XELIUM : clarity defined

Assigning Teacher role in the Category Context

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:06:26 +0000

In Moodle 1.9, assigning Teacher role to a user in the Category context means the user will have access to ALL courses under the category as a Teacher.

In Moodle 2.0, this no longer applies. Assigning Teacher role in the Category context do not automatically gives Teacher access to all the courses as Teacher.

So how does one group courses under each category, say Science subject and give Science Teachers the appropriate access to all the courses contained within?

To begin with, the Teacher role is not even shown in the Category context anymore. Only Managers and Course Creators are shown.

Recover the Teacher Role Option in the Category Context

To add Teacher role into the Category context the site administrator needs to tick the “category” option under “Context types where this role may be assigned” found in Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissiosn > Define roles

So here are 5 ways to assign Teacher role in Category Context:

1. Use enrolment method at course level either “manual enrolment” or “self enrolmnent” with key feeding to Teacher role for courses under the category

2. Assign Manager role at the Category context, this gives teachers access to ALL courses in the category

3. Assign Manager role in System context (not recommended), this gives teacher access to ALL courses in ALL categories (and entire system, including front page)

4. Use cohort and category sync plugin – understanding of cohort and category sync required for teacher role and may be overly complicated

5. Role Definition – after enabling category context under teacher role settings (see to add teacher role into the category context above) to ensure that new courses created will have teachers assigned automatically, the administrator needs to set to “allow” the capability enrol/category:synchronised for the role in question. Go to Settings > Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles.

So there you are, five options for assigning Teacher role in Category Context.

Do you have the need to assign Teacher role in the Category context and did you find this tutorial useful?

Author: Samuel J Tan

Copyright © Xelium Ltd. All Rights Reserved. This article cannot be used in part or whole without expressed permission or license from Xelium Ltd. The author of this work and Xelium Ltd reserves all rights to the content of this website as the original creator and owner.

5 Steps to Make Moodle More Social

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:47:15 +0000

With fierce competition from social networking sites, it has become increasingly difficult to get students’ screen time. Learning platforms need to evolve and be more interactive and engaging, in other words to be more social. So how can we achieve this on Moodle. Here are 5 easy steps to make Moodle more social.

1. Encourage teachers and students to complete their profile page

Often overlooked, teaching staff usually leave their profile page blank. Start working on your profile page. Upload your photo or your favourite image and be creative with what you put on your profile to make your profile page more exciting. See our previous post on Spice up your Moodle User Profile.

2. Embed Twitter Widget into Moodle

Follow the steps in our tutorial to Add Twitter Widget to Moodle and start embedding twitter accounts for the whole Schools on the Moodle Front Page, for Departments on the Category pages or Course pages and on to the Social format course page (see step 3 on how to create a Social format course). If Facebook is allowed on the School’s network, similar Facebook widget can be added to Moodle. See our tutorial on how to Add Facebook Widget to Moodle.

3. Add a Social format course under each subject or department

Here is a quick tutorial on re-creating the a Social Wall Post on Moodle:

a. Create a new course for each subject or department. Set the course format to Social Format.

b. On the course page, ‘Turn Editing On’ and remove all blocks except People, Social Activities & Recent Activity

c. Then add Online Users, Comments, Messages, Search Forum and Profile blocks and arrange this to suit.

d. Move all blocks to the right including Navigation and Site Administration (optional)

e. Click on ‘Social Forum’ found in the Social Activities block and click ‘Update this Forum’ button, update

the forum name,
description,
force everyone to subscribe (optional).

Also, to give your forum that bit more interactivity, allow students to Rate comments or replies akin to the 5 Star Rating system. To add peer rating to the forum for replies, follow step 5 above, look under the Grade section and use the following parameters:

Aggregate type: Average of ratings
Grade: 5

This will allow users to grade replies on the Forum based on a 5 point system.

4. Add a Chat room in your course and be there to facilitate

Online chat room can be added as an activity to engage students. Instead of limiting contact time with students to just the time spent physically being in classrooms, online chat room can be used carry on their discussion.

For teachers, when adding a chat activity to your course, be sure to set a date and time convenient for you and log in to the chat room to be a facilitator in order for the chat to effective. The chat times can also be set to repeat to make it a regular activity.

This does not stop students from logging on to the chat room at any other time, unless the activity is hidden manually until the appointed chat time.

Setting Chat times allow the online chat to be co-ordinated and adds a reminder to the course calendar. You can also decide who sees who in the chat room assuming you have organised the students into groups by simp lying turning on group mode.

Another feature of the chat activity is to allow recording sessions to be displayed to the students. Chats can be recorded and published for everyone to see. Set the option for Everyone can view past sessions to On. Remember to place a note in the description of the chat to let students know that they can refer to the chat later as it would be saved for all to see.

5. Explore other online social activities on Moodle through the Wiki, Glossary and Workshop modules

The Wiki, Glossary and Workshop modules are what we like to call collaborative modules. Set a task or assignment for students to complete certain definitions, descriptions or paragraphs in the Wiki or Glossary and see them work together to build a wonderful learning resources. Need ideas for creating both exciting and engaging activities using these modules, see list below:

Some ideas for Glossary activity module

ask students to draw from a box of key words
create an online word bank for learning languages by students
create an online word back for sciences, business or it subjects by students
catalogue elements, plants, animals, historical events, geographical features
enable Glossary Auto-Linking to allow key words to be linked to its definition in glossary
enable rating and comments on glossary entries

Some ideas for Wiki

work together on a writing project
set a target to publish a book at the end of term say a fiction
assign students to complete certain paragraphs of a classic
research and document science experiments
students act as news reporters,authors and editors to cover a historic event
students create revision materials to help each other

While the Workshop modules allows students to:

complete their assignment and share with others
encourage peer assessment, allowing students to review and mark each others work
combine a workshop activity with in-person classroom activity
discuss a topic or subject matter students offering each other different views through journal entries
let students grade more than one piece of work
encourage students to discuss the different answers after peer assessment

Remember, you can also encourage students to leave offline messages through the use of Message block on Moodle. The key here is visibility, adding the block to the sidebar will automatically invite users to use it.

Does your school use Moodle? Do you know of ways to make your course even more engaging. Do you have a favourite module you would like to share. We would like to hear form you, leave your comment below.

Author: Samuel J Tan

Closing the Application Gap between Tablet and PC

admin — Tue, 15 May 2012 07:30:10 +0000

With the launch of the new iPad, the third generation tablet from Apple in March 2012, the company took the opportunity of releasing yet another app for the iOS platform, the iPhoto®. Together with iMovie® and GarageBand® this completes their offering of the desktop equivalents of similarly named software bundled together as iLife®. Digital publishing apps for iOS such as Pages®, Keynote® and Numbers®, known as the iWork® bundle, also received another round of update.

This brings Steve Jobs vision of a post-pc era where tablet devices would replace the desktop PC closer to reality.

So how would one go about their day to day life with a tablet instead of a PC? Would you leave your laptop at home? Let’s take a walk…through a typical day in the life of a convert.

Every tablet is a little workstation just as every smartphone is a pocket computer, with dual core and quad core processors becoming more common.

In our previous posts, we wrote about how the iPad with its powerful processor, graphics engine, clean and lean apps and easy user interface allow users to carry out their day to day and sometime specialist tasks on the tablet instead of the PC. In other words, what one can do on the PC, one can achieve on the tablet, we call this Closing the Application Gap. Let’s start by taking a look at some basic tasks one would do on the tablet…

Some Basic Tasks >

Quick Jump

Ready-made UK Term Dates For Your Google Calendar

admin — Fri, 11 May 2012 21:28:36 +0000

Below are some Ready-made Term Date calendars built in Google Calendar. Schools, Local Authorities, Parents, Teachers and generally anyone who has an interest is welcome to download or import these calendars in to their own.

If you don’t yet use Google Calendars, find out why Every School Should Be Using Google Calendars.

A quick guide on how to import Google Calendars

To import to another Google calendar

If you already have a Google Account, log-in to your Google Account.
Then click on the relevant Google Calendar, HTML version in the second column.
The Google Calendar will open in a browser window, click on the +Google Calendar button at the bottom of the Calendar, and follow the options.

To import in to iCalendar format(this supports Outlook & Mac Calendar)

Click on the iCal version (third column) of the relevant Google Calendar.
This should automatically start the download of an .ics file.
You can then import this in to Outlook, or just follow the instructions on iCal.

Local Authority	Google HTML version	iCalendar version
Bath & North East Somerset	Google Calendar	iCal format
Bristol	Google Calendar	iCal format
Cardiff, Wales	Google Calendar	iCal format
Cornwall	Google Calendar	iCal format
Devon	Google Calendar	iCal format
East Sussex	Google Calendar	iCal format
Gloucester	Google Calendar	iCal format
Kent	Google Calendar	iCal format
Monmouthshire, Wales	Google Calendar	iCal format
Newport, Wales	Google Calendar	iCal format

If you can’t find the relevant Google Calendar, leave us a comment with the Local Authority details and we will try to update the table above as soon as possible.

If you live in a different country and would like us to look in to creating a similar Term Dates Google Calendar, email us the details or leave a comment below.

Disclaimers

While we have made every effort to ensure that these terms dates are as accurate as possible, we cannot be held responsible for any changes that may occur at the Local Authority or School level. All Schools are independent in determining their own Inset (In Service) training days. These are not accounted for within these Term Date Calendars.

If you spot a discrepancy, please leave us a comment or email us.

Author: Li-ling Ooi

5 Reasons Why ALL Schools should use Google Calendars

admin — Fri, 11 May 2012 21:03:20 +0000

The use of Google Calendar as a tool within schools has the ability to transform the way Administrators, Teachers, Students and Parents, coordinate and plan term dates, work, events and even exams. Here we highlight 5 simple reasons why schools should move on to using Google Calendars (instead of Word documents or Excel spread sheets).

To make it easier for you to start, we have created some Ready-Made UK Term Dates Calendars. (If you’re not sure how to start, look out for our next post on How to set up your own Google Calendars)

1. Multiple, colour-coded calendars

With any Google account, each individual can create multiple, colour coded calendars. While there does not seem to be a limit as to how many calendars can be created, there may be a limit to how many can be created at one time (Source: Google Support)

Typically we have encouraged our School Clients to make use of a Term dates calendar, Events calendar and an Exams calendar. Some also go on to create their own Curricular Activities calendar while others have encouraged the PTA to take ownership of their own calendar.

2. Importing Ready-made Calendars

One of the most handy tricks on Google Calendar, is the ability to import a Ready-made calendar. In most cases, these ready-made calendars are generic in nature, so the list of British holidays, includes all the main Bank holidays and also lists dates that may be relevant to England, Wales and Scotland in combination.

While most School Event calendars will need to be created and maintained within each school to cater to specific school events and functions. More general type calendars such as Bank Holidays in England or Term dates can be imported and displayed within your own school calendar.

Here is a link to some Term Dates Calendars we have built and made publicly available. If you can’t find the one for your Local Authority, leave a comment below the post and we’ll get on to it as soon as possible.

3. Share and Share Alike

The main appeals of using Google calendars is the ability to share as much or as little as one would like of each calendar. There are three types of settings for Google calendars.

Individual calendars (not shared), much like a diary or an organiser, calendars can be set up to be personal, where access or viewings by others are prohibited. This is the default type of Google calendar.

Closed calendars (share with specific people), for Administrators and the Senior Management Team (SMT), Governors, PTA, allow sharing only within a small user group. This enables activity planning to occur in a cohesive, collaborative manner.

The group can appoint a secretary to make informed changes to the calendar or all members of the group can be setup to have administrative privileges to update the calendar.

Open calendars (share calendar with others) allow public sharing of the calendars and these are the types that we encourage our clients to use for their Term dates, Events and Exam dates calendars.

4. Publishing to a Website or VLE

Once a calendar has been made ‘public’, it can be shared or embedded on to the school’s website or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), see picture above. This allows the calendar or calendars to be displayed as part of the website while drawing the information directly from Google calendars.

This allows teachers, parents, students and other interested parties to refer to the website to find out the relevant information.

5. Calendars beyond a Browser – Importing in to Outlook, iCal and mobile devices.

Moving beyond simply referring to the website for the calendar view, the public sharing of a calendar also allows the Calendar to be imported in to software applications such as Microsoft Outlook©, Mac’s iCal or mobile devices.

This means that Teachers, Parents and Students will have access to the dates on the calendars at the touch of their finger tips either on their phones, mobile devices or their own personal computers.

In conclusion, this just very briefly sums up, a few of the main advantages of using Google Calendars.

Do you use Google Calendars in your school or Institution? Do you have any tips or tricks to share? Leave us a comment below.

Our next post on Google Calendars will be a ‘How to Guide’. Find us on Facebook or Twitter to make sure you don’t miss it.

Author: Li-ling Ooi

Copyright © Xelium Ltd. All Rights Reserved. This article cannot be used in part or whole without expressed permission or license from Xelium Ltd. The author of this work and Xelium Ltd reserves all rights to the content of this website as the original creator and owner.

Advantages of a VLE for Teachers Students & Management

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:18:28 +0000

VLE or Virtual Learning Environment (sometimes known as the Learning Platform) offers a simpler and more streamlined mechanism for the creation and publication of learning resources that are just as easy to access as conventional web-based content, with additional assessment, support and tracking functionalities. But what are the real advantages of using VLE for teaching and learning?

You may find that implementing a VLE consolidates the different aspects of online learning (such as content delivery, student tracking, e-mail communications) which are already in use.

VLE can help teachers and support staff manage and deliver a variety of daily tasks, including:

general class administration and organisation
the creation of lesson plans using existing resources
assessment and monitoring of students
allocation and marking of on-line assignments
discussion and support with students on line.

The various interactive tools of VLEs can also support students with both class work and homework, and can cater for individual learning styles. For example, students can:

submit and track their assignments on line via a personal home page
contribute to and participate in discussions with classmates and other schools via the various tools
work at their own pace within and out of school
complete their worksheets and tests online for final submission and grading
attempt offline assignments with instructions and guides from the learning platform

Being able to work at their own pace is particularly beneficial to students. This allows the student to personalise their learning, to go back on lessons taught in classrooms and revise on their work, or if they feel confident they can progress to the next level or topic and prepare for lessons ahead. Doing so allows them to reinforce teaching and learning in the classrooms.

There are obviously many more advantages on the application of VLE, every school will tell you a different story based on their successes in implementing their own VLE. What is yours?

Xelium implements and supports Moodle as the choosen VLE for schools. We help schools customise the learning platform to suite their local needs. You can find more useful features on Moodle from the links below:

Related Articles:

Author: Samuel J. Tan

What a cheaper iPad 2 means for Education

admin — Tue, 08 May 2012 06:53:33 +0000

The New iPad (or iPad 3 to some) is here and Apple has decided to leave the iPad 2 16GB WiFi and iPad 2 16GB WiFi + 3G in its portfolio of iPads while dropping the prices of these to make it their entry level range starting from £329 (approximately £274 ex. VAT) at time of writing. This can only be seen as a means of cornering the ever competitive tablet market since the introduction of the 1st Generation iPad. But what does it mean for education? Is the iPad 2 still a capable tablet for education? Would schools be missing out on new features if they opt to go with iPad 2?

What a Cheaper iPad 2 Means for Education?

The iPad 2 no doubt is still a very capable tablet. Price drop is certainly a great welcome for education where cost and sustainability is a factor in every IT procurement. Early adopters have certainly reaped the benefits of such devices in schools but not many were able to afford it until now. Such devices were exclusive to senior management with a limited number to share between classes.

With the price drop, this places the iPad 2 in the same price bracket as some of the more capable netbook or cheaper entry level laptops. This allowed schools to begin investing in such devices for all its teaching staff as oppose to netbooks and laptops. Suddenly, even schools with one to one device access programmes for its students driven by netbooks and iPod Touch are also seeing iPad 2 as a viable option.

Is the iPad 2 Still a Capable Tablet for Education?

Soon after the iPad 2 was launched we wrote a review on it particularly in the context of education. Indeed, with its dual core processor, ample storage space, reliable OS, quality controlled apps from the App Store and not to forget the shear number of educational Apps available, makes iPad 2 very attractive and capable tablet. If you are thinking of an upgrade path for the device in two or three years time, look no further, the 3rd Generation iPad would be on offer as the affordable iPad in very much the same way the iPad 2 is now. Remember, iPhone 3GS and 4, iPhone 4 and 4S, such cycle can only be repeated for every generation jump. Soon we will see the iPhone 5 (or new iPhone) and price dropped iPhone 4S and the very same pricing strategy for iPads.

Next Page: Let’s Look At the Details >

Quick Jump

Moodle Moot UK and Ireland 2012

admin — Thu, 03 May 2012 20:28:43 +0000

Earlier April 2012, we were at the Moodle Conference, MoodleMoot 2012 in Ireland. Here is our presentation on ‘When Looks Really Do Matter’ and how to capture the imagination and attention of the learners.

WHEN LOOKS REALLY DO MATTER

View more presentations from Ireland & UK Moodlemoot 2012

Add Facebook Widgets to Moodle

admin — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:50:34 +0000

Facebook is the greatest and biggest social networking site at the moment and Moodle has the largest user base as the learning platform of choice for education and professional training world wide. To begin to take advantage of Facebook on Moodle, there have been attempts at developing Facebook modules and plug-ins for Moodle in the past but nothing concrete.

What if adding Facebook widgets or buttons to Moodle is as easy as copying and pasting some lines of codes, similar to Add Twitter Widget to Moodle tutorial we just ran. So here we go again, in 5 easy steps on how to embed Facebook widget into Moodle (and WordPress).

1. Get your Social Plugin

Go to https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/ and choose your Facebook social plugin to embed into Moodle. For this tutorial we will choose the Live Stream plug-in. Live Stream allows students to interact, share activities and comments during a live event such as a lecture or talk.

Live Stream allow students to interact, share activities and comments during a live event such as a lecture or talk.

On the Live Stream page, leave all settings as default except to tick the check box for Always post to friends at the bottom if so wish. You will see a preview of your Widget on the right.

You may increase the dimensions of the block if you want but generally 400 to 500 pixel width is recommended.

2. Click Get Code Button and Copy the Codes

Click Get Code button, a pop-up window will appear (as shown below) with two panes and three tabs. Use the HTML5 tab, this should be selected by default. Leave this window open and start another browser window. We will need the codes later.

3. Login to Moodle and Go to Your Course

In the new browser window, login to Moodle and go to the course you wish to add the Facebook Live Stream.

4. Turn Editing On and Paste Your Code

Click on the Turn Editing On button on the top right corner and click on the edit icon (hand holding a pen symbol) on one of the Topic Summary in the main course area.

Topic Summary is the region next to the topic number (or week number if weekly format is used) before the list of activities and resources for each topic section.

In the edit Topic Summary windows, switch to HTML mode by clicking on the <> button on the WYSIWYG editor’s top menu.

Go back to the previous browser window and copy and paste the Facebook codes, one on top of the other. Remember to copy the app ID from the bottom pane of the code pop-up and put this in place of APP_ID.

The placement of the app ID is highlighted in the screenshot above. Each app ID is unique and you must use the one provided in your code.

5. Click Save Changes and View Your Facebook Widget

This will bring up the course page, now click Turn Editing Off button.

The page will reload and you should see the Facebook Stream as shown in screenshot below.

Now, you may choose to add this to the side bar, in pretty much the same way using a HTML block but watch out for the width. You can change the width easily and grab the codes the same way, just remember to add the app ID.

WordPress: for WordPress copy and paste the codes into a Text Widget for the sidebar or similarly at the bottom of your article by switching over to HTML mode and pasting the codes there.

We also recommend the following plug-ins:

Like button and Like box- most commonly used plugin to display stream from facebook page, users including those you might know that liked the page and the button to like the page. This is great for pushing traffic to the facebook page and is used widely by websites and blogs.
Send button – in a social and education content, this is great for students to share your course with others. The plugin simply creates a sent button and all you do is paste the link to your course on the URL to Send field.
Subscribe button – If you are an avid facebook user and would like others to subscribe to your public updates on facebook, here is a plugin to generate your very own subscribe to me button.
Recommendations – This is a great social plugin allowing you as a teacher to personalise a list of facebook pages and suggest this to your students.

If you have used Facebook in your lesson with Moodle to engage students, we would like to hear from you.

Add Twitter Widget to Moodle

admin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 07:37:05 +0000

A quick and easy way to add a twitter widget is to copy and paste the widget codes into Moodle’s HTML block but where does one start. Here is a quick guide on how to get what you need without much effort. These steps are also useful for those looking to add Twitter Widget to their website or blog such as WordPress or Blogger.

Step 1: Customise Your Twitter Widget

Go to http://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets.

Click on My Website to for the type of widget to grab then choose Profile Widget.

Customise your profile widget by going through the different tabs on the side bar starting with Settings > Preferences > Appearance > Dimensions

We recommend checking the tick box for auto width under Dimensions. You may click on Test settings at any time to preview the options taken. Once finished click Finish & Grab Code button. Select and copy the codes.

2. Add the Twitter Widget codes to Moodle’s HTML block

Login to Moodle and choose the page you would like your Twitter widget to appear. This could be the front page or a course page.

Turn on editing mode and add a HTML block. Once added, click on edit icon (hand icon) to edit the HTML block.

You may leave the Title field empty. Change to HTML editing mode by clicking on <> button for its content. Paste the code into content box and save your HTML block. Don’t worry if it does not appear to load on the side bar. Simply turn editing off and you should see the Twitter widget.

Adding Twitter Widget to WordPress Blog

Now for WordPress users, follow these simple instructions to get the Twitter widget onto your sidebar.

1. Follow Step 1 above then in a new window, login to WordPress as an administrator

2. Click on Appearance > Widgets

3. Depending on the type of theme used, there should be place holders for Sidebar and Footer

4. Add a Text widget by dragging and dropping the widget into the place holder

5. Copy and paste the code into a new added Text widget then click Save button. Title is optional.

View your WordPress blog to look at your ‘Freshly Pressed’ Twitter Widget.

We hope this simple tutorial will help those looking to add a Twitter Widget to their Moodle VLE.

As more and more schools are starting to use Twitter as means of communicating with parents and students, why not take this to the learning environment.

The second part of the tutorial shows steps to add a Twitter Widget to WordPress site. This is particularly useful if the WordPress theme used does not have a Twitter Widget for its Sidebar built in.

The fact is, both the Moodle block and Text widget (in WordPress) supports pure HTML codes allow for the integration of codes generated from Twitter itself.

We hope you find the article useful. Share this on Twitter and Facebook.

Author: Samuel J Tan