Taking stock

As we enter phase 2 of the rollout and our Moodle system continues to grow here at Bromley College, we now have 128 staff and 340 students enrolled. The implications and impact of the VLE have begun to filter out far beyond just teaching staff, with our Quality Manager now chairing a new steering group, which is good, should be interesting, goes without saying . In the last couple of weeks I conducted an audit of user activity. This has been a useful and timely exercise, as it shows how many of the features promoted in the phase 1 training have actually been used. The outcome has shown, not surprisingly, variability within courses on the way in which staff are making use of the system, and so our phase 2 strategy will include specific targeting of those courses in an effort to introduce some level of continuity. We have also put together an easily digestible report for SMT, it seems my first somewhat voluminous attempt at this went down more like un-chewed cucumber, anyway the latest incarnation makes the case that by deploying Moodle, we will be in a position to leverage many of the high priority themes emerging from the DfEE of late, we shall see.

Mind mapping for free

I came across a nice little freebe the other day that’s worth a look, it’s a web based mind-mapping tool called ThinkLink . In use it’s an intuitive application, students drag and drop various symbols onto the main stage and then type text into them, which in turn gets over any legibility issues. We are about to trial a mobile BlueTooth graphic pad in class and I feel tools like ThinkLink are going to come into their own.

Done and dusted

With the arrival of phase 2, a new series of staff training is about to begin, that means some new courses, so I am pleased to say the file has closed on Moodle Quizzes this week. As an added extra I have included a chapter on Hot Potatoes, which seems to hook nicely into the Moodles quiz reporting system, well done out there for that one. I have been having some thoughts regarding the viability of doing things this way though, particularly for some of the lighter features, like say Journals and even options from the more heavyweight stuff, and with that in mind I am going to try screen capture type videos, that users can run on demand, anyway I will be getting back on that one.

Sticks and carrots

The rollout here has hit one of those inevitable census points: how is the system actually being used. The findings are a bit mixed, with some staff uploading content, creating links and generally planning their delivery and taking advantage of VLE facilities. However its not that good everywhere, and this means that some courses are only partially served by Moodle, while with others its not really happening at all. Cash incentives are apparently going to be on offer, as are extra training sessions, sticks, what sticks.

Chatting with msn

I set up a new project on Moodle just before the end of winter term, more blogs on this later. Anyway realising that this implied students maybe having to do some work over the Christmas break, I say no more, I thought the decent thing to do would be to make myself available using a chat session. So we agreed a time each day. Well all I can say is that it would have been lonely old Christmas had relied on that strategy, not one contact! Clearly my high quality teaching and notes remove the need; nice thought, but back to planet Earth. Just before our return to college I set myself up, for the first time, on MSN Messenger and emailed my group. Guess what, most are in; as are some members from other courses who found out about it. I have had to set up groups to keep it manageable with chat actually about work even at weekends!

Upgraded to 1.5.2

The upgrade to Moodle 1.5.2 went smoothly and I completed necessary changes to the course notes, so they will be OK to go for the next staff development. Started work on the “Creating a Quiz in Moodle” course and it's about 50+% complete so hopefully I can start to offer that by the end of Jan. Our Conference video is still being sliced up into easy chunks by the media team for me to edit and stream.