Special thanks to Katie Kraker from the IES Abroad Freiburg Center for submitting these photos!

April/May 2012

Freiburg

Moodle Updates from Michael Steinberg

I just returned from Wo�ord College where I had a chance to meet with Dennis and Annmarie Wiseman and the faculty members who have visited or will visit IES Centers to assist with Moodle development: Begoña Caballero-Garcia, Cissy Fowler, Beate Brunow, and Kaye Savage. We agreed that the roles of these visitors needed to vary by Center depending on the Moodle knowledge of faculty at the Center, which varies quite a bit.

We also discussed possibilities for future interaction between our faculty and Wo�ord’s faculty on the Moodle project. We’ll send more information about this as we develop the plan for the next academic year.

We will shortly send all of our instructors a survey to assess where we and you are with the Moodle project. We are very pleased by the progress many of you have made to date, and we look forward to your responses to this survey.

John Lucas, who has spearheaded the Moodle project over the last year, left IES Abroad in April to take a position at the School for International Training. We are all grateful for John’s leadership and wish him well in his new position.

I am temporarily assuming leadership of the Moodle project until we are fully sta�ed and have reorganized assignments in the Academic Programs Depart-ment in Chicago. Lee L’Hote, Nancy Kenyon, Ellen Keating, Kattrina Cannon, and Erika Quinn will continue to provide support to the Moodle project.

Michael SteinbergExecutive Vice President for Academic Programs

April/May 2012

Moodle Tip of the Month...Guides and tutorials for the Moodle modules and blocks featured in themonthly newsletter can be found on the MoodleLearn website: https://moodlelearn.muat.iesabroad.orgUse the following generic log-in: User ID - iesstudent Password - Student1

To reduce the size of course content, use more Moodle activities and less uploading of �les. Uploading �les is great, but there’s a lot more you can do with Moodle! Use the “Add an activity” drop-down to create activities such as Quiz/Lesson vs. uploading a 20MB PowerPoint presentation. These activities will engage students and require less �le space.

Create eLearning Content with iSpring Software

With the iSpring Suite, instructors can create high-impact eLearning content to integrate into their Moodle Courses. iSpring is a professional software suite that streamlines e-learning authoring. Whether you work in PowerPoint 2003, 2007 or 2010, iSpring will help you to transform regular PowerPoint presentations into SCORM-compliant Flash courses ready for integrating with Moodle.

The iSpring Suite includes iSpring Kinetics, which allows you to easily create 3D Books, FAQs, and Timelines, and the iSpring QuizMaker, which allows you to create SCORM-compliant quizzes that can be easily integrated into Moodle. The iSpring Suite is extremely easy-to-use and allows you to stay focused on e-Learning content creation rather than software mastery. To learn more about iSpring and its availability, please contact your Regional Educational Technology Specialist or the Educational Technology Administrators.

Premium Software for E-Learning Authoring and

Online Presentations

Sample of a 3D Book using iSpring Kinectics Create a Timeline using iSpring Kinetics

Freiburg

Featured Moodle Module - Workshop Activity

This newsletter was sent to provide the latest information for IES Abroad Moodle.IES Abroad Chicago

33 N. LaSalle Street, Chicago, IL 60602-2602Phone: 1.800.995.2300

April/May 2012

Workshop is a peer assessment Activity with many options. Students submit their work via an online text tool and attachments. There are two grades for a student: their own work and their peer assessments of other students' work. Workshop is similar to the Assignment Module and extends its functionality in many ways. However, it is recommended that both the course facilitator (instructor) and course participants (students) have at least some experience with the Assignment Module before Workshop is used in courses.

• As in the Assignment Module, course participants submit their work through the Workshop activity. Each course participant submits his/her own work. The submission may consist of text and attachments, as Workshop submission merges both the Online text and the Upload �le types of the Assignment Module.

• The submissions are assessed using a structured assessment form de�ned by the course facilitator (instructor). Workshop supports several types of assessment forms. All of these forms allow multi-criteria assessment, as opposed to the Assignment module where only one grade is given to a submission.

• Workshop supports peer assessment activities. Course participants are asked to assess a selected set of their peers' submissions. The Workshop Module coordinates the collection and distribution of these assessments.

• Course participants receive two grades in a single Workshop Activity - a grade for their submission (how good their submitted work is) and a grade for assessment (how well they assessed their peers). The Workshop Activity creates two grade items in the course Gradebook, and these grades can be aggregated.

• Understanding the process of peer assessment and the assessment form can be trained in advance by using example submissions. These examples are provided by the facilitator together with a reference assessment. Students in the Workshop can assess these examples and compare their assessment with the reference one.

Freiburg

New Slideshow Module!The Slideshow Module allows you to easily display a folder of images, without having to worry about or understand the resizing of �les for screen size or download �le size.

• The submissions are assessed using a structured assessment form de�ned by the course facilitator (instructor). Workshop supports several types of assessment forms. All of these forms allow multi-criteria assessment, as opposed to the Assignment module where only one grade is given to a submission.

The Slideshow Module works with static GIF's, PNG's and JPG's. It generates thumbnails and resizes images that exceed the size limits which are con�gurable site-wide by the IES Chicago Educational Technology Administrators.

Images within a directory are ordered alphabetically and a thumbnail can be shown above or below the main image. The user can click on a thumbnail to navigate between the images or click on the main picture image to advance to the following image. Teachers can choose to display titles and captions in various places to accompany each image.

In the Slideshow Module, there is a link available which opens the slideshow in a separate window. Images in the slideshow advance automatically with a delay between images that is con�gurable by the teacher. For more information on adding a Slideshow Module to your Moodle course, log into the IES Moodle Learning Site where a detailed step-through guide can be found in both the Center Admin and Faculty Resources section.

Any instructor who uses the Quiz Activity for their students can share their quiz question bank among their own courses in addition to other instructors. This is achieved by creating an additional role in Moodle called “Question Sharer.” Instructors can be assigned to the Question Sharer role at the System Level, which allows sharing of questions in any shared area of the question bank, or at the Course Category level, which allows sharing of questions within a particular Course Category.

Instructors who have the Question Sharer role are able to see the shared areas of the question bank when they are editing quizzes or when they click on the “Questions” link located under the Course Administration area. Any questions that an instructor stores in the shared areas of the question bank will be visible within all of their courses.

The Barcelona and Buenos Aires Centers are currently using the Question Sharer roles for their instructors. The Buenos Aires Center speci�cally use this function to share questions in their Language Course Category.

If you are interested in having the Question Sharer role added for your Center, please contact Kattrina Cannon, Education Technology Systems Manager or Erika Quinn, Education Technology Specialist.

Instructors Can Share Quiz Questions Between Courses in Moodle

New Modules/BlocksAssignment Module:

The Assignment Module allows teachers to collect work from students, review it and provide feedback. Students

can submit digital content including word-processed documents, spreadsheets, images, and audio and video

clips. Assignments don't necessarily have to consist of �le uploads. Students can also type directly into a text �eld

using the online text assignment format.

Attendance Block:

Used in association with the Attendance Module, the Attendance Block allows teachers to take attendance, download an attendance report, and change settings.

Click “Take Attendance” to assign attendance statuses to students. Attendance reports can be downloaded in

Excel (.xls) format by clicking on Reports.

Moodle Workshop - IES Berlin CenterFrom March 22 - March 24, the IES Berlin Center hosted a Moodle Workshop conducted by Dr. Wolfgang Bialas (RETS). The Moodle Workshop at IES Berlin o�ered training and discussions on the use of interactive modules in Moodle and iSpring, and on participants’ experiences in working with Moodle. Participants included: Barbara Gügold, Katrin Arendt, John Schulze and Andre Böttger (IES Berlin); Marcel Oettrich and Alexander Breisacher (IES Freiburg); Philippe Postel and Julie Ouvrard (IES Nantes); Trúc Long Võ Trân (IES Paris FS/BIA); Peggy Schwob (IES Paris BIA); Anaïs Frantz de Spot (IES Paris FS); and Günther Haika (IES Vienna). Dr. Wolfgang Bialas felt the workshop had a very creative atmosphere and an enthusiastic response from the participants. Congratulations on such a successful Moodle Workshop in Berlin and thanks to all who participated!

Trúc Long Võ Trân (IES Paris FS/BIA) addresses the paricipants during his Moodle

presentation.

Moodle Workshop participants engaging in a discussion.

Günther Haika (IES Vienna) conduct his Moodle presentation to the participants.

Dr. Wolfgang Bialas (RETS) answers questions from the workshop participants.

IES Moodle Workshop participants (IES Berlin)

Free Moodle Web Resources!Here are some helpful Moodle Web Resources for resizing photos, uploading widgets, and downloading icons. All of these resources are free and available on the web!

Widgets for HTML Blocks - Add travel, weather and analog clock widgets to your Moodle site

Moodle Course BackupsAll IES Moodle courses are con�gured to automatically create backups every Saturday at 12 noon in your Center’s time zone. Please note that Moodle may be slower on weekends due to course backups. Backups include user data (e.g. grades, student work) and can be used to restore student data (e.g. grades, assignments)

Only the last two course backups are retained. Instructors also have the option of saving the backup �le to their hard drive by clicking the �le and going through the regular “Save” procedure.

International Technology Terms!In this month’s IES Moodle Newsletter,

we’ll take at look at how technology terms can be written in di�erent

languages!

German Spanish

The technology term of the month is:backup - A backup is a copy of one or more files created to be used in case the original data is lost or becomes unusable. For example, you may save several copies of a research paper on your hard drive as backup files in case you decide to use a previous revision. Better yet, you can save backups to a USB flash disk, or other external devices to protect the files if the hard drive failed.

Google Gadgets: http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open

Weather Gadgets: http://www.weather.com/services/oap/weather-widgets.htmlhttp://netweather.accuweather.com/adcbin/netweather_v2/signup-page1.asp

Analog Clock from Time and Date Website: http://www.timeanddate.com/clocks/free.html

Free Pictures & Icons - Search for images, clip art and icons to add to your Moodle site

Icons: http://www.freeiconsweb.com/http://www.icon�nder.com/free_icons

Photos: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/Clip Art: http://o�ce.microsoft.com/en-us/images/

Image Resize Sites - Need to resize your photos quickly and easily? Check out these image resize websites

Image Resize: http://www.picresize.com/ http://www.shrinkpictures.com/http://www.webresizer.com/

PDF File Compression - Reduce the size of your PDF documents without the need for special softwarePDF Compression: http://docupub.com/pdfcompress/

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