A MoodleRooms Guide to Almost Everything - Phil Miller, VP of Product Strategy

The Moodle community continues to grow at a rapid pace. There are about 60 million Moodle users in 100s of countries. This isn't just for education anymore. MoodleRooms is at about 1000 customers with about 2200 sites, worldwide. There is a movement in Moodle to consider the social justice ramifications of the use. MoodleRooms would like to be good stewards of the partnership they have. There is another mention about learner.moodle.net, a MOOC which will start on 1st of this year. You can earn a badge showing that you completed it and this can lead to Moodle Course Creator Certificate.

MoodleRooms is working towards with the movement of Standards Based Grading (SBG). MoodleRooms is sponsoring the certification from the National Federation of the Blind, which is a huge push by Moodle to integrate more easily with accessibility tools, such as screen readers.

So what is my responsibility as a user? Participate in the conversation. Contribute to the community (code - which I don't do). Expand the community, maybe by pushing the MOOC? Engage in the community. Look into research projects (this could be a good idea for class). All of these would contribute to the global reach of Moodle.

Collaborate might be an option for synchronous opportunities. Joule Classroom is $10k. The limitation is 50 total users. xPlor is also a new thing coming. It is a content repository.

MoodleMoot Portland Keynote - Martin Dougimas, Moodle Founder and CEO

Martin is joining us from the future! He's 16 hours away in Austrailia, via GoToMeeting.

So who needs teachers? Students are able to get knowledge anytime they would like. There have been a lot of predictions about what education would look like. Some say that Google will be feeding us information before we even know that we need it. Go to YouTube to learn an instrument. The hole in the wall project in India, etc. However, Moodle's position is that teachers are important. They need support and resources. The human component is missing when you take the teacher out of the equation. Even when learning happens over the internet, you still make a personal connection.

One of the great things about Moodle is that even though it is open-source, it can be run on your own server, with your own data, keeping everything that you want as private as you want. There is one site that is supporting over a million students, with several running over one hundred thousand. Moodle supports teachers and learners.

Given that as the mission, how do we get there? By development. Moodle allows many plugins to talk to other plugins. Such as a student posting an assignment and that triggering some action. Or the reverse, where a students doesn't post an assignment which triggers some external log, etc. Caching allows an increase in performance cutting down the amount of work the program has to do (cutting out repetitive actions). Moodle partners are allowed to prioritize their bug fixes (MoodleRooms).

So where are we going from here? Moodle 2.5! And then some discussion happens about bootstrap, which I have no idea to what he is referring. I got a bit lost here. Something about Responsive Design. We are currently running 2.4.4. The other priority Moodle is working on is outcome-based learning. If you are interested in this, look into standards-based grading. There are also a significant amount of improvements on forums, such as accessibility, discussion subscription, improved navigation, in-line reply, and posting stats. Additionally, they are working on data-driven improvements. In other words, analytics and reporting. I suspect that our reports for students not attending class or not turning in assignments will be coming soon. They will also be working on Course Management. According to Martin, the current one is rubbish. Improvements to grading papers, the ability to annotate assignment (via PDF), will be coming. Accessibility!! Gradebook!! Bug Fixing. These are not all coming in 2.5, but many will be coming in future iterations. Many people are unhappy with the Moodle app. However, it is impossible to have the app do everything the full site does. It is more focused on offline work, e.g. being able to download course information and grade or read.

Look into signing up for AirNotifier Server when it becomes available? This would enable notifications, meaning that students could be notified by text about due dates, etc.

Look for a new Moodle.org coming soon. This will include badging for users who are particularly helpful in the forums. Consider taking the MOOC, which occurs starting on 1 Sept 2013 at learn.moodle.net. You will earn a Mozilla Badge. There is a Moodle Course Creators Certificate that can be earned as well.

Martin shared a great list of research questions asked and explored at the Moodle Research Conference (this year in Tunisia, next year maybe the US.) What about data? How do we address issues of privacy? What about notifications? Specifically, notifications when students need help, without them asking for it? How can we motivate students with data? Can badges be motivators?

The Eight Tenets of Connectivism

I am seeing Seimens' (2004) eight tenets of connectivism with fresh eyes today:

1. Learning and knowledge rests in diverse opinions; Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources
2. Learning may reside in non-human appliances
3. Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
4. Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning
5. Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill
6. Currency (accurate and up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities
7. Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision

Teaching Philosophy Distilled

The following quote is a great distillation of my teaching philosophy:

Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write reflectively about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves.

It comes from an article I read on the TLT website.

Stephen Johnson - Where Good Ideas Come From

Interesting thought - Tim Berners-Lee wasn't intending to create the Internet. He meant to invent something that would simply connect documents. However, he invented something that was remixed into the most amazing tool in human history. 

Apple didn't just study other retailers when they opened Apple Stores. They studied something completely different. Connecting to what Will Richardson said yesterday, they didn't do it better, the did it different. This is significant. When we are thinking about education and how to "fix" it, we really need to think differently. Not just better. 

Great thoughts. I hope this will percolate for a while. 

What Makes a Good Conference Presenter

Good presenters - 

Know who they are as a presenters

Plan the goals and outcomes 

Know the audience

Anticipate questions

Visualize presentation and attendees

Assess themselves 

Practice

Is the presentation for you? Or for the audience? Consider that question when making the planning. Should your presentation tool fit you? Or the audience? 

Abundant Learning: 4 Newish Ideas in Education with Will Richardson

Why are we here at ISTE? Is it to be a better teacher or a better learner? If its not the latter, it's probably for the wrong reason. We all are likely living at the most change-filled moment in education and we must be willing to re-think our educational methods through a different lens or we will be preparing students for a world that no longer exists. 

Margaret Wheatley says "We can't be creative if we aren't willing to be confused. Change always begins with confusion." What am I confused about? I think I'm confused about student motivation. I'm disturbed by a distinct lack of motivation in students. I need to work hard at engaging students and figuring out what I can do to move them to a more intense level of learning. How we get students to embrace the act of learning. More importantly, how do we engage students in designing their own learning AND how do we work on the systems in place to ALLOW that to even happen? This latter question is hard for K-12 and a bit easier for the more autonomous nature of higher education. 

The problem with education is that we are the product of the current system but that system is not relevant to today's students. Students understand the education game. What do I do to be able to "check the box?" 

How do students learn to play (actual) games? They have PLNs and resources that they find/construct on their own! Traditional learning teaches students facts "just in case" but today's learning teaches students how to find information "just in time" and be able to connect that information with other information.  

Think about today's world, who needs a reporter? Reporters are now news aggregators. EVERYONE is a reporter. YouTube is the channel. Even the media markets are beginning to use YouTube. The world is changing. We are now able to print leather and suspect that in the next two years we will be able to print food. We have no idea what's coming. Learning is leaving the institution and is moving into the hands of the learners. Students CAN learn anything, anytime, anywhere - if they are disposed to doing so and have the skills and literacies to do so. 

I think I need to read Mr Richardson's book, "Why School?"

We don't necessarily need to be better. We need to be DIFFERENT. Example, the USS United States (fastest ship to cross the Atlantic in its day) vs the DeHavilland Comet (jet aircraft cut Atlantic crossing to about 10 hours). The ship was better than other ships. But the airplane was different, not just better. 

What is self organized learning? What is networked learning? 

We need to be able to let our kids meet and learn with strangers on the Internet. Think about that. They need to be put into situations that allow (encourage/require) them to connect with people who are not bound by geographical limitations. It's the world we live in. That is what a global market looks like. What if your doctor wasn't/isn't an unlearner/relearner? That's what we need to instill in our students. Make a safe place for students to risk and FAIL. 

The epitome of the honors student is one who is terrified of failure. Students should be encouraged and allowed to fail. 

Check into dual lingo. This site teaches a language and translates the web at the same time. 

Think about the meta-idea of twitter and how that applies to students. It's not a place, an institution, a repository of knowledge. It is a place to make connections with others who have similar interests. This is the analogy of education. Students are learners who need to connect with others to achieve a common goal. This could be worded better, but I think you get the idea. Maybe instead it's a way to connect to team members to solve a problem. To connect to people who are DIFFERENT than they are. Bottom line, it's a medium for connection. 

What is design thinking? Check out designthinkingforeducators.com Discovery. Interpretation. Ideation. Experimentation. Evolution. It's a process that students of through. It's a bit like a pared-down version of the scientific method! The key is that the questions don't have answers. Key component. 

What is the Maker Movement? Good grief I freaking love this guy. We are moving back to the industrial arts classroom and a bit of the cottage manufacturing industry. Students make something as they learn the knowledge. It's a huge shift to students creating artifacts. The skills students learn are the basics of what every student should know.  

I need a 3-D printer. That's my next thing. They are <$2k. I've got to get another Arduino! I may need a Pi as well. 

Guiding question: How do I integrate this into my pre-service science education classes? Small things. Small steps. I can't change it all at once.