open source software
DESCRIPTION
Open Source Software. Virtual Learning Environments. What is Open Source Software?. Open source software is software whose source code is open to public review. It is free to download, free to modify, free to redistribute. Links Open Source Definition Open Source Licenses - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Virtual Learning Environments
Open Source Software
What is Open Source Software?
Links
Open Source Definition
Open Source Licenses
GNU General Public License
More examples of OS Software
Open source software is software whose source code is open to public review.
It is free to download, free to modify, free to redistribute.
Advantages of using Open Source Software
Software evolves and improvements can happen with far greater speed than proprietary software.
Bugs can be fixed, improvements and new developments can be made available to all..
Freely available, with a global support community.
Free to obtain, modify and redistribute
High quality, stable, secure software available to all
Wonderful gifts for the educational community!
Open Source Software in Education
Total cost of ownership is reduced, Freedom from being tied to particular products Lower costs for home-school communities Customise to fit your needs. Can be used on older computer systems. Allows productivity to increase for small outlay Saves money for cash-strapped schools Flexibility and adaptability to with changing needs
Examples of Open Source Software?
Apache webserver Squirrelmail webmail system sendmail, the most widely used email transport
software Python programming language PHP programming language Abiword word processor Linux: the most used Unix-like operating system Postnuke Content Management System Moodle Virtual Learning Environment
What is a Virtual Learning Environment?
An online vehicle for teaching and learning
Controlled access to curriculum ‘modules’
Modules can be separately assessed and recorded
Tracking of student activity and achievement
Activities to facilitate, guide and monitor learning
Access to learning resources and assessments
Communication between the learners and teachers/facilitators, and between peer groups
Links to administrative systems
Virtual Learning Environments
Buy a VLE :
Digital Brain Blackboard WebCT
VTLE (RM) BT Learning Centre Learning Gateway (MS)
Free VLE’s
ATutor Moodle Claroline COSE
Proceed with caution…
What are our strengths? What do we need? What can a VLE offer? What is available? What are the teaching and learning opportunities? Do they match our requirements? What flexibility is provided? What other issues need to be considered?
Do your homework first!
Information and Guidance?
FERL: Further Education Resources for Learning.
“An Internet based information service for lecturers and other practitioners in Further Education colleges funded by the FEFC and managed by BECTa.”
Links to guidance/help pages:
Why have a VLE? Evaluating Learning Platforms Purchasing a VLEStaff DevelopmentPiloting a VLEMainstreaming a VLEAdministrationCase StudiesHow to Get it all WrongList of Case Studies
Information and Guidance?
JISC : Joint Information Systems Committee.
“An independent advisory body that works with further and higher education by providing strategic guidance, advice and opportunities use to use ICT to support learning, teaching, research and administration.”
Useful documents
MLEs and VLEs explained
Open Source: Case Study
A challenge:
What else can we be doing tosupport our students?
Case Study : Providing more support
More Individual support within lessons
Additional support at lunchtimes and after school
Individual programmes of study
Exploring new teaching methods and learning styles
Increase number and range of choices
Home/School links
Parental involvement
Initial Ideas
Case Study : Providing more support
Making it all fit into scheduled lessons
Commitments of staff and students outside of scheduled lessons
Mismatch between timetables between teachers and students for additional support.
Constraints
Case Study : Providing more support
What are our needs?
What new opportunities for teaching and learning can a VLE provide?
Can we match our requirements with a VLE?
Is it flexible enough to change with us!
What INSET is required?
Is 24/7 access available?
Can a VLE be applied and used in context with our courses?
Do we have the infrastructure to make it accessible to all students
How much will it cost?
VLE: Initial questions
Case Study : Providing more support
Open Source No ties Flexible Meets our requirements Easy to install and backup Easy to create, change, modify courses Select range of facilities Ability to save our courses Overall costs are low Provides a range of new teaching opportunities and
learning styles
VLE: Why Open Source?
Case Study : An Open Source solution
Moodle it!
MOODLE is an acronym for….
“Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment “
It is also a verb that describes the process of… “lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity …..”
What is Moodle?
A software package –
designed to help educators create quality online courses. A course management system (CMS) –
or Learning Management Systems (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
Supports social constructionist pedagogy
Open Source software
FREE to download it, use it, modify it and distribute it ( GNU General Public License).
Supports a range of platforms
Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Netware and any other system that supports PHP, including most webhost providers.
Data is stored in a single database:
such as MySQL and PostgreSQL. Can also be used with Oracle, Access, Interbase, ODBC and others….
Available in 34 languages
Who created Moodle?
Martin Dougiamas created Moodle
Martin is Australian, living in Perth.
Moodle started out as a hobby for Martin,
and grew into the subject of his PhD thesis:
"The use of Open Source software to support a social
constructionist epistemology of teaching and learning
within Internet-based communities of reflective inquiry",
Moodle is now being used in many schools,
universities and other educational
communities.
Martin Dougiamas
More Information is available from
Using Learning Communities to Create an Open Source Course Management System
Moodle’s Home
Who uses Moodle?
There are almost 700 sites which have registered,in over 67 countries! (January 2004)
Albania | Argentina | Australia | Austria | Belgium | Bolivia | Brazil |Canada | Chile | China | Colombia | Costa Rica | Croatia (Hrvatska) |Cyprus | Czech Republic | Denmark | Dominican Republic | Ecuador Finland | France | Germany | Greece | Guatemala | Honduras | HongKong | Hungary | Iceland | India | Indonesia | Iran (Islamic Republic of)| Ireland | Italy | Japan | Korea; Republic of | Lithuania | Malaysia |Mexico | Morocco | Nepal | Netherlands | New Zealand | Nicaragua |Norway | Pakistan | Peru | Philippines | Poland | Portugal | Romania |Russian Federation | Saudi Arabia | Singapore | Slovakia (SlovakRepublic) | South Africa | Spain | Sweden | Switzerland | Taiwan |Thailand | Trinidad and Tobago | Turkey | Ukraine | United ArabEmirates | United Kingdom | United States of America | Uruguay |Venezuela ……………………..
Download your Moodle now!
Who uses Moodle? North Chadderton School
Coolwebschool’s Moodle Openschool’s Moodle
Supporting 21st Century Science
Teacher to Facilitator?
Moodle supports a change of role from ‘teacher’ to a ‘facilitator’ :
A change from ‘source of knowledge' to being an influencer and role model of class culture,
Facilitator connects with students by
- addresses individual learning needs, - moderating discussions and activities - collectively leads students towards the learning goals of the class.
The future developments of Moodle provide more support for this approach
The Philosophy ?
“Social constructionist pedagogy“
A social group in which the focus is on both group and individual activities :
Constructing Collaborating Creating Sharing
Moodle: Site Management
An administrator
Control of the site is by an administrator user defined during setup
Plug-in "themes"
The administrator can customise the site colours, fonts, layout etc to suit local needs
Plug-in activity modules
These can be added to existing Moodle installations
Plug-in language packs
Currently there are language packs for over 34 languages. These can be edited using a built-in web-based editor.
Moodle: Course Management (1)
A teacher administrator has full control over all settings for a course, including restricting other teachers
Choice of course formats such as by week, by topic or a discussion-focused social format
Flexible array of course activities –
Forums, Journals, Quizzes, Resources, Choices, Surveys, Assignments, Chats, Workshops
Display recent changes to the course since the last login can be displayed on the course home page
Easy editing of text for resources, forum postings, journal entries using an embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor
Moodle: Course Management (2)
Grades for Forums, Journals, Quizzes and Assignments can be viewed on one page (and downloaded as a spreadsheet file)
User logging and tracking – full activity reports for each student are available with graphs and details about each module. Also a detailed review of each student’s involvement including postings, journal entries etc
Mail integration – copies of forum posts, teacher feedback etc can be mailed in HTML or plain text.
Custom scales – teachers can define their own scales to be used for grading forums, assignments and journals
Courses can be packaged –
as a single zip file using the Backup function. These can be restored on any Moodle server.
Moodle: Course structure
Weekly format
Each week consists of activities. Some might have deadlines, others might be open.
Topics format
Presented and organised into topics. A topic is not restricted to any time limit.
Social format
All activities are presented and organised into a single forum. Could also be used as noticeboards
Moodle: Course structure
Weekly format
Each week consists of activities. Some might have deadlines, others might be open.
Topics format
Presented and organised into topics. A topic is not restricted to any time limit.
Social format
All activities are presented and organised into a single forum. Could also be used as noticeboards
Moodle: Modules
Assignment Attendance Chat Choice Dialogue Exercise Forum Glossary Journal
Quiz Resource Survey WebQuest Webwork Workshop
Modules available for Moodle
More details
Moodle: Assignment Module
Can be specified with a due date and a maximum grade.
Students can upload assignments
They are date-stamped. Different file formats are allowed
Late assignments are allowed
The amount of lateness is shown clearly to the teacher
Whole-class assessment
Grades and comments provided for each assignment, on one page in one form. Viewable by assigned teachers
Teacher feedback
This is appended to the assignment page for each student. Notification is sent by e-mail
Resubmission of assignments
This can be allowed by teachers after grading (for re-grading)
Moodle: Forum Module
Different types of forums are available,
teacher-only,course news, open-to-all, one-thread-per-user.
All postings have the authors photo attached.
Discussions can be viewed as nested, flat, threaded, oldest or newest first
Every registered user can join, or the teacher can force subscription for all
The teacher can choose not to allow replies
Discussion threads can be easily moved between forums
Attached images are shown inline
Moodle: Journal Module
Journals are private between student and teacher.
Each journal entry can be directed by an open question.
The whole class can be assessed on one page in one form
Teacher feedback is appended to the journal entry page, and notification is mailed out.
Moodle:Quiz Module (1)
Teachers can define a database of questions for re-use in different quizzes
Questions can be stored in categories for easy access, and these categories can be "published" to make them accessible from any course on the site.
Quizzes are automatically graded, and can be re-graded if questions are modified
Quizzes can have a limited time window outside of which they are not available
At the teacher's option, quizzes can be attempted multiple times, and can show feedback and/or correct answers
Quiz questions and quiz answers can be shuffled (randomised) to reduce cheating
Questions allow HTML and images
Moodle:Quiz Module (2)
Multiple-choice questions :
single or multiple answers
Short Answer questions ~
words or phrases
True-False questions
Matching questions
Random questions
Numerical questions (with allowable ranges)
Embedded-answer questions (cloze style)
Embedded descriptive text and graphics
Administration Panels
Moodle: Assignment Module
.
Assignments can be viewed online, or downloaded
Teacher can attach feedback comments
Notification is sent out by e-mail
Resubmission can be granted for assignments, for re-grading
Moodle: Assignment Module
Assignments can be specified with a due date and a maximum grade.
Students can upload their assignments (any file format) to the server - they are date-stamped.
Late assignments are allowed, but the amount of lateness is shown clearly to the teacher
For each particular assignment, the whole class can be assessed (grade and comment) on one page in one form.
Installing Moodle
Fantastico!http://www.webschool.org.uk/science/powerpoint/moodleinstall.ppt
Installation: requirements
1. Choose a hosting company which provides a MySQL (open source database) and PHP (embedded scripting language)
2. Make sure they offer Fantastico.
3. No special technical knowledge is required for the installation of Moodle
4. It is all controlled using 'point and click' operations.
5. Once installed, you can build your own Virtual Learning Environment, to suit the needs of your school.
Installing Moodle : Using Fantastico
1. Logon to the Control Panel
• Use the username and password
supplied with Welcome Mail!
Fantastico! is usually installed on Linux hosting accounts with CPanel
bse33ugo
**************
Installing Moodle : Using Fantastico
Select Fantastico! From the Control Panel
Installing Moodle : Using Fantastico
Installing Moodle : Using Fantastico
Installing Moodle : Using Fantastico
supportme
Installing Moodle : Using Fantastico
Installing Moodle : Using Fantastico
Installing Moodle : License Information
Agree to the terms of the GPL License……
Installing Moodle : Version Information
Current version of Moodle is displayed…..
Installing Moodle : Release Notes
Notes about the current version
No input required here…
…. just continue with the installation
Installing Moodle : Database Tables
Installing Moodle : Database Upgrade
Installing Moodle :Configuration
Specify the configuration variables
A few are shown here….
The default settings usually work !
They can be changed at any time
by the Administrator
Installing Moodle : Site Format
Configure the site format presented to visitors
Installing Moodle : Admin. Profile
Set the User Profile for the Administrator
A few items are shown here….
They can be changed at any time
Moodle : Ready to go!
Moodle has been installed and configured. Courses can now be added….
Science Support Websites
North Chadderton School Home www.webschool.org.uk
Community Websites www.mywebschool.org/postnuke/ www.scibase.org/ http://www.scigallery.org/blogger/modules/news http://www.scigallery.org/blogger/modules/news/
Databases ( for KS3 and Science Links)These were originally developed for the ASE
www.scilinks.org.uk/ www.scishop.org
Image Gallerieswww.supportscience.org/cgi-bin/imagefolio/imageFolio.cgiwww.webucation.org/gallery/
Virtual Learning Environment Websiteswww.coolwebschool.org/moodle/www.openschool.org.uk/support/
21st Century Support Sites
www.21stcenturyscience.org.uk/support/www.scienceblog.org/community/index.php
Blogging User Logon
www.webschool.org.uk/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi
North Chadderton School Websites : Constructed using Open Source Software