Moodle 1.9: E-Learning Course Development

This book is a comprehensive guide to Moodle 1.9, covering everything from installing Moodle and creating courses through to in-depth explanations of how Moodle works under the surface. One thing I enjoyed about this book is that it’s not just a collection of step-by-step guides, but it gives detailed information so you understand why you are doing it.
For example, when describing configuration options, it doesn’t just give an overview of what the option is for. Additionally it provides more information on the advantages and disadvantages of using it.

The book is divided into the following chapters:

1. Introduction
This provides information about Moodle and how an overview of how it works

2. Installing and Configuring Moodle
Indepth guide to the Moodle installation process. It includes the standard step by step explanations as well as covering possible complications and areas to watch out for.

3. Configuring Your Site
The administration of Moodle is covered in this chapter as well as information about authentication methods, language options. How to set up the enrolment for a course is covereed here, such as using LDAP, PayPal or Flat Authorize.net etc.

4. Creating Categories and Courses
Basic category and course creation is covered in this chapter.

5. Adding Static Course Material
Uploading files and adding multimedia to courses are some of the topics covered in this chapter. It also covers the markup and the HTML editor.

6. Adding Interactive Course Material
Assignments, Lessons and Quizzes are the main focus of this chapter. The SCORM standard is also covered.

7. Adding Social Course Material
Web 2.0 meets Moodle. This chapter shows how to add Chat, Forums and WIkis to your Moodle course.

8. Welcoming Your Students
The ins and outs of customising the front page of Moodle are thoroughly examined here. Themeing and Front Pages Blocks are covered.

9. Features for Teachers
Reports, Logs annd Grading is covered in this chapter.

10. Extending and Administering Moodle
The more advanced parts of Moodle Administration are covered here, including external Modules, Backup and Roles.

This book covers everything most people need to know about Moodle in a style which is detailed. It can be read as a guide or dipped into when you have problems or questions. If you are thinking about or currently using Moodle this is definitely the book for you.

I’m presenting a talk on “Reusing Adaptation Strategies in Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems” later this morning and the slides are available from here.

I spent quite a while trying to get ADB setup using the Android SDK but it refused to recognise the adb drivers as compatible with the device. Unfortunately there’s not that much out there in the way of step by step Android Screencasts for Dummies, but, after much googling and hair pulling I managed to tease a solution from the internet (I’m using Windows XP for this, not my usual Ubuntu).

1. First, you need to enable debugging mode: Hit Menu->Settings->Applications->Development and check “USB debugging”.
2. The Android SDK adb drivers don’t work so you need to install HTCSync. Apparently some people have the file on the CD/SDCard from HTC, I couldn’t find it so downloaded it from here (kudos to James Giang for this solution).
3. Plug in HTC Desire, Windows will do some installing, after which you need to restart.
4. There is a nice project over on googlecode called AndroidScreencast. Make sure you have JRE v5+ installed and run this file from their project.

Hopefully you should be able to see a window displaying your phone monitor (see screenshot). Yay!

I recently had a full conference paper, titled “Reusing Adaptation Strategies in Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems” accepted for ICALT’10 in July and I am now getting back to research after my Easter “break”! I’ve updated my papers page with the abstract.

The first events of the year that I organised for Notts/Derby BCS group went well and I’m hoping that this continues with the events over the next couple of months.

They are all held at the Long Eaton Novotel and are free to non-BCS members. If you want to come along please register first on our website so we have an idea of numbers. The next few meetings are:

• 15th March: Safe Disposal of IT equipment
• 19th April: Speed Networking!
• 17th May: Game-based learning
• 21st June: The Art of Productive Laziness

All meetings start at 18:30 and are at: Novotel, Bostock Lane, Long Eaton, NOTTINGHAM NG10 4EP (map)

convert file.pdf file.jpg

Unfortunately the resolution was messed up in the output files so had to do some digging on google to find this forum post which sorted the problem with:

convert -density 400 in.pdf -scale 2000x out.jpgtext

Works a treat. I had figured out the -scale part but the -density bit I had missed. I’ve also been using another ImageMagick command quite a lot recently to prepare folders of photos for Facebook upload. This one changes the source images so best make a copy of the pictures first.

mogrify -resize 800x *.jpg

Off course, these are linux commands so might not work on Windows.