Waffle Bytes

Lots of updates are happening in the MeL Gale databases! Just shared from Christine Schneider, MeL K-12 Education Specialist: Great news! Gale has just announced a number of enhancements to many of the Gale databases you are using from the Michigan eLibrary (MeL).  These enhancements provide increased functionality, easier access to Gale’s most used tools, and more.  The following highlights will automatically become available on FEBRUARY 7, 2018 : All MeL Gale Databases:   Updated tools on the document page .  “Send to Google Drive” and “Send to OneDrive” now appear in the tools list, without having to click on “Download”.  Also, the most used features have been moved to the top for easy access. Enhanced Highlights and Notes . Highlights and notes sent to Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive now include hyperlinked document titles and citation information, making it easier for users to navigate back to the original content and properly cite informati...

This morning while getting around, I was watching Twitter for my usual morning food for thought.  During it I started following a twitter chat (the #coffeecue happening at #ISTE2014) about redesigning the learning environment.  The chat started about the redesigning off the physical classroom - I confess not as much interest to me, but still interesting to follow.  Then it took a turn with the following tweet - and it got me thinking, hard.  And after reflecting on it I've come to the following thoughts/beliefs - many teachers reconstruct/mirror their physical space into the online arena we talk about tearing down the walls of our classroom....and then turn around and build walls in our online environments I think we have a big misperception of an LMS - that it needs to be the be-all and end-all to where our students' learning takes place online.  And it shouldn't  Instead of thinking of an LMS as the structure, we need to think of it as the gatew...

A common issue on many Moodle courses is the plethora of items that end up on the "home" page of the course.  When a person starts building a course, they don't have much so begin with a habit of adding every item on the main page.  Over time, this becomes a monstrous beast, that takes a LONG time to load and eons to scroll through.  There are several methods that can be used to eliminate the "scroll of death" - some take more work than others.  This week I'll show one way to help students focus in on the current topic, and away from an endless stream of content. Viewing a Course by One Section  First - a caveat - you need to be putting content into topical areas for this to work.  If you have everything in the top content box...this won't help. This takes only one step.  Go into your Course Settings, and under the course format change the Course Layout to "Show one section per page:" When in non-editing mode or viewing the course as a studen...

Occasionally it happens...a student leaves a class, and then comes back in.  Or, even worse, the WRONG student is removed from a course.  With Moodle 2.5, did you know you have the ability to attempt a grade restore when reinstating the student into the course? When in the Enroll Users window, there is an understated area called Enrollment options: Clicking on this, reveals some additional choices available to you: With these choices, you can: opt to try to recover the user's old grades if possible (depends on your database & backup system) have them start from the current date OR the course start date If you have a course that has finite duration, you can set the enrollment duration Another awesome feature when you need it!

One of the newer features within Moodle is the availability of completion status.  As an instructor, you can turn this on (as long as it has been enabled at the server level) and then use it to help students "track" which items they have completed within your course. Advantages of this feature:  There are several advantages: If you do not use the gradebook, it gives an alternative way for students to track their progress It is flexible by activity so you can set completion "standards" such as a grade or action, or even set it so students can mark it themselves It can be used in conjunction with contingencies, so activities can be dependent on each other (students have to complete one activity to see or do another) Disadvantages of the feature:  There are a couple drawbacks to using this feature as well: While a default can be set within your course, if you set parameters for completion it has to be set on each activity It has to be enabled at the server lev...