notes from the Moodle Moot 08 e-Learning Conference…

The final Moodle session of the first day, Rich content for Moodle on a Budget, was enthusiastically and entertainingly presented by Rhys Moult, of BJ Network Consulting.

Rhys (an ex-bartender and sommelier who smoothly seduced his way into the hearts of his audience with a glass of Shiraz) looked at various tools (free, media rich, Web2.0 tools) that can be used with Moodle to enhance learning resources and courses.

You can view the session presentation here, or just check out some of the tools Rhys highlighted for easy integration with Moodle below.

GoAnimate!

GoAnimate is a web tool you can use to create animations (learning activities) to embed into your course web space or Moodle course. Here’s an example:

Udutu

Udutu is a tool that represents “a drastic change in online learning and training, allowing anyone to offer training through the already popular Facebook social network”.

From Udutu:

Social Networks as Learning Management Systems

To create a learning organization where knowledge is passed from experts to newcomers and where personal growth is encouraged, you need to create a social learning network. You can impose your own and hope they’ll participate, or you can leverage the one they already use. Chances are many of your people are already signed up!

Don’t fight technology, Leverage it!

Our applications can turn existing social networks such as Facebook. Into a powerful Learning Management System, (LMS, LCMS) and retain all the rich communication and scheduling tools that these applications offer.

Better yet, there’s no upfront investment in either infrastructure or software licensing. You can be up and running tomorrow in the interface your learners already know and use.

Udutu and Moodle

The myUdutu Course Authoring Module for Moodle allows you to easily insert your myUdutu courses into your running Moodle installation. You can download the module from the Moodle site here.

To find out more click here.

I’ve seen a demonstration of Udutu and Moodle, it basically allows you to create and embed your own learning objects, structure the learning, easily add audio and video, navigation and much more.

Well worth a look!

Jing!

Jing is a tool that some of us have been using already to quickly and simply record audio over screen demonstrations or create screen shots with captions. It’s a free tool, with limited server storage, but you can save the instructional movie as a flash file to your computer.

What is this thing called Jing? Video tour.

I have written a blog post about how I use Jing in the past, but here’s my first attempt at a recording using Jing…

Flexible Learning Framework Toolboxes

Download Learning Objects from the Toolbox Repository for easy upload into Moodle.

You can find out more about this on our Institute e-Learning Kit’s Resources Page, or our join our Moodle Toolbox Course for a walk through How To.

Slideshare

Slideshare is a place to upload and share (if you like) PowerPoint presentations. You can even add audio to your slideshow.

Here’s an example of one we created last year for the Institute’s e-Learning Strategy project.

Videos and Voki’s

And of course there’s;

videos to embed

• teachertube
• blip.tv – here are some edu examples
• skillsone videos - search by industry categories

voki’s

• used for our blog welcome, top right
• used through various Moodle courses for course intro’s
• used with students for practising language skills

Have a look at some voki examples from our teaching staff, or visit our Web2.0 page for more ideas.

What tools do you use with Moodle?

Let me know what great Web2.0 tools you use in Moodle by leaving a comment here.