[Moodle] How we use moodle at Chelt....

[Kevork Krozian]

Hi again Stephen,

A few questions I meant to ask:

 1. Is there an itemised "one stop" homework page or "diary" for each child a parent can view to follow at home ? or is it by going into each course the student is enrolled in?
 2. To what extent are individual student assessment tasks recorded and used in/as an electronic gradebook by teachers in each course ?
 3. To what extent are assessment tasks created/written within each course for students to undertake ? Are they predominantly the multiple choice type or is there a fair sprinkling of short answer, extended answer and other varieties of questions as well ? What percentage of assessment tasks are on Moodle and how much is still on paper considering every course is on Moodle ?
 4. Do teachers still use a paper based gradebook ?
 5. You mentioned the archival facility for each student to view reports. Are you using markbook for your reporting and then reimporting into MySQL, the Moodle back end  ? If not, how are you maintaining reports for viewing as archives ? Security? Remote access ? Authentication after students have left school ?
 6. The beauty of the link to file feature in a course is that it provides a full description of a file instead of naming it eg. How_to_Build_a_networked_information_system_worksheet7_data_security.doc or similar. By linking everything to I drive or the like aren't you falling back into the difficulty of having to give individual files these unwieldy names if I have understood the I drive concept correctly  ? 

   Sorry for the barrage . I think these discussions will lead us to the promised land of the perfect Ultranet or if it is already a trademark of DEECD then the HyperMeganet or equally fancy name we conjure up.

Take Care

Kevork
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Stephen Digby 
  To: The Moodle Users' in Schools Mailing List 
  Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2008 3:37 PM
  Subject: [Moodle] How we use moodle at Chelt....


  Just thought this summary may be of interest….

  PS:  Did anyone email Ms. Pike to encourage her to consider moodle as an Australian option to develop as Ultranet cf. paying some private company squillions to design CASES v2…..

   

  Moodle
  Moodle is the CMS (Course Management Software) currently used at Chelt to support student and teacher access to digital resources that will improve the efficiency and effectiveness.  It currently provides opportunity:

    a.. subjects courses: 
      a.. access to course information for students on a "24/7" basis. 
      b.. staff and students to communicate digitally (forums, message systems) 
      c.. for staff to report assessments and comments individually and securely to students (whether assessments are digital or not) 
    b.. software 
      a.. T Drive (Texts & Software) - read access to access to digital texts and other resources from home as well as at school as well as searchable database of content) 
      b.. I Drive (Course Resources) - read access to resources for any subject 
    c.. student profile 
      a.. edit goals and reflections which are then printed in official school reports 
      b.. view all official reports provided to them during their school life 
    d.. public infomation 
      a.. view all current school policies and rules at any time 
      b.. view all school council minutes 
      c.. view the public school activities calendar (soon to be moved to an onine "Outlook" based format to integrate with staff notebook software) 
    e.. student and parent information 
      a.. view the public and student activities calendar 
      b.. view the school newsletters, photo-collection (back to 2004) and magazines (back to 1962) as well as other digital archives 
      c.. view a personal timebtable (accuracy variable due the limitations of The Timetabler software) 
      d.. view a personal ePortfolio (a website that students develop to keep documents, photos and reflections from their time at school and ina format able to be taken away wit them when they leave school) 
    f.. alumni 
      a.. permanent access to reports copies and school archives after they have exited 
      b.. post to forums for alumni to further communication between students and with the school 
    g.. staff information 
      a.. access to everything accessible above 
      b.. persoanlised daily email digest with links to all changes that have occurred in courses relevant to you 
      c.. Staff Manual - access to up-to-date compendium of all school programs and administrative arrangements whose accuracy is guaranteed by the admin 
      d.. R Drive-Teacher Software & Resources - access to all teacher versions of texts as well as software and resources for teachers only 
      e..  ability to book rooms (locally written software integrated with The Timetabler) 
      f.. ability to search for student information (photos, contact details) and enter observations about sudents visible to co-ordinators and admin (not available from off site) 
      g.. KLA information 
        a.. ability to share posts and information with specific groups of teachers only 
  How does it work ?
    a.. All courses except "Public" have an enrolment key to prevent public access 
    b.. Course: Public:  the web address www.cheltsec.vic.edu.au is redirected to http://infonet.cheltsec.vic.edu.au/course/view.php?id=70 and visitors automatically assigned the role of guest.  This allows more control of the content of the course compared with using the moodle front page as the school website. 
    c.. course: student and parent information:  
      a.. all students and teachers are enrolled 
      b.. automatically this enrols them in T drive, I drive and Archive (i.e. these courses are moodle meta courses that look to student and parent information as their "child" and mirror its enrolments) 
    d.. Course: staff information  
      a.. all school staff are enrolled 
      b.. automatically this enrols staff in courses such as Performance Development and Professional Development, and Student Wellbeing (i.e. these courses are moodle meta courses that look to staff information as their "child" and mirror its enrolments 
      c.. wiki: Staff manual: This format for all school program procedures allows all staff to contribute to the accuracy of the manual while recording who made what changes and allowing reversion where mistakes were made. It also provides a search limited to the manual and automatic interlinking of wiki page titles where they appear in any wiki page.
      Software limitations in the current moodle wiki will hopefully be improved soon ???? e.g. words forming part of page titles need to be repeated within pages to be searchable; the edit window for pages is small; the length of pages is limited to about 100 lines and if exceeded causes the page to fail to display etc. 
    e.. Courses: KLA's:  Staff need to enrol themselves in these courses as a "student" depending on their teaching load and their interest. Enrolment keys are provided for them in the restricted Staff information course.  KLA managers are enrolled by Tech staff and assigned the role of "teacher" in these courses 
    f.. I Drive (Course Resources):  Tech staff create folders for every subject code in the Timetable.  All folders and their contents are visible to all staff and students. 
      a.. The size of the course files area of this single course is over 1 Tb.  This caused moodle to crash when asked fro a directory display as it tried to calculate the size of every folder first !  (A hack is used to prevent this so that folder sizes display as 0 bytes). 
    g.. Courses: Curriculum Subjects:  Tech staff create a course for every course on the timetable 
      a.. Tech staff enrol staff in courses depending on the timetable and assign them the role of "teacher".  Students enrol themselves at the commencement of the course when the teacher tells them the enrolment key. 
      b.. Tech staff make a link from the course to the I drive folder for that course.
      NOTE:  We discourage use of the "files" area of individual courses as this provides less flexible access to files.  Placing all course files in I drive allows students to move in and out of subject folders through a mapped drive at school without needing to visit the related course.  From home they can do the same thing.  They only need to visit the specific course site IF teachers post instructions, suggestions, assignments etc.  
      c.. This arrangement allows a teacher to use InfoNet for one-way communication (i.e. provide resources for students through a familiar cut and paste folder access which is accessible from school or home and includes course timelines, guides etc etc) 
      d.. The subject course can be used later when the teacher is ready for two-way communication (i.e. students posting questions, comments, info  to forums, responding to questionnaires, making online choices, contributing to a shared wiki, sharing task development through a grouped forum, handing in work through an assignments, receiving grades and comments from the teacher, sending andreciging provate messages etc) 
    h..   
    i.. T Drive (Texts & Software) - read access to access to digital texts and other resources from home as well as at school as well as searchable database of content) 
      a.. The size of the course files area of this single course is over 2 Tb. 
    j.. Course: Student profile: 
      a.. Assignment Student reports: An single moodle assignment is used to store all student reports.  Reports are secure and visible only to the student logged on. Reports in pdf format are uploaded into the students assignment folder by a locally written software script that inserts the new reports into the existing assignment folder for that student. 
      b.. Link: Student ePortfolio:  This provides a weblink to the student's personal H drive storage folder where they have been editing their ePortfolio as a website. Student Password access is needed to view the contents. 
      c.. Report Goals & Comments: A moodle "portfolio" assignment allows students to repetitively edit a text box (no HTML allowed as this needs to e inserted into a school report) 
    k.. Course: Alumni:  No message block shown as we do not want alumni in continued contact with current students.  Future desirable option would be to have alumni hosted on a seperate moodle server where alumni could messag each other but current students would not be visible.  Technical problem is to maintain joint access to the archives which is the main motivator for alumni visits. 
    l.. Message System:  Turned on so that staff and students can communicate with each other without revealing any email addresses.  Small Hack to the moodle code has turned off the moodle user option to reveal a personal email address.  Also small hack has removed the message button from the personal profile page so that students are encouraged to go to the Student and Parent info course to access messages. 
    m.. Other hacks: 
      a.. remove automatic repeat of subject in replying to a post to force people to consider the titles of their posts 
      b.. alter daily digest format to emphasis post title in Heading 1 size for easier visual scanning. 
      c.. remove moodle to receive posts as full text (forcing everyone to a single daily digest of titles only) 
      d.. add print formatting hack to remove some web page stuff from printouts.  Staff are still advised to copy to word and check layout before printing for all web page content including InfoNet) 
      e.. Alter message system to force all messages to be emailed as well as displayed on screen so that staff can be assured that all  messages from stduents (or parents) will reach their inbox. 
      f.. Remove moodle folder size calculation so that huge folders (like I and T drives) do not take for ever to display. 
   

  ====================================================
  Stephen Digby, Learning Technology Manager
  mailto: digby.stephen.p at edumail.vic.gov.au  
  Cheltenham Secondary College www.cheltsec.vic.edu.au
  Ph: 613 955 55 955  Fx: 9555 8617 Mb: 0431-701-028
  ====================================================
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