels of Mahara deployment.  But as a mere "user" myself I found these latter chapters equally clear and informative – especially the sections on using Mahara as a very capable e-assessment tool.

What really sets this book apart from the plethora of computer manuals was the first appendix that guided the reader into the essential aspect of planning and piloting an e-learning platform, to ensure all stakeholders are consulted, and a robust evaluation plan is factored in.  The final appendix even goes as far as covering basic installation of Mahara for those brave enough to try. But by the time you've dipped in and out of this book, you will want to.  A thoroughly good read, that can be enjoyed by anyone interested in the potential of eportfolios and a must for those who have Mahara and want to exploit its suite of features. 

On its own (either hosted or locally run) Mahara offers a robust set of features that pitch it up against most VLEs for shear practical teaching and learning e-solutions. But... if you do co-join Mahara and Moodle (single sign on), then Mahoodle can offer quite a powerful and flexible Open Source solution suited for most training and teaching needs.


Well done Derrin and all the TDM book authors, for a well crafted and very informative book.

Moodle mootings

RSC WM customised Moodle theme

A few notes and resources for those Moodlers out there in e-learning land.

Firstly you will see from the image above we've been playing around with some themes for our Moodle.  We've (Colleen our IT guru) managed to combine the simplicity of the custom corners theme with the snazzy icon set from the chamelon theme.  Simples!?  So for those of you who want a quick win to pep up you tired looking Moodle, go for a new theme.  Very little "tweeking"  involved.  Dload free themes from http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?id=6552

• Still on the subject of themes, we also considered the flex page theme (free) from Moodlerooms.  This offers quite a significant change in the look of "course" formats.  Again, useful to revamp the normal topic or weekly view.  Access a useful tutorial on using Flex page here : http://michaelpenney.blogspot.com/2008/07/presenting-google-docs-inside-of.html
  

• I was passed this from our accessibility advisor. An excellent report advising the do’s and don’ts for visual impaired and blind users, for Moodle please keep this in mind when creating style sheets or content http://randall.test.opensourcery.com/clients/cannect/
  
  
• And this webinar (2nd half) covers innovate use of Moodle in the South West: link to the recording is on their website here:   http://www.rsc-south-west.ac.uk/index.php?p=11
  
  
  
• These links will be added to our Moodle wiki page which hosts many other useful Moodle resources: http://wiki.rscwmsystems.org.uk/index.php/Moodle 

• Finally.... the next UK Moodle Moot is April 14th - 15th in London . go to http://moodlemoot.org/ for full details. I attended one of thes a few years ago. They're well worth attending to get the lastest Moodley news.
  

Open Source is a winner :O)

Congratulations are to RSC Scotland NE who have won a prestgious IMS global award for their Access apps suite of tools to aiist accessibility initiatives. This is part of the new edu apps range of tools aimed at teachers & students. All three groups of software can be download and run from a standard memory stick. I had a go woth the CORE version of the Teacher apps last week, and they ran a treat. Read about the award & download the apps, from their home page : http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/index.php

Also our local Worester College of Technology also won an award for their Moodle plug-in caled MR CUTE. This essentially adds a learning object repository to any Moodle. Find out more about MR CUTE here:

http://www.wortech.ac.uk/MrCute

• Yesterday we ran a live presentation covering the basics of learning object repositories by Mahendra Mahay. Watch a recording of this interesting presentation online here:

• Click here to view Recording

• Click here to view Chat Transcript

And finally, you can access the latest version of the OpenDisc projects CD choc full of open source softwarez:

http://www.theopendisc.com/

Magoogle or is it Moogle?

We've had Mahoodle (Mahara eportoflio + Moodle + single sign on) suite of tools, now we've got Magoogle (Google docs + single sign on). Last week in our recorded discussion Martin mentioned Google Docs + Moodle VLE. Since then I've come across some interesting articles relating to Open Source applications and their cost, etc.

First of all here's the full skinny on Moogle. The same (Open Source schools) website also discusses the government's new stance on "levelling the playing field" with purchasing Open Source software. Please remember that OSSwatch another JISC service also have a wealth of knowledge and experience with this subject and have plenty of resources to help ogfnasiations understand the cost of OSS.

Thanks to : Bruce Nightingale for this info

Google applications have proven to be a very useful set of integrated applications enabling collaboration, peer review and other types of formative feedback. But now Google have released an education edition of Google applications. Google Apps Education Edition includes communications tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Talk; collaboration apps, such as Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Labs (for software code review); and various administration features and APIs for integration with existing systems.

http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html

A moodle developer http://moodlerooms.com/ is launching a new enhancement to MOODLE in collaboration with Google to provide access to the application suite using a single sign-on. Through integration, users loaded into Moodle will be automatically loaded into Google Apps Education Edition, providing users with Web-based e-mail, document authoring, spreadsheets, presentations and sites, all integrated with their online learning platform. From a teacher's perspective, this provides an easy way to assign students to collaborative tasks without having to worry about the students having different operating systems or incompatible software or being unable to access an online system. From an IT backoffice perspective, this provides an integration tested with large-scale data loads and built to industry standard SAML 2.0 and OAuth protocols for secure single sign on and information transfer.

The comon misnomer with Open Source is that the word "free" applied does not take into consideration total cost of ownership (TCO) of running a VLE. Recently I've come across some posts and been involved online discussions concerning the options available to run a Moodle VLE in house or "out source" the hosting and and support of sed VLE. Needless to say the options are many and varied. And I personally feel that external hosting is a viable option for cash strapped organisations, and those whose IT support dept' concerntrates soley on on maintaining a secure and stable "network", where the users wants and needs come second place! Sound familiar?

thanks to Laurence Fouweather for this info

these are some of the factors involved in any software system acquisition:-

1) Server costs -- hardware purchase, operating system setup and any licence fee, ongoing server support (maintenance, bug fixes and routine updates), backup device and media usage, network cards and high speed access point to school network.

2) Application system support costs - this is the cost of just keeping it going (i.e. with no one using it) in terms of initial installation, diagnosis of problems, installation of bug fixes and other updates, backups and data security.

3) Integration costs to other systems - e.g. Student records/ assessment systems

4) Content provision costs - e.g. bought in or teacher provided

5) User support, training and conversion costs - internal or external

Don't forget that most of the costs will be of staff (either direct or indirect) and that any salary needs to be increased by the overhead cost (Usually 40%+ but your HR/Accounts department will usually be able to give a figure).

• On a releated note the next UK Moodle Moot occurs on April 7th & 8th in Loughborough