Martin Dougiamas Keynote at Moodlemoot Canada | Some Random Thoughts - 0 views
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Martin Dougiamas presented the keynote at the Canadian Moodlemoot in Edmonton.
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Martin updated us with the current stats on Moodle 54,000 verified sites worldwide. 41 Million users 97 language packs (17 fully complete, the rest are in various states) 54 Moodle Partners who fund the project and its going very well ensuring the project will continue into the future. (such as Remote-Learner who I work for) USA still has the highest raw number of installations and Spain has half of that with much less population. Brazil is now 3rd in the world and has overtaken the UK now in total installs. 3 of the top 10 are English speaking per head of population, Portugal has the largest number of Moodle installations.
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As many may have seen before, there are 10 steps of pedagogical usage of Moodle, which is outlined on Moodle Docs. It details the typical 10 step progression which looks like: Putting up the handouts (Resources, SCORM) Providing a passive Forum (unfacilitated) Using Quizzes and Assignments (less management) Using the Wiki, Glossary and Database tools (interactive content) Facilitate discussions in Forums, asking questions, guiding Combining activities into sequences, where results feed later activities Introduce external activities and games (internet resources) Using the Survey module to study and reflect on course activity Using peer-review modules like Workshop, giving students more control over grading and even structuring the course in some ways Conducting active research on oneself, sharing ideas in a community of peers
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”a lot of people find that giving students the ability to teach is a valuable learning process” – Martin Dougiamas.
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A lot of people want that secure private place in the LMS with big gates, with students needing to gain competencies and knowledge. Many people really want this “Content Pump” focus, becuase it is what they need. Others use it as a community of practitioners, connected activities, content created by students and teachers alike and many methods of assessment. These are the two ends of the spectrum of usage.
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Moodle has two roles: to be progressive and integrate with things coming up, and a drag and drop UI, with innovate workflows and improve media handling and mobile platforms to be conservative and improve security and usability and assessment , accredition, detailed management tracking and reports and performance and stability
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Since Moodle 1.9 came out three years ago, March 2008 and most are still using the three year old code which has had fixes applied since then (1.9.11 is the current release.) The support for 1.9 will continue until the middle of 2012 as it is understood that it will be a big move to Moodle2. “If you are going to Moodle2, you may as well go to Moodle 2.1 as it is better with 6 months more work” .
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However, the ongoing support for each release will be 1 yr moving to the future. Moodle will be released every 6 months which enables the organisations to plan their upgrade times ahead of time.
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What will be in Moodle 2.1? Performance Restore 1.9 backups Quiz/question refactor Page course format Interface polishing Official Mobile app (there now is a Mobile division)
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HQ are working on an official app which uses Moodle 2 built-in web services. This provides a secure access to the data in Moodle 2 for people who have accounts in Moodle which greatly benefits mobile apps.
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Moodle HQ has looked at what is Mobile really good at and identified them one by one and implemented them. This includes messaging, list of participants in your course, marking attendence (in class roll call). This will be for the iPhone first and then someone will make it for Android so it will lag behind, but will be the same.
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What is going to happen in 2.2 and beyond?
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Grading and Rubrics Competency Tracking (from activity level, course level, outside courses to generate a competency profile) Assignment (planning to combine all 4 into one type and simplify it) Forum (big upgrade probably based on OU Forum) Survey (to include feedback/questionnaire – being rewritten currently) Lesson Scorm 2 Improved reporting IMS LTI IMS CC (although it is in 1.9 needs to be redone)
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An important overview for any one using Moodle, especially useful for those contemplating an upgrade to 2.0 . (I'll make the move when we have 2.1 or 2.2.)
