group study and note taking in moodle with mediabird

Just came upon a nice little note taking plug-in for moodle. Mediabird allows students to take notes and share them if they want to, as well as publish questions about their notes to others in their study group. They get to form their own group(s), and so don’t depend on instructors, nor are they limited by rigid rules about group activity. The youtube intro is worth a look:

The plug-in needs to be installed at the site level by a moodle administrator, of course. Wonder if system administrators would have any hesitations about security, data protection or other concerns that sys admins are supposed to have (for good reason).

One to keep an eye on…

Via D21-Projektblog at http://www.blog.initiatived21.de/?p=2848 Danke!

Michael Kerres’ experiment with Moodle and SCORM

Michael Kerres writes about recording a lecture using Camtasia, saving it as a SCORM object and then using it in Moodle. The circa 20 minute-long lecture object includes slides, audio and a made-with-Camtasia quiz.

Michael Kerres post

link to the lecture in moodle (login as guest)

UCLA goes with Moodle

As stated on their webpage titled UCLA IT Strategic Vision:

In November, 2006, the UCLA Faculty Committee on Educational Technology decided that UCLA should converge on Moodle as the single open source platform for its common collaboration and learning environment (CCLE).

The additional information that UCLA will remain involved in the Sakai project, but apparently not as a first priority ( “as capacity is available” ), is particularly interesting since UCLA is a Sakai Foundation member.

Via EdTechPost

Michael Kerres on the success of Moodle

Michael Kerres talks about the factors that contribute to Moodle’s success as a learning platform. The sound file is available as an MP3 download near the bottom of the page, called dll-pod2.mp3 (in German).

He lists 3 main hurdles that Moodle has cleared in terms of acceptance by different users of Moodle: system administators, teachers, and students. For each type of actor, the main attraction is ease of use: easy to install for sys admins, easy to set up a course quickly for teachers, and easy and intuitive to use for students. Make it easy and they will come.

Set up and maintenance of Blackboard vs Moodle

from accidental pedagogy
http://accidentalpedagogy.typepad.com/accidental_pedagogy/2006/04/set_up_and_main.html
Apparently Bb and Moodle come out more or less the same…