moodle for language teaching
Moodle News
Welcome to EnglishSafari. This blog (and Moodle) is for language teachers who want/have/aspire or simply like to use Moodle as a language teaching tool. I’ll be sharing tips and tricks here, some on the admin side of things, others for language teaching.
If you have any requests or ideas, pleased let me know!
Come on in,
Guido
I entered a competition run by Synergy Learning (creators of the fun and useful Moodle Admin Map) to in the draw for an e-book, namely Alex Büchner’s Moodle 2 Administration and actually won! Thanks to Andrea who drew my name out of a receptacle and the other folk at SL.
I rarely win stuff (no notable lottery wins to speak of at least), so this is a welcome surprise and possibly even a good omen. Auspicious times ahead, me hearties!
It’s been a while since my last post, mostly because I’ve been really busy at work, but I’ve been doing a lot of moodling as well, so stay tuned. Some upcoming posts will be about:
Let me know which one you want me to write about first in the comments!
Cheers,
Guido
I just found a review of the great Online Audio Recorder plugin on http://www.iteachwithmoodle.com/ by Frederic Nevers (you can find the review here). It’s a good breakdown of the plugin (along with its strengths and weaknesses) and compares it with the more famous NanoGong.
The only thing I would mention is that it is now possible to submit recordings with iDevices via the ‘Upload a file’ option. Users who use the official Moodle App on an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch can record audio directly from the app’s front page and then upload that recording. I haven’t tested this personally yet, but I don’t see why this wouldn’t work.
Otherwise, excellent review, Frederic! Yet another blog to follow…
Cheers,
Guido
Rubrics are a new feature in Moodle 2.2, part of the new advanced grading methods that are now possible in the Assignments module (see the official Moodle announcement here). They are designed to save you time by writing lots of feedback once on a scale and then just picking the bits you need to grade your students’ submissions.
I’ve used Paul Nicholl’s Online Audio Recorder assignment to create a rubric to grade speaking (see it in my Moodle here). Here’s an example of one I did yesterday to grade pronunciation:
Vowel Sounds, consonants, diphthongs, end sounds, linking, intonation, word stress and sentence stress
I’ve divided them into eight categories: vowel sounds, consonants, diphthongs, end sounds, linking, intonation, word stress and sentence stress.
I didn’t really want to include ‘points’ but I didn’t see a way around it. I guess it could be useful to give students an idea and most students like to get a score to see where they are in the scheme of things. Eight categories with seven grades each ended up as 56 points…a slightly random number, but you can always change that if you’d like.
I’ve put both the Word .doc file and a HTML file into my Dropbox. Feel free to download and modify them as you’d like. I’m going to publish everything on my blog under CC very soon. Stay tuned! If you find this useful, I’m also going to make a rubric for essays.
If anyone figures out a way to export rubric templates, please let me know too.
Cheers,
Guido
I’ve now added a CC licence to both these documents!
Also, MoodleDocs have been updated and now there is a section on exporting rubrics. Unfortunately, this isn’t possible yet, but a workaround exists. From the Docs:
At the moment, there is no way how to export/import grading form definitions. The known workaround is to create an empty assignment module and attach the grading form to it. Then make a standard activity backup of this assignment in the MBZ format and share it. By restoring the assignment, the attached grading form is restored, too. It can be then picked for your own activities or shared as a template at your site.
I’ve done this and you can download my rubrics as an Online Audio Recorder backup file here. Just make sure you’re running Moodle 2.2+ and have OAR installed. Restore the activity into an existing course and you should be good to go 
Cheers,
Guido
I just upgraded to Moodle 2.2.1+ and all went well! The upgrade went very smoothly, using Github, or git, as it more commonly known. The process was a bit daunting at first, as it involved deleting the entire Moodle folder (!!), but it ended up being OK. I followed the directions posted here and with a little forum help from Open University Moodle guru Tim Hunt, I could upgrade without any problems. Here are his instructions:
Well, if you have not customised the code, then you don’t really have to worry about deleting anything in the Moodle folder (except the config.php file), because you can just download everything again.
So, one option is to:
I did and all was well. Before you do this, though, zip up your Moodle folder using your favourite FTP program (or other Linux command) and back everything up!
In my case, I have a customised theme (Aardvark 2.1 with a zebra’s head), so I just zipped that up separately, downloaded it and after git did its thing, I just re-uploaded it and unzipped it in the /theme folder. No worries!
I did promise a LT perspective in the title, didn’t it?
Well, the biggest one for anyone who looks at essays a lot is rubrics. The MoodleFairy (a.k.a. Mary Cooch) has created a video about rubrics in 2.2. Have a look at it here:
Although it would take quite a bit of time setting up detailed feedback fields, it will be a massive time-saver if you grade a lot of essays. Of course it doesn’t just have to be essays. It could be a simple paragraph, a story, description, process, diary entry…you name it.
Combined with the Online Audio Recorder, you can also rate students’ pronunciation! I’ll post a completed template soon.
Let me know what you think in the comments!
Cheers,
Guido
Sorry about the month-long absence! I’ve been busy at work and had to take a break from Moodling for a while. However, last week, I went to MoodlePosium in Canberra, a great conference on all things Moodle. I learnt a lot and even got to network a little! I’ll tell you all about it in a little while. Things to be excited about were:
Last week, we finally moved into the dream house we’ve always wanted…still renting, but at least we now have a house! Only problem is that moving takes time and leaves little left to waste on the interwebs. Bear with me!
Cheers,
Guido
Happy Friday, everyone!
I’ve just installed a fantastic module on my Moodle called BBB or BigBlueButton. It integrates into Moodle just like any other activity would and works a treat! I’m really excited about it all and the possibilities this presents to language teachers. It offers a range of features, most notably group web conferencing, desktop sharing, whiteboard sharing and recording, all right within Moodle. Very nice! There’s a big thread about it on moodle.org here as well.
This YouTube video gives you quick overview of the installation and use of BBB:
You can try it out on the BBB website here or on my Moodle. BBB also has some concise instructional videos on what to do when you’re inside the software.
As with all great things, there is a downside to this, which is the server required to run it all. Video streaming is incredibly taxing on the ol’ infrastructure and this is what they recommend to run it:
We recommend installing BigBlueButton on a dedicated (non-virtual) server for optimal performance. To install BigBlueButton, you’ll need root access to a Ubuntu 10.04 server with
Sure, you can build a machine like that for less than $500 and all the software required is free, but you also need a good, fast pipeline to push it all through. In countries like Australia, this would be a problem. Renting a dedicated server with such specs also wouldn’t come cheap…maybe $150-$250/month? There is also a company that offers hosting called Generic Conferencing, which has a variety of plans available.
So, all in all, the server hardware requirements aside, this gets a big thumbs up from me
Watch this space for more on BBB and Moodle.
My next article will be on Adobe Edge, a web design tool that is currently available for free and seems to be very exciting for language teachers! More on that soon…I’m currently moving house and still have a lot of unpacking and cleaning to do.
Cheers,
Guido
Let’s see if I can keep up this posting pace.
I’ve added my first tutorial on my Moodle site!
It’s a simple how-to that shows you how to create a database for your students. They can enter new words that they’ve learnt and then browse through them either as lists or use the a customised single view template to output cool flashcards that they can then print off and use while waiting for the bus or at a restaurant while waiting for their date to (never?) show up. The possibilities are endless!
If you don’t want to learn how it’s done and just want to reap the fruits of my hard labour by downloading the preset, you can do that too. You can get it from my Dropbox here or directly from the course. Of course, there’s also a sample database that you can add entries to. So far there’s only a lone mushroom…make sure to add a few more!
If you do end up using the preset/tut in your course and your students add hundreds of entries, you can also share these! All database entries can be exported and shared (as can presets), so please share the love here by posting a link to the files on your GoogleDrops.cloudi file-sharing account.
If you don’t know how to look up word recency, get yourself a Cobuild Dictionary (which uses the diamonds I have in my example below) or use a concordancer. Oxford3000 works in a pinch, too. If you happen to know a good free online dictionary that indicates word frequency, please let me know in the comments!
An example of database flashcard
One of the more annoying aspects of adding content to your Moodle courses is the cumbersome process of uploading files. There are a lot of hoops and dialog boxes to jump through to simply add a single file to your course:
Turn editing on > Add file > upload a file > browse > locate the file > rename dialogue box > upload
That’s seven steps that have to be repeated every time you want to add a file!!
Sure, it’s not too bad…if you’re fast you can get through all that in about a minute, but it’s not just a matter of dragging and dropping a file in like you would with your file manager. Or is it..?
Well, that’s exactly what this little plugin does! It doesn’t work everywhere (only from the desktop directly into courses, not the frontpage) but I can live with that, seeing how that’s how we generally get files to and fro Moodle most of the time anyway!
Get yours here! Written by Davo Smith I believe. Thanks Davo 
To install it, simply drop the unzipped and renamed folder (it’s a massive 56 kilobytes…) into /moodle/blocks, go to the notifications page under ‘Site administration’ and click upgrade. Dead easy!
It should then be available inside all your courses as a block. Just turn editing on, add a block and select ‘Drag and Drop Uploader’. Once your block is in your course (it can sit anywhere, so just put it at the bottom) and you’re good to go.
Please note that you don’t drag the files onto the block but rather directly inside the course section.
It doesn’t work in all browsers (So far, I haven’t got it to work in Safari, but I’ll keep trying). There is a thread on the Moodle forums about it here as well.
Let me know if this works for you! And thanks to Davo Smith for creating this.
This is the third incarnation of EnglishSafari!
The first one was too slow. I hosted it with a cheap shared hosting plan (at $30/year you can’t really complain too loudly!) and expected a light-weight software like Moodle to fly. Needless to say, it didn’t. In fact, it was so slow that it probably turned away a lot of users. We’ve become very fickle Internet consumers. If something takes more than 20 seconds to load, we become impatient, click ‘refresh’ a couple of times, go to another window…it’s terrible, really! Don’t you all remember 56K modems??
Anyways, so I got a nice fast VPS with a great little Aussie host and called it a (what I thought to be) clever name: 2minutemoodles.net
Right, it’s a bit cheesy and others have done things with it already, but who cares? I thought it was great! But then I had this nagging feeling about Moodle really being Moodle™, a registered trademark. After all, the Moodlers needs to feed their families (and afford mine-craft home servers) somehow…
So I did the right thing and launched a ticket with the Moodle Helpdesk, asking whether my puny blog/Moodle would be allowed to have the LMS’s moniker embedded within the domain, fully expecting it to pass in the spirit of open-source development and all. As I’m sure you’ll be able to tell, this was not the case. I quickly got an email from Michael Blake, the Moodle Partner manager, saying that there is no way anyone other than an official Moodle Partner can have the word ‘moodle’ in its domain. A subdomain: no worries. Using Moodle in any other way on the site: piece of cake. A site called 2minutemoodles: NO WAY!! I should’ve known…
So, back to my old domain, but with a new server! What can possibly go wrong?
Time for bed…
Guido
