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.

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.