www.it-ebooks.info Moodle 2 for Teaching 4-9 Year Olds Beginner's Guide Use Moodle to create quizzes, puzzles, and games to enhance the learning ability of your students Nicholas Freear BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI www.it-ebooks.info Moodle 2 for Teaching 4-9 Year Olds Beginner's Guide Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmied in any form or by any means, without the prior wrien permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotaons embedded in crical arcles or reviews. Every eort has been made in the preparaon of this book to ensure the accuracy of the informaon presented. However, the informaon contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark informaon about all of the companies and products menoned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this informaon. First published: October 2011 Producon Reference: 1121011 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK. ISBN 978-1-84951-328-9 www.packtpub.com Cover Image by Rakesh Shejwal (shejwal.rakesh@gmail.com) www.it-ebooks.info Credits Author Nicholas Freear Reviewers Mary Cooch Silvina P. Hillar Maja Kuna Kent Villard Acquision Editor Sarah Cullington Development Editor Chris Rodrigues Technical Editors Pallavi Kachare Arun Nadar Project Coordinator Michelle Quadros Proofreaders Aaron Nash Steve Maguire Indexer Monica Ajmera Mehta Graphics Geetanjali Sawant Producon Coordinator Alwin Roy Cover Work Alwin Roy www.it-ebooks.info About the Author Nicholas Freear got into soware and educaonal technology through a series of happy accidents. During research for a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Birmingham he was thrown in at the deep end, learning to program in C++, using the Windows API, and programming against the interface card for an early digital camera (a "frame grabber", since you ask). Bizarrely, this didn't put him o. In his next job, he was a programmer at a high-tech startup company helping to create products from voice recognion and speech synthesis soware. However, the World Wide Web was calling. Aer a character-building snt as a self-employed developer and accessibility consultant, Nicholas joined the team that was working on The Open University's next-generaon e-learning environment. And so, he was introduced to Moodle and the open-source soware community. Following several fruiul years, Nick joined the Instute of Educaonal Technology at The OU, where he got to talk to more academics, pursue his accessibility and usability interests, and work on many dierent educaon and research projects. He blogs ( http://freear.org.uk), contributes to the Moodle community (http://moodle.org/user/view.php?id=93815), and likes to talk at workshops and conferences despite his stammer. When he's not trying to understand the mysteries of the Web, Nick likes to sing, cycle, listen to loud music, and learn about all things Chinese. Occasionally all at the same me. www.it-ebooks.info Acknowledgement I am indebted to many people for their help during this project. To Snehman Kohli and Sarah Cullington at Packt Publishing for coming to me with the original ideas—it's been a crazy ride! To my coordinator, editors, and reviewers: Michelle Quadros, Sarah, Chris Rodrigues, Reshma Sundaresan,Swapna Verlekar, Arun Nadar, Pallavi Kachare, Maja Kuna, Silvina P. Hillar, Kent Villard, Rebecca Galley, and Mary Cooch – for outstanding paence. To the Moodle community, parcularly the contributed plugins curator, Anthony Borrow, Michael de Raadt, Mary Cooch, and those on the Quiz forum—for encouragement and valuable feedback on my contributed plugins. The VLE team in Learning and Teaching Soluons at The Open University—for smulang and nurturing my interest in free/open source soware and Moodle. You guys and gals connue to do a fantasc and somemes under-rated job. Colleagues at the Instute of Educaonal Technology and around The Open University—for support, friendship, and pung interesng projects my way. This includes Will, Juliee, Chetz, Rod, and the Richards. I owe a debt of gratude to my parents David and Doreen for their support, and ring my interest in books. Lastly, to the free/open source soware and open-content communies: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" — (Isaac Newton) www.it-ebooks.info About the Reviewers Silvina P. Hillar has been teaching English since 1993. She has always had a great interest in teaching, wring, and composing techniques, and has made a lot of research on this subject. She is an English Teacher, a Cered Legal Translator (English/Spanish), and has a Post Degree in Educaon (graduated with Honors). She has been working in several schools and instutes with nave English-speaking students and as an independent consultant for many internaonal companies as an interpreter, translator, and e-learning acvies developer. She has always had a passion for technological devices concerning educaon. Former videos and cassees were a must in her teaching lessons; computer was and sll is present. Her brother Gastón C. Hillar designed some programs and games for her teaching. Lately, she is teaching using Moodle and the Web 2.0. She believes that one of the most amazing challenges in educaon is bridging the gap between classic educaon and modern technologies. She has been doing a lot of research on mulmedia assets which enhance the teaching and learning through VLE plaorms. She tries to embed the learning of students through new resources which are appealing and innovave for them. Thus, mulmedia smulates the dierent thinking skills as well as mulple intelligences. She has worked on books such as Moodle 1.9 English Teacher's Cookbook and Moodle 2.0 Mulmedia Cookbook. I would like to thank all the team at Packt Publishing Ltd. I owe tremendous thanks to my wonderful six-year-old son, Nico, who despite his age has been very paent and supporng in all my projects. www.it-ebooks.info Maja Kuna has been providing consultancy about technical wring, instruconal design, e-learning content development, and management to corporate and public organizaons for the last few years. She has consulted and worked for organizaons in dierent vercals, including: EUMETSAT, Societa' degli Studi di Seore (SOSE), GiunLabs, and Piramide e-learning supporng various e-learning projects. Maja is a cered Moodle teacher (MCCC, formerly MTC) and she has been involved as an instructor in courses on Moodle in Almere (Netherlands), Florence (Italy), and Darmstadt (Germany). Maja holds a Master of Art in Polish Philology with specializaon in teaching (Jagiellonian University in Cracow) and a postgraduate diploma in E-learning and Knowledge Management (University of Florence). She speaks English, Italian, and Polish uently. Kent Villard is a twenty-year veteran of the IT industry and currently the E-Learning Coordinator for the University of Prince Edward Island. He has been administering Moodle for almost ve years. He has acted as a technical reviewer for Packt on Moodle 1.9 for Design and Technology and Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques among other tles. When not administering Moodle or evangelizing the Mac plaorm, Kent can be found spending quality me with his beauful wife Denise and awesome kids, Maxwell and Samantha, and watching really bad movies. Kent lives in Cornwall, Prince Edward Island in Atlanc Canada. He can be reached at kent.villard@gmail.com. www.it-ebooks.info www.PacktPub.com Support les, eBooks, discount offers and more You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support les and downloads related to your book. Did you know that Packt oers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub les available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com and as a print book customer, you are entled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch with us at service@packtpub.com for more details. At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collecon of free technical arcles, sign up for a range of free newsleers and receive exclusive discounts and oers on Packt books and eBooks. http://PacktLib.PacktPub.com Do you need instant soluons to your IT quesons? PacktLib is Packt's online digital book library. Here, you can access, read and search across Packt's enre library of books. Why Subscribe? Fully searchable across every book published by Packt Copy and paste, print and bookmark content On demand and accessible via web browser Free Access for Packt account holders If you have an account with Packt at www.PacktPub.com, you can use this to access PacktLib today and view nine enrely free books. Simply use your login credenals for immediate access. www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info [...]... module Time for action – installing the activity module Creating a book Time for action – creating a book Improving our book Time for action – adding custom styles [ iv ] www.it-ebooks.info 186 186 188 188 190 191 193 193 197 197 199 199 20 1 20 1 20 8 21 0 21 0 21 2 21 2 21 4 21 5 21 9 21 9 Table of Contents Adding pictures Time for action – adding pictures to our book Completing our online book Time for action... filter 24 0 RSS feeds and blocks 24 3 Time for action – adding an RSS feed 24 4 Improving our RSS feed 24 6 Time for action – using Yahoo! Pipes 24 6 Feeds 24 8 Science simulations 24 9 Time for action – incorporating PhET simulations 25 0 HTML5 jigsaw 25 6 Time for action – exploring the jigsaw 25 6 Creating your own jigsaw activity 25 9 Time for action – using an iframe 26 0 Summary 26 4 Course backup Time for action... Installing a dictionary Time for action – installing a pop-up dictionary Integrating a dictionary service Time for action – using the dictionary Summary 22 3 22 3 22 5 22 5 22 8 22 8 23 0 23 0 23 3 Chapter 9: Embedding the Web 23 5 Chapter 10: Administration 26 5 What is Scratch? 23 6 Embedding Scratch projects 23 6 Time for action – embedding Scratch applets 23 6 The Scratch embed filter 24 0 Time for action – installing... Restoring a course Time for action – course restore Recording and tracking progress Time for action – making notes Blogging Time for action – writing a blog post Tags Gradebook Time for action – viewing grades Community [v] www.it-ebooks.info 26 5 26 6 27 2 27 3 27 6 27 6 27 9 27 9 28 3 28 4 28 4 28 6 Table of Contents Contributed plugins Summary 28 6 28 7 Appendix A: Accessibility for Online Teaching 28 9 Appendix B: Pop... label Time for action – creating a label resource Embedding a video Time for action – embedding video Creating numerical questions Time for action – creating numerical questions Creating more math questions www.it-ebooks.info 10 10 13 14 16 18 20 24 24 27 27 29 29 31 32 34 35 36 36 39 39 43 43 46 46 48 Table of Contents Time for action – creating more maths questions A calculated question Time for action... Online Teaching 28 9 Appendix B: Pop Quiz Answers 301 Index 23 7 What is accessibility? 29 0 Why accessibility for teachers? 29 1 Guidance for teachers and online authors 29 2 Perceivable 29 2 Operable 29 6 Usable 29 7 Robust 29 9 Useful links 29 9 Final words 300 Chapter 1 Getting Started Chapter 2 Basic Math in Moodle Chapter 3 Telling Stories Chapter 4 Spot the Difference Chapter 5 Setting Homework Chapter... entries Time for action – adding glossary entries [ iii ] www.it-ebooks.info 126 127 128 131 131 133 1 34 1 34 136 136 138 1 39 1 42 1 42 146 146 151 153 1 54 1 54 158 158 Table of Contents Glossary auto-linking Time for action – using auto-linking Installing the Games module Time for action – installing the module Creating a game Time for action – adding snakes and ladders Adding a cryptex Time for action... 9 Embedding the Web Chapter 10 Administration 301 301 301 301 3 02 3 02 3 02 3 02 3 02 3 02 303 303 303 303 303 303 3 04 3 04 3 04 3 04 [ vi ] www.it-ebooks.info Preface Moodle is a virtual learning environment that is being used in more and more schools worldwide It is ideal for teaching a younger age group as interactive lessons enable children to learn quicker and with greater ease Moodle 2 for Teaching 4- 9. .. function in versions 2. 0.x (2. 0.0, 2. 0.1…) and 1 .9. x of Moodle There are a few exceptions, which are noted in the text In the first seven chapters, instructions are given for Moodle 2 then Moodle 1 .9 For the remaining chapters the procedure is given for Moodle 2, and it is assumed that you will have learnt enough to extrapolate for version 1 .9 The activities will probably also work in Moodle 2. 1.x and most... 76 77 78 78 80 80 81 82 83 83 84 85 88 88 90 91 94 95 95 99 99 Table of Contents Installing an image editor Time for action – installing Inkscape Editing the images Time for action – editing the first SVG image Bringing it together Time for action – adding images to our lesson More difficult exercises Time for action – adding more questions Wrapping up the lesson Time for action – adding a branch Enrolling . Accessibility for Online Teaching 28 9 What is accessibility? 29 0 Why accessibility for teachers? 29 1 Guidance for teachers and online authors 29 2 Perceivable 29 2 Operable 29 6 Usable 29 7 Robust 29 9 Useful. book 22 5 Time for acon – adding the remaining parts to the book 22 5 Installing a diconary 22 8 Time for acon – installing a pop-up diconary 22 8 Integrang a diconary service 23 0 Time for acon. backup 26 5 Time for acon – creang a course backup 26 6 Restoring a course 27 2 Time for acon – course restore 27 3 Recording and tracking progress 27 6 Time for acon – making notes 27 6 Blogging 27 9 Time