Exciting new question types for Moodle 2.2+

15 Feb

Tim Hunt and the awesome Open University UK team have released new question types that they’ve been developing. It looks like we’ll see these integrated into the Moodle core in a future release, but for now you can head to the Moodle.org plugins page to download and install.

These are some of the most exciting new additions to Moodle I’ve seen for a while. Among them there are a number of drag and drop question types, allowing you to create questions that require your students to drag and drop in missing words in a paragraph or onto images. As well, advanced pattern match question type is one I’m probably most excited about. It allows you to create short answer questions that are then flexibly checked against sample answers for correctness. It appears to be much, much more flexible than the existing short answer type. Go check ‘em out. I can’t imagine any teacher won’t find tons of new uses for these. A very big step forward for Moodle today.

Update: If you want a tour of the new question types and get an idea of what they can do you can check out developer Jamie Pratt’s site or download a PDF from OU.

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Updates coming

16 Jan

To those of you who have been waiting on updates (especially the FOG installation guides), I apologize. Real life has gotten in the way of me doing much other than teaching and sanding siding on my house these days. The major writing for my class this quarter is almost done and I’m only about a week away from having the house prepped to paint. After that I promise I’ll have guides up and running. The FOG guide is only an hour or so from finished, but as I said, unfortunately, my students and my family take precedence.

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Moodle 2.2 released

7 Dec

Moodle 2.2 is out with a host of new features from 2.1. Most impressive is the new rubrics grading method integration as well as a long awaited update to a new version of TinyMCE allowing iOS users to finally input text.

If you use CVS to manage your install a full upgrade is only a “cvs update -dP -r MOODLE_22_STABLE” away.

Full release notes on moodle.org

 

 

 

 

 

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No contract may soon = no overtime

2 Dec

A new bill before the Senate (S. 1747) doesn’t look pretty for any school tech workers not on contract (via Ars Technica)

A bill recently introduced in Congress would greatly expand the exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act for IT employees, ending overtime benefits for many more types of workers, including network, database and security specialists.

Read the full article here.

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Moodle 2.2-Text input finally working in iOS!

2 Dec

After updating the test server to Moodle 2.2RC1 yesterday I failed to notice the second most important change (after rubrics of course): TinyMCE has been updated to 3.4.5, meaning that as long as your iPod/iPhone/iPad is running iOS 5 you can FINALLY do text input!

Great news for schools with iPad deployments and Moodle.

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Moodle 2.2 RC1 out, rubrics in

1 Dec

I just finished updating our test site to Moodle 2.2 RC1 (HEAD release for those of you always on the slathering edge). The biggest improvement, by far, is the inclusion of rubrics for a grading option. I’ve played around with it a bit and I’m looking forward to using it on a production server soon. It looks like the final release should be any day now.

If you want a more in-depth look, check out moodleblog’s “First Look at Rubrics in Moodle 2.2″

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Installing FOG 0.32 for a mobile imaging server – Part 1

1 Dec

FOG

What is FOG?

My last school had almost 600 desktops and laptops of various makes/models/and configurations. Rolling out new applications and keeping them all up-to-date has historically required lots and lots of hands-on time since we don’t have rights to setup WGM policies in our Active Directory server. I spent a great deal of time last year trying to come up with a solution that was better than sit-down-at-every-machine-and-run-the-installer. Or worse yet, see computers going unused for months because they need to be re-imaged. I looked at Dell KACE, Symantec Ghost, and other commercial solutions before I finally found Clonezilla.

Clonezilla is a server based cloning and imaging solution that is 100% free and open source. It’s a great piece of kit, but I found it was only going to solve one of our problems: re-imaging machines. It doesn’t have any capabilities for machine management. I’d basically have to re-image a system every time I wanted to add a new application.

Enter FOG, or Free Open-source Ghost. FOG is an excellent imaging and software management solution, allowing you to remotely image machines, install software, change settings, log usage, and even generate inventory reports among many, many features. Best of all it’s 100% free and open-source.

Creating a mobile imaging server.

This how-to will walk you through creating an imaging server using a laptop for portability. As well, it’s probably WAY too verbose if you already know your way around a unix terminal and bash; for a more direct step-by-step guide, check out the Ubuntu 10.04 instructions on the FOG project site. If you don’t know bash from a BSOD, then keep reading.

If you have more control over your school’s network and can put a server in your school’s network rack the same instructions will still apply (for the most part).

Continue reading →

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Emails

29 Nov

If you used the contact form to email me today, you’ll want to try it again (I broke the contact form earlier, but now it’s fixed).

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LACUE 2011

28 Nov

I’ll be posting more about FOG, Moodle, Wiimote Whiteboards, iTalc2 and more in the coming days.

In the meantime, if you attended the presentation, please take a second to fill out this survey.

Links from today’s session:

For more on FOG imaging server, goto www.fogproject.org. Check back next week, I’ll be posting a full how-to on creating a mobile imaging cart. I’ll cover selecting hardware, installing all software, all the way up to imaging your first set of computers.

For more on moodle check out the moodle.org and Google Apps for education sites as well as the great books from packtpub. I’ll be posting full how-to’s for setting up moodle on shared hosting and private server hosting in the next week or so.

iTalc, the computer monitoring software can be found at italc.sourceforge.org. Expect a full write-up with instructions soon.

Finally, if you’re interested in creating inexpensive interactive whiteboards ala Promethean, check out smoothboard and Uwe Schmidt’s websites.

If you’d like to contact me for more information in the meantime, email me at eric@nolalearning.com or use the contact form in the upper-left.

Thanks to everyone who came out, I had a great time sharing with y’all.

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iPad 2 on its way, looks great for school

2 Mar

Using InFocus 3916

I managed to sneak a peak at the various live-blogs of the iPad 2 launch in San Francisco during my lunch break today. They start shipping March 11 and I put in an order for 11 of the 16GB units with our Apple rep this morning (I’ve been waiting for the new ones to order another batch for our special education department). While I was really hoping for a dedicated Thunderbolt port (or at least a Displayport) for dedicated graphics goodness, I am happy to see the new Apple HDMI adapter for 1080p output.

One of the most potentially exciting things about new HDMI adapter is the USB port. Apple’s specs page says it’s for charging; I’m hoping it works like the USB port on the camera connect kit, meaning that USB human interface devices (like keyboards) work with it as well. In my dream world I could actually use an iPad as my primary teaching device, video out to my Smart Board (or equivalent interactive whiteboard) and have the USB HID from the Smart Board be able to control my iPad while I’m at the board.

Actually, my true dream setup (which is getting closer and closer to being possible) is being able to run a class anywhere with nothing but an iPad and an interactive short-throw projector. Literally one power cord (the projector) and nothing else. Continue reading →

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