Waffle Bytes

Someone suggested I change my title to “Moodle with Melinda” so I am not restricted to Mondays; I wonder if that meant this person wanted these more than once a week, or less? I did decide to change it on my blog as I am not always good about getting these posted up on Monday, and occasionally have the odd extra idea to post.  Today I am sharing how to reset a Moodle Course for re-use.  If you want an archival copy of the existing data, make sure to do a backup containing student data of the course BEFORE doing the reset! (See the last Moodle post - backing up Reset a Moodle Course 1.    Go to the Adminstration Pane and select Reset
 2.    A new window comes up with LOTS of settings to go through and decide on.  Make sure you look at each section to make sure you are not leaving data you do not want, or deleting data you want!  Start with the General area.  Uncheck the “Disable” & set the new start date for the course....

As usual, finding good web resources can be the hardest part of the job for an educator.  With all the demands on a teacher's time, who has time to spend searching?  If this is you, here are some resources you may found useful.  Please feel free to share with others! General Cirriki “Curriki is an online environment created to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them. Our name is a play on the combination of 'curriculum' and 'wiki' which is the technology we're using to make education universally accessible.” Language Common Core Curriculum Maps “[A] coherent sequence of thematic curriculum units, roughly six per grade level, K–12. The unit maps connect the skills outlined in the CCSS in ELA with suggested works of literature and informational texts and provide activities teachers could use in their classrooms.” Math...

Happy Monday, fellow Moodlers! Performing a course backup as Archive of Student Work (You can skip this step if you have no need to retain an archival copy of the data currently in the course. Also, check to see if your Moodle Administrator has some backuping that is happening automatically; if so, then you may never need to worry about this!) 1.    Login to Moodle and enter the course you desire to backup 2.    Go to the Administration Pane and click on the Backup icon
 3.    In the screen that comes up, there are 3 different areas.  First is the data area where you select what data to backup.  For the purposes of an archival backup, you would want everything checked. You can easily do this by clicking both “All” links at the top to the right of “Include.”
 4.    The next area is where you choose what files to include.  For this case, you want the Course Users, Logs, User Files, Course Files, & Sit...

As usual, finding good web resources can be the hardest part of the job for an educator.  With all the demands on a teacher's time, who has time to spend searching?  If this is you, here are some resources you may found useful.  Please feel free to share with others! General- Discussion Board Etiquette : With so many people becoming involved in online learning experiences-which often include discussion boards- it is important to both model and teach good etiquette. This piece from the University of Wisconsin summarizes many points very concisely. Language - Useful Blogs Created By & For Language Teachers: A list to several blogs created for language teachers (this is located in the middle of a huge module; the link should take you right to the section, but there is a lot of other information on the page). Math - Create A Graph : Select from five different graphs and charts to create, design ...

 Happy Monday, fellow Moodlers! Today let us look at another block that has been added onto our Moodle servers: the Slideshow with Transition block.  (If your Moodle site is not hosted at the Calhoun Intermediate School District, you will need to talk to your Moodle Administrator about the possibility of adding this feature to your school’s Moodle site.  Here is the link at moodle.org.) A note for Moodle Administrators:  You can add this to your Moodle Font Page to have pictures displayed on the top level of your site.  The folder storing the pictures will need to be stored on Files at the top level or your Moodle site. This is a great little block for sharing pictures with the users of your Moodle site.  Perhaps you have pictures from a field trip you want to share with your students, or some activity that happened in class?  This is the perfect way to share them.  And a bonus:  this is a block you can add multiple times...

(Delayed post for the latest Five Friday Finds I sent out to area educators.) As usual, finding good web resources can be the hardest part of the job for an educator.  With all the demands on a teacher's time, who has time to spend searching?  If this is you, here are some resources you may found useful.  Please feel free to share with others! For a mix-up, this week all five sites contain online educational materials for all curriculum areas.   Education Podcasts: http://education.podcast.com/ A whole host of education podcasts from universities, colleges, students & teachers.  Materials for everyone, from the youngest to oldest learners. MIT Open Courseware: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm Free lecture notes, exams and videos from MIT; free to use and no registration. Stanford Uniersity’s ecorner: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/ “Free podcasts and video clips of entrepreneurial thought leaders and...

Happy Monday, fellow Moodlers! Today I’m going to share about the Grade Me block that can be used to track where ungraded assignments are.  This can be especially handy if you allow students to turn in material or complete activities late, as it can be tedious to go back through old assignments to see if there is something new to grade. The block will function in two ways if you have it turned on.  When viewing it on the front page, you will see the ungraded assignments by course if you have multiple courses.  When viewing it in a specific course, you will only see the ungraded assignments for that course. Since it is a block, you add it to your side block area, either left or right: Once added you will see (of course, this may be a little different depending on your theme): There is nothing to edit on this block, unlike most others, so you will notice the absence of the hand holding the pencil icon for editing. In the picture above, you can see t...

Happy Monday, fellow Moodlers! Today I’m going to share about the Poll block that can be used to run little one question polls on your Moodle site.  This poll has the flexibility of being added to the front page, so everyone can contribute; or it can be added within a course for only course members.  Probably its biggest shortcoming is that you can only have one Poll block on the page.  However, the block can be edited so you have many questions set up within it, so you can change to a new question as desired.  Some uses you may find for this block in the classroom: -for pre & post knowledge testing (since it archives answers you can compare results between the poll questions as long as you create 2 different questions-even if you are asking the same question) -asking questions about current content, such as novel readings, current events, answers to homework questions, etc -quickly gathering data, such as for use in math or science -fun student polls ...