Dear Moodle Colleagues,
I´m delighted to be able to announce a major opportunity for Moodle development. The European Union has just awarded a grant of 333,127 euros to develop collaborative aspects of Moodle to address the needs of language teachers. The total budget of the project is 446,190 euros. The name of this project is COVCELL - Cohort-Oriented Virtual Campus for Effective Language Learning.
The overall objective of COVCELL is to address the need, established in current work on on-line language learning, for a virtual environment in which language learners can meet and interact in the process of language study -- a "virtual campus" for language learning.
The overall conception of the project is driven by the notion of "cohort-learning" that learning is most effective and sustained where there is a community of learners who interact, collaborate on projects and share the learning experience. Organisationally, the support and atmosphere of classroom learning processes must be transferred online enabling group work and experience of the personality of the teacher; the learner must be able to chart his/her own progress in the learning, via self assessment, general assessment, instant feedback and guidelines for further study. This will be achieved by the adaption of current functionality (extending and enhancing the simple notion of chat) and introducing new functionality where necessary.
We intend to keep the Moodle user/development community informed of our work and we would welcome any input that you have to offer. I would be happy provide any further information that you may be interested in.
Matthew Whelpton
Project Co-ordinator
COVCELL Project (Minerva)
Hi Matthew,
This is great news! You might want to consider contacting a Moodle partner to help you coordinate your project. Working through an authorized Moodle partner will insure your project receives support at the developer level, attention it needs, and a timely roll-out. There are several EU/UK Moodle partners and the whole team often collaborates on such large projects.
This is great news! You might want to consider contacting a Moodle partner to help you coordinate your project. Working through an authorized Moodle partner will insure your project receives support at the developer level, attention it needs, and a timely roll-out. There are several EU/UK Moodle partners and the whole team often collaborates on such large projects.
Many thanks! We will definitely check this out. One of our partners is Humboldt University in Berlin who run Moodle as part of their intranet and have been doing development work. But we are keen to see our efforts contributing in the most effective way to ongoing development efforts. Best, Matthew.
Congratulations, Matthew! That is a good deal of money for Moodle development, you should be able to accomplish a very great deal with it! We've found Moodle development to be very cost effective when you follow the API and have your developers participate in the Moodle community and ask lots of the questions of the experts like (Martin, Martin, Penny, Eloy, Petr, Jon, etc.
.
We're working on a collaborative file sharing space, ourselves, that may be of interest to your project: it allows students to share files with each other and teachers, and we'd like to link it to the HTML editor, chat, etc. It is available now in beta here and we are currently working on a project with Goldsmiths College to integrate it with the VMAP mind mapping/portfolio tool.
I've also passed a link to your annoucement along to other folks in the Cal State System.
Again, congratulations on getting funded and on choosing the best codebase to put your time and money into.
Best
Michael Penney
LMS Project Manager
Courseware Development Center
California State University, Humboldt
LMS Project Manager
Courseware Development Center
California State University, Humboldt
Yes, questioning the experts is something we will definitely be doing 
the collaborative file-sharing space is very exciting and fits very well with our aims and needs - we´ll definitely check it out. Look forward to collaborating with you! Matthew.
Matthew,
Congratulations! This is excellent news - the first step for Moodle to become the most important VLE for EU schools. Is COVCELL only for university level students or also for secondary schools and vocational colleges? We have been experimenting with virtual English classrooms for our trainees, so they can study together during the time they are at their respective companies. I'm really looking forward to hearing more about your project.
Ulrike
Congratulations! This is excellent news - the first step for Moodle to become the most important VLE for EU schools. Is COVCELL only for university level students or also for secondary schools and vocational colleges? We have been experimenting with virtual English classrooms for our trainees, so they can study together during the time they are at their respective companies. I'm really looking forward to hearing more about your project.
Ulrike
Thanks! I´d be very interested to hear about your experience with virtual English classrooms. Although our partnership includes three academic institutions and a private company (University of Iceland, Humboldt University Berlin, Ca´ Foscari University Venice, University of the Basque Country, Open Development Group Ltd), we are keen to collaborate with vocational colleges and secondary schools (and indeed are already in active contact with a secondary school here using Moodle for its intranet). What are the principal strengths and weaknesses of your virtual classrooms for language teaching as currently set-up, do you think? Best, Matthew.
First, a few words about our students: they are young trainees working for large companies like SAP, Daimler-Chrysler, Roche etc in Mannheim. Their training is so-called block release, ie they alternate between our school and in-company training.
For their time away from school we provide them with a virtual classroom.
The strenghts are obvious:
These are just a few ideas - please keep us posted.
Cheers,
Ulrike
For their time away from school we provide them with a virtual classroom.
The strenghts are obvious:
- our students who all have different levels of English can practise those chapters they don't know yet or have forgotten (ie tenses) - while getting support from their peers or teachers. In our virtual classroom we provide them with a variety of exercises. Thus we can use our precious f2f time for real communication instead of wasting it for grammar lessons that bore those students who are already quite proficient in English (see Timothy Takemoto's post)
- through RSS feeds we give them access to the business section of the most important newspapers - with the glossary section they can build up quite a business vocabulary
- After the end of their first year they are sent to the companies' US/UK branches. During this time they have to work on a project together and get it ready for presentation in English at our school. Moodle has helped them tremendously to communicate. Michael Penney's Myfiles add-on is a godsend for this project.
These are just a few ideas - please keep us posted.
Cheers,
Ulrike
Thanks again, Ulrike.
Yes, I sympathised with Timothy Takemoto´s point about keeping "the boring stuff" online -- one of the revolutionary implications of distance learning technologies for on-site students - making the interactive best of f2f!
The audio conversation aspect is certainly something we are considering -- and I agree that the possibility of recording would be a real bonus... I´ll pass these priorities on in our discussions.
And you will of course be hearing more from us as we proceed!
All the best,
Matthew.
Yes, I sympathised with Timothy Takemoto´s point about keeping "the boring stuff" online -- one of the revolutionary implications of distance learning technologies for on-site students - making the interactive best of f2f!
The audio conversation aspect is certainly something we are considering -- and I agree that the possibility of recording would be a real bonus... I´ll pass these priorities on in our discussions.
And you will of course be hearing more from us as we proceed!
All the best,
Matthew.
Hi Ulrike
I'm from the project technical company, but also with a background in education. Just to assure you that we are definitely aware of the potential Moodle has for vocational training. It's useful to get the background to your needs and it has been duly noted.
brgds
Paul
I'm from the project technical company, but also with a background in education. Just to assure you that we are definitely aware of the potential Moodle has for vocational training. It's useful to get the background to your needs and it has been duly noted.
brgds
Paul
Thanks Paul,
I'm looking forward to the new developments,
Ulrike
I'm looking forward to the new developments,
Ulrike
Hi Matthew,
fine to hear such great thing from the north
.
We we have now one year used moodle and 2 years before Blackboard in our school (language, biology, maths, physik ...). Do you have an own community for this project?
The austrian government will provide moodle in an high performance serverfarm for all austrian schools in the next months. There are also two great projects for blended learning in schools. One for all notebook classes over the hole country http://www.e-teaching-austria.at/, and one project for using an e-Learning plattform in the school http://elsa.schule.at .
I am one the coordinator in our school www.eurogym.info , for details, please contact.
nice greetings from austria,
Leo
Yes, there is life yet in the Viking North! ;)
The University of Iceland has its own homegrown intranet system and has up til now subscribed to WebCT -- we have been pushing however for the take-up of Moodle and with the success with the Minerva grant we are having Moodle set up here; the programmers of our home intranet are also very sympathetic to the Moodle project. One of our partners (Humboldt University Berlin) also runs Moodle as an active part of its intranet system.
Thanks for the links to developments in Austria - I´ll check them out! Best, Matthew.
The University of Iceland has its own homegrown intranet system and has up til now subscribed to WebCT -- we have been pushing however for the take-up of Moodle and with the success with the Minerva grant we are having Moodle set up here; the programmers of our home intranet are also very sympathetic to the Moodle project. One of our partners (Humboldt University Berlin) also runs Moodle as an active part of its intranet system.
Thanks for the links to developments in Austria - I´ll check them out! Best, Matthew.
Hi Leo. Enjoyed looking at the links you suggested. I´d be particularly interested in hearing about the experiences of your language teachers in using Moodle and their perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of the system. Any feedback welcomed with interest! Best, Matthew.
Great Mathew - quite a nice surprise! 
I do hope you can work closely with us so that your efforts are integrated with Moodle and what we've already been planning for a long time.
Can you be more specific about the goals? From what you've told us here it seems to me like you mostly plan to add audio conferencing to Moodle.
Cheers,
Martin
I do hope you can work closely with us so that your efforts are integrated with Moodle and what we've already been planning for a long time.
Can you be more specific about the goals? From what you've told us here it seems to me like you mostly plan to add audio conferencing to Moodle.
Cheers,
Martin
Yes, we are very keen to co-ordinate with you to assure that we get the most effective use of this money. The way that we characterise the proposed modules in our project application is as follows:
However, I should point out that the first stage of our project is a "state of the art audit" as we don´t want to make a final decision on exactly how to implement our aims (and spend our money!) before we see how developments currently stand in the field. And we are particularly keen to make sure that our efforts gel constructively with you, the principal developers...
Best,
Matthew.
· Cohort-oriented Modules for an open-source learning management system (e.g. Moodle) designed to contribute to a virtual campus for language learning (interface for Moodle available in these project languages: DE, EN, ES, IT, Basque), specifically:
o Collaboration an enhancement of standard chat functionality to allow students to discuss with each other the current item they are viewing (exercise, slideshow, lecture, document) and collaborate in their understanding of it.
o Current Usage Tracking Collaboration will require a system that tracks current usage of the site (e.g. all those viewing Document A can chat about Document A).
o Study Hall a shared workspace that allows active collaboration on course activities.
o Virtual Briefcase -- a support system that provides structure e.g. individual learning plans, self assessment, general assessment, and learning logs.
o Lecture Hall a module to bring the lecture hall online not just video or slideshow but the two synchronised (i.e. an open source version of Microsoft Producer which is integrated into the Collaborative system described above)
I have already heard of a "file-sharing" initiative underway (cf "Study Hall") and I believe that you are already working on a more structured "personal environment" along the lines described under "Virtual Briefcase". The idea of being able to see who is working in a similar area to you and then chat/interact with them in that area (reading the same document, viewing the same slideshow etc) is one central element to our aims; the other is the Microsoft Producer style synchronised video-slideshow -- this is important in our current distance learning programme at the University of Iceland as a way of communicating the "personality of the teacher in the classroom".However, I should point out that the first stage of our project is a "state of the art audit" as we don´t want to make a final decision on exactly how to implement our aims (and spend our money!) before we see how developments currently stand in the field. And we are particularly keen to make sure that our efforts gel constructively with you, the principal developers...
Best,
Matthew.
Dear Project Co-ordinator Matthew Whelpton
That is great news! I hope that this funding leads to great things. I am a language teacher using Moodle.
It seems that you have a plan already. I hope that at the same time, you find time and inclination to listen to the voice of teachers using Moodle and adapt your probably wonderful plans accordingly.
There was a UK funded programme to add to the functionality of moodle. I am not sure what happened to it. I said some somewhat harsh things in the thread where those plans were announced.
I am a big believer in communication in language learning. And the Moodle ethos, and a large part of the Moodle community is committed to the sort of interaction that you mention. Your words,
"The overall conception of the project is driven by the notion of "cohort-learning" that learning is most effective and sustained where there is a community of learners who interact, collaborate on projects and share the learning experience. "
could almost be a excerpt from documentation of the Moodle philosophy. So you are sure to find lots of like-minded teachers and developers in this community.
At the same time, there are the "dark side of the Moodle" users, who do not use Moodle quite in the way that it was designed to be used. That is to say that I and others, use Moodle partly or largely to test and coerce learners, rather than, and in addition to utilising the facilities provided for communication.
This does not mean that my primary pedagogy is one of testing and coercion. But rather that I see Moodle (or online learning management systems in general) as being adept at providing the non-social constructivist element of a primarily social-constructivist pedagogy.
While communication lies at the centre of my pedagogy, I see a place for behaviourism in education. So I use Moodle primarily (but not exclusively) for providing behavioural reward. To cut a long story short, in my classrooms I attempt to encourage communication as much as possible, and use Moodle to facilitate this emphasis, by relagating the non-communicative part of the education process to the online world.
TWO EXAMPLES
1) While some communicative purists may disagree, I see a need for learner activities of the following two types
1.1) Memorisation of vocabularly, assimilation of grammatical facts, and largely non-participatory "input" (listening, reading).
1.2) Interaction, the two way communication of ideas, based upon and using the activities of (1.1)
Hence, I use Moodle to ensure that students read texts, listen to audio, memorise vocabularly before coming to the classroom, where, in the classroom they discuss the same topics, use the same vocabularly, and grammatical structure. From the point of view of the common "P.P.P." (presentation, practice, production) structure of a language lesson, I attempt to off load the first half -- most of the presentation, some of the practice -- to the machine, so that the more of the class can be used for the second half -- some practice and as much production as possible. Concretely, students are forced to read texts, and memorise vocabularly and grammar before coming to class, where they are allowed to communicate using these the knowledge that they have aquired online.
2) If you walk around the corridoors of many a university, and take a peep through some lecture theatre doors, you may witness boring old men (BOM) speaking to large groups of bored young men and women (BYMAW). The idea is that the BOM impart knowledge to the BYMAW. It does not work at all well. If instead, the "sage on the stage" were moved online -- if the lecture notes and video of previous BOM speeches were available to download -- then the lecture time could be used to discuss the same knowledge. The lecture theatre, as a place for BOMs to broadcast, should be a thing of the past.
In sum, I am suggesting that the "boring part" be put online.
There are various reasons...
1) When it comes to synchronous communication (chat) then often (but not always) if the persons participating are available at the same time, then it is better that they should come together and communicate offline. Offline, face to face communication has numerous advantages. There is thus, generally, often, little need for online synchronous communication. I venture a guess that the use of and demand for the chat module is thus, quite low.
As an aside, find that this first point is one which many programmers do not agree with. Many programmers see the potential of the online world as being as great or greater than that offline, whereas many users, or at least many of my students see the online world as marginal, inferior, geeky place. As a geek myself, I would like my students to see the joys of the virtual world. But since that does not seem to be happening anytime soon, I try be realistic about the place of the virtual in my students' lives.
2) There are many online methods of allowing communication. Advanced chat, forums, various different types of social networks. There is thus little need for advancements in facilities for communication online, at least that is, unless one is using the framework and functionality of the Learning Management Systemm.
However, there are ways many which the current functionality can be improved if the focus is placed upon integration of communication with Learning Management. The important point is, for me, *the integration of communication with learning management:* or a *combined* social constructive and behavioural pedagogy.
Here are a couple of ideas.
1) Moodle P2P
Chat is only really important when there are problems with the spacial coming-together of learners. This can occur in the distance learning environment. And it can occur in the language teaching world where one may be able to facillitate communication between different language groups. E.g. some Latvians may chat with some Greeeks or Japanese. This points to a way in which (you have no doubt considered) enahanced communication could really be a plus. If you can work out ways in which to allow moodle-to-moodle communication, synchronously or asynchronously, then this will be very helpful to language teachers. There are moodle communities where many different teachers can take part, but, for me at least, they do not offer a sufficient level privacy, admin, unification. Moodle forum P2P would be very nice.
2) Moodle Chat Tokens
Learners are motivated to communicate so there is often no need to grade. But if there is no need to grade, then there are is no need to use a LMS.
In the present chat room there is no means of grading chat. If there were functions for allowing teachers to award points to chatters, even for each remark (I often hand out point cards -- money, tokens -- in my classes) then we could make the most of the advantages of an LMS.
So one might think of ways of allowing students to form private chatrooms, or integrate features similar to MUDS, with virtual interation environments, roles, groups, privelidges, and facilities for exchange and cooperation.
But my points is, that all of these wonderful things exist, in the real world and in other online systems.
So, to make the most of a LMS, to advance an LMS, I believe that each step towards greater communication functionality should be matched with a greater step towards integration with learning management. In this senario, social constructivism and behaviourism would advance hand in hand.
I am sure that the majority of Moodle users will find herein a lot to disagree.
Tim
Timothy Takemoto
Yamaguchi University
Hi Tim,
Thanks for a fascinating a detailed reply to our announcement. I am myself not a purist and find much to sympathise with in your response.
1. You say: "you find time and inclination to listen to the voice of teachers using Moodle and adapt your probably wonderful plans accordingly" -- indeed this is very important to us -- our project has two strands: a. the programming strand and b. the teachers´ testing and feedback strand -- the project is structured into iterative cycles of programming, testing and feedback. There are five partners, two involved in programming, four involved in teaching/testing (i.e. one of the partners involved in both); we are also in touch with secondary schools and language colleges -- not to mention the language teaching/learning community with Moodle to get their feedback. So this input is very welcome!
2. I actually have some sympathy with the idea that the "boring stuff" is more effectively presented online, as long as a. "classtime" is used constructively for discussions and collaborations on putting this knoweldge into practice and b. students are given facilities for discussing with each other the content of the "boring stuff" and working together to understand it.
3. I am somewhat at a loss to know how to respond to your comments on the effectiveness of communication functionality online. I don´t agree that we should focus on communication off-line and content on-line. But then as you yourself go on to say, we do not have that luxury with distance learners and I personally think that the learning community is stronger if on-site and distance learners can be brought together as a coherent learning community rather than separated as completely different entitites. Also, as my answer to (2) implies, I think that content is only ever effectively presented if students have the opportunity to chat with each other about it and sort out their reactions/responses/understanding together -- even on-line. However:
4. as you imply, the problem isn´t so much developing new communication techologies as integrating them more effectively into the LMS -- and that is precisely what our project is aiming to do -- to help in the process of assimilating some of the rich communication technologies that are available into a pedagogically effective use within with the LMS.
I hope that gives some idea of my own reactions. I am also forwarding your reply to our pedagogical specialist and I hope that she will be able to join our discussion...
All the best,
Matthew.
Thanks for a fascinating a detailed reply to our announcement. I am myself not a purist and find much to sympathise with in your response.
1. You say: "you find time and inclination to listen to the voice of teachers using Moodle and adapt your probably wonderful plans accordingly" -- indeed this is very important to us -- our project has two strands: a. the programming strand and b. the teachers´ testing and feedback strand -- the project is structured into iterative cycles of programming, testing and feedback. There are five partners, two involved in programming, four involved in teaching/testing (i.e. one of the partners involved in both); we are also in touch with secondary schools and language colleges -- not to mention the language teaching/learning community with Moodle to get their feedback. So this input is very welcome!
2. I actually have some sympathy with the idea that the "boring stuff" is more effectively presented online, as long as a. "classtime" is used constructively for discussions and collaborations on putting this knoweldge into practice and b. students are given facilities for discussing with each other the content of the "boring stuff" and working together to understand it.
3. I am somewhat at a loss to know how to respond to your comments on the effectiveness of communication functionality online. I don´t agree that we should focus on communication off-line and content on-line. But then as you yourself go on to say, we do not have that luxury with distance learners and I personally think that the learning community is stronger if on-site and distance learners can be brought together as a coherent learning community rather than separated as completely different entitites. Also, as my answer to (2) implies, I think that content is only ever effectively presented if students have the opportunity to chat with each other about it and sort out their reactions/responses/understanding together -- even on-line. However:
4. as you imply, the problem isn´t so much developing new communication techologies as integrating them more effectively into the LMS -- and that is precisely what our project is aiming to do -- to help in the process of assimilating some of the rich communication technologies that are available into a pedagogically effective use within with the LMS.
I hope that gives some idea of my own reactions. I am also forwarding your reply to our pedagogical specialist and I hope that she will be able to join our discussion...
All the best,
Matthew.
Hello from NZ!
You project sounds really interesting, and strongly aligned with the kind of work that NZVLE and its associated efforts are doing. Check out http://eduforge.org/projects/nzvle/ , specially the forums and the wiki, where we track plans and execution.
Richard Wyles mailto:richard.wyles@openpolytechnic.ac.nz is the man behind all of this -- might be interesting to get in touch with him.
Cheers!
You project sounds really interesting, and strongly aligned with the kind of work that NZVLE and its associated efforts are doing. Check out http://eduforge.org/projects/nzvle/ , specially the forums and the wiki, where we track plans and execution.
Richard Wyles mailto:richard.wyles@openpolytechnic.ac.nz is the man behind all of this -- might be interesting to get in touch with him.
Cheers!
Hi Martin,
Thanks so much for the reply and sorry to be so long responding -- I missed it in the initial flurry!!
I can see from eduforge that you have a lot of active developments down there; I'll write to Richard Wyles as you suggest to let him know what is happening.
Thanks again!
Matthew.
Thanks so much for the reply and sorry to be so long responding -- I missed it in the initial flurry!!
I can see from eduforge that you have a lot of active developments down there; I'll write to Richard Wyles as you suggest to let him know what is happening.
Thanks again!
Matthew.
If advanced version's of Moodle are available to schools, students who have used the system find it easier to use it in universities. I feel you should consider the requirements of school teachers also while going in for such major development.
Finally, we will see a whiteboard in moodle ! That's almost the only thing WebCT has to harp about now !
Congratulations on the grant Matthew ! Let's hope most of the development is available to everyone through Moodle's site !
I agree! So you will be happy to hear that we have been in touch with one of the secondary schools here using Moodle and intend to send out a questionnaire to their language teachers, seeking their views on Moodle development!
Best,
Matthew.
Best,
Matthew.
Hi Mat,
if its in your sense, i can give this questionaire to my teachers too.
We are using moodle since one year, 2 years before using blackboard. Age of the childs 10-18 years. Number of teachers: up to ten
nice greetings from austria
leo
Hi Leo.
Yes, this would be great for us. It is important for us to pool the widest range of responses at the beginning before we finalise our plans. Thanks for the offer! I will post on this forum when the questionnaire is ready and we will make it available in the Language Teaching Course...
Best,
Matthew.
Yes, this would be great for us. It is important for us to pool the widest range of responses at the beginning before we finalise our plans. Thanks for the offer! I will post on this forum when the questionnaire is ready and we will make it available in the Language Teaching Course...
Best,
Matthew.
Why not open a questionnaire in Moodle.org for all Moodle language teachers of the world? Under the respondents you will randomly give several books for free. (A bigger pool of creative language teachers is not possible.)
.
IF you prefer personal contacts: we are starting an intiativ with nine other big secondary schools in The Netherlands to improve our teaching approach, at least four of us use Moodle:
Our mission is to combine good parts of old education with new approaches (For example the TABASCO language ideas, Soc.constr., Narrative design, .. )
.
Students are offered more control over their own learning and the (wise) teachers monitor and coach them. So Moodle needs better support for student initiativ:
- You can create a mechanism for students to place plans/activity-slots and resources in Moodle, SEPARATED from these which are under teacher control. (to protect monitor and coach mechanism )
- Students ALREADY use lots of tools for sharing resources and thoughts OUTSIDE moodle, so you should invest in tools that can bring the results of thesecollab activities into a for the teacher VISIBLE collab project in Moodle
- I saw a web enabled tool from Dutch SLO, where students can compare the pitch and vocal energy from their own voices with that one of a nativ speaker
- I saw the AT&T speech engine (tip from Art LAdder): why not invest in a free alternativ speech services engine with the same high quality? Students of all countries can then design their own Hamlet-plays, work on the right frasing, train the speech with this engine and go proud on stage...
- We invest in time-management and collab-knowledge-construction-tools for students - see for example - my personal profil.
When you give students more freedom in learning, even in a collab promoting environment like Moodle, you will loose your Cohort control and must invent clever coach mechanism to survive in your schoolsystem!!
You can have for free our prototypes to use for teacher-tests
..so you can built the next generation of our little tools. (Martin Dougiamus already has the code for several parts of our product on CD since the conference in Portugal during his World tour.) - All kind of tools that can help students to solve in an educational play all kind of language related cases would be great also.
So good luck with your project, Ger
(always ready to help and give critical comments)
Good day, I'm one of the people who will be responsible for the technical development of the COVCELL project, and I've been lurking around here for a while.
Because this weekend we're having our kick-off meeting, Matthew has been very busy, and feeling guilty about not being enough on here discussing the project, in his absence I can at least tell you that we do plan to make the questionnaire available on moodle.org for all language teachers using Moodle - We want all the responses we can get, and the basis for a successful project is of course to gauge the needs of language teachers.
Of course we will be working the project based on the philosophies we have already presented, and were given a grant from the EU to complete, however within the goals we defined there is great flexibility in implementation, and we need a good amount of teacher responses to our questionnaire in order to accurately identify all the different aspects of the problems we are trying to solve.
I'm afraid I don't completely understand the latter part of your post, whether you are requesting certain features or whether you've already developed them, either way I'm just a programmer, and the questions / thoughts you posted are about the teaching methodologies it seems.
However I must disagree with the danger of "losing cohort control", the whole idea behind cohort-oriented language learning is the communication between students, and when students are able to easily discuss the activity they're engaging in with others engaging in the same activity -- that is not a drastic increase in student freedom, it's just a natural evolution to decrease the isolation of online learning. Learning is an experience best effected when students can discuss problems with their peers and overcome them together, and this is especially important in language learning since the only way to properly learn a new language is to use it. I can personally say as a former student of a foreign language that the most exhilirating lessons were the ones where us students were paired/grouped up and made to converse in the language, or work together on assignments.
I'm sure Matthew or one of our project members with a real educational background and experience will be able to answer your questions, thanks for your interest
Hi again, Ger!
And sorry for the slow reply -- we have just finished our COVCELL launch meeting in Reykjavík and it has been really hectic the last few days.
First, it is precisely our intention to post our questionnaire on moodle.org -- in fact we will post in the Lang Teaching course, under topic 1 which the moderator team has kindly dedicated to COVCELL. We hope to have it online by early December and open until the beginning of January -- we will post an announcement in this forum to let people know that the questionnaire has been uploaded. We would also be delighted to have it distributed beyond moodle.org.
Second, your theme of student control of their own learning is music to my ears and had a very positive reponse in our discussions the last few days -- in particular, as you say, students are involved in all sorts of collaborative activity outside Moodle and their learning environment (photo sharing and commenting, blogging, music play list tracking, instant messaging etc etc etc) and it seems to me that the change for us to bring the liveliness and the colour of those skills and that interest into the learning environment -- and personalisation of the student space and greater control for the students of their own learning experience is a general approach for doing this... On the other hand you clearly have worries about such an approach exploding the learning environment -- so please elaborate on warning of loss of cohort control in this context....
And yes -- more information and critical comments are welcome! Our consultation phase extends until the end of January 2006...
Best,
Matthew.
And sorry for the slow reply -- we have just finished our COVCELL launch meeting in Reykjavík and it has been really hectic the last few days.
First, it is precisely our intention to post our questionnaire on moodle.org -- in fact we will post in the Lang Teaching course, under topic 1 which the moderator team has kindly dedicated to COVCELL. We hope to have it online by early December and open until the beginning of January -- we will post an announcement in this forum to let people know that the questionnaire has been uploaded. We would also be delighted to have it distributed beyond moodle.org.
Second, your theme of student control of their own learning is music to my ears and had a very positive reponse in our discussions the last few days -- in particular, as you say, students are involved in all sorts of collaborative activity outside Moodle and their learning environment (photo sharing and commenting, blogging, music play list tracking, instant messaging etc etc etc) and it seems to me that the change for us to bring the liveliness and the colour of those skills and that interest into the learning environment -- and personalisation of the student space and greater control for the students of their own learning experience is a general approach for doing this... On the other hand you clearly have worries about such an approach exploding the learning environment -- so please elaborate on warning of loss of cohort control in this context....
And yes -- more information and critical comments are welcome! Our consultation phase extends until the end of January 2006...
Best,
Matthew.
Matthew,
I really like the idea of cohort learning - I'm sure it will work with our adult students but I also share Ger's worries. After all, I'm also teaching 16-19 year olds. Many of them are problem students with a very short attention span. After 6 years of English they can't even utter one correct sentence.
One thing I'm concerned about is the fact that they most likely won't communicate in English if left in an open learning environment. One thing that might work, though, is cohort learning with English-speaking peers who in return have to learn German. I have been discussing this with Art Lader whose students are about the same age - we are thinking of starting a German-English blog.
If you can think of anything else that could be tried out with this age group, let me know. We'd love to be Guinea pigs for your project.
Good luck with your work,
Ulrike
I really like the idea of cohort learning - I'm sure it will work with our adult students but I also share Ger's worries. After all, I'm also teaching 16-19 year olds. Many of them are problem students with a very short attention span. After 6 years of English they can't even utter one correct sentence.
One thing I'm concerned about is the fact that they most likely won't communicate in English if left in an open learning environment. One thing that might work, though, is cohort learning with English-speaking peers who in return have to learn German. I have been discussing this with Art Lader whose students are about the same age - we are thinking of starting a German-English blog.
If you can think of anything else that could be tried out with this age group, let me know. We'd love to be Guinea pigs for your project.
Good luck with your work,
Ulrike
Hi Ulrike,
Well, what I am about to say is a personal bit of brainstorming/imagining rather than anything official from the project but here goes.
I am becoming increasing convinced of the importance of a "personal space" for each student, not just one which brings together useful course-based info (although that is clearly important) but also one which allows the student to show to the "school" or the "campus" their personal side -- identity is very important to teens and as much as try to regulate it teenagers in particular will find ways to mark their identity in the way that they present themselves in physical space. So, for instance, I would welcome a personal student space which allowed them to set up RSS feeds to their personal photo sites or their blog sites or their "this is what I am currently listening to" sites (like audioscrobbler). This obviously does not have anything directly to with their education and many teachers might be bemused by the content that appears but (as long of course as the material wasn´t offensive to public morality!!!) this creates a personal engagement for the student with the site -- this information will of course be alongside more classical portfolio elements concerning their learning.
Such a personal site would in my opinion have a number of advantages but to name two: first it would provide a meaningful point of contact for tandem learning co-operation -- i.e. where English-German classes where exchanging languages it would provide a starting point for students to get to know each other and attempt to chat -- my guess is that students will string a sentence together more quickly if they feel it is to their personal advantage and on their personal territory than on topics that they are less secure with. Second, this might provide an opening for learning materials that are more accessible to them but can be used for more constructive educational purposes by the teachers, e.g. English sports or music reporting leading to other kinds of english language reporting etc.
COVCELL itself has not formed a position on this much more articulated position but this is the kind of context in which I see "personal presence online" of both the student and teacher being important for setting up more constructive education uses of interaction. I agree that within the context of courses themselves, teacher moderation and structuring of activities is very important but I do not personally believe that this would be compromised by embedding it in a freer and more personal environment in which students have a take.
The "virtual campus" in the COVCELL logo is not just jargon -- I really believe that the LMS must be more than just the formal classroom of teaching but also the corridor outside after class and the coffeebar where student meet between class etc (and where the close they wear and the music they listen to and the books they read form part of the character or atmosphere of their learning group)...
So there we are -- some brainstorming from me as me rather than as project co-ordinator -- reactions very welcome!!!
Best,
Matthew.
Well, what I am about to say is a personal bit of brainstorming/imagining rather than anything official from the project but here goes.
I am becoming increasing convinced of the importance of a "personal space" for each student, not just one which brings together useful course-based info (although that is clearly important) but also one which allows the student to show to the "school" or the "campus" their personal side -- identity is very important to teens and as much as try to regulate it teenagers in particular will find ways to mark their identity in the way that they present themselves in physical space. So, for instance, I would welcome a personal student space which allowed them to set up RSS feeds to their personal photo sites or their blog sites or their "this is what I am currently listening to" sites (like audioscrobbler). This obviously does not have anything directly to with their education and many teachers might be bemused by the content that appears but (as long of course as the material wasn´t offensive to public morality!!!) this creates a personal engagement for the student with the site -- this information will of course be alongside more classical portfolio elements concerning their learning.
Such a personal site would in my opinion have a number of advantages but to name two: first it would provide a meaningful point of contact for tandem learning co-operation -- i.e. where English-German classes where exchanging languages it would provide a starting point for students to get to know each other and attempt to chat -- my guess is that students will string a sentence together more quickly if they feel it is to their personal advantage and on their personal territory than on topics that they are less secure with. Second, this might provide an opening for learning materials that are more accessible to them but can be used for more constructive educational purposes by the teachers, e.g. English sports or music reporting leading to other kinds of english language reporting etc.
COVCELL itself has not formed a position on this much more articulated position but this is the kind of context in which I see "personal presence online" of both the student and teacher being important for setting up more constructive education uses of interaction. I agree that within the context of courses themselves, teacher moderation and structuring of activities is very important but I do not personally believe that this would be compromised by embedding it in a freer and more personal environment in which students have a take.
The "virtual campus" in the COVCELL logo is not just jargon -- I really believe that the LMS must be more than just the formal classroom of teaching but also the corridor outside after class and the coffeebar where student meet between class etc (and where the close they wear and the music they listen to and the books they read form part of the character or atmosphere of their learning group)...
So there we are -- some brainstorming from me as me rather than as project co-ordinator -- reactions very welcome!!!
Best,
Matthew.
Yes I have been lurking a bit in the thread following the discussion. Thank-you Matthew for making contact. With NZVLE we have a full-time development team on Moodle, you'll see Martin Langhoff, Penny Leach and Patrick Li and others in the forums.
To date, we've had funding of NZ$1.5M which is approx. $850,000 Euro much of it invested in Moodle and spread over 30 months. The other project output has been Eduforge.
I'm certainly keen to keep communication channels open through Moodle.org as there's likely to be significant synergies with the resources we have through our projects.
Going forward our primary areas of interest are;
1) Content management / open source, learning object repository integration with Moodle
2) e-Portfolios - a portfolio system that sits internally to Moodle with easy export to a stand-alone portfolio / social networking application.
3) Work with the eXe project on content authoring - the eXe team are making sure eXe plays well with Moodle.
4) Role play & simulations. This is a tricky area. One idea we've had is to focus on the Lesson module, perhaps with a wizard approach to make set-up really easy. A second notion is to have the ability to assign students with roles within a course - this would entail enhancing the profile area. The Teacher can then assign a course specific role under the Role Play Course Type - e.g. Mary Smith (student) is assigned the role of Jane Brown, Chief Executive etc., the roles and simulation are set up and all the course tools are available for the simulated excercise. Students don't know who each other are. Still work in progress on this one -eeek.
regards
Richard
Hi Richard
I'm on the COVCELL technical team. You are clearly ambitious for open source for learning in NZ. I looked briefly at eduforge and tried the eXe tool. We'll definitely be in touch again when we-ve identified possible synergies.
brgds
Paul
I'm on the COVCELL technical team. You are clearly ambitious for open source for learning in NZ. I looked briefly at eduforge and tried the eXe tool. We'll definitely be in touch again when we-ve identified possible synergies.
brgds
Paul
Hi Paul,
Thought I'd drop a note to allert you to the latest release of eXe. This is our strongest release to date and has seen the team overcome some significant technical difficulties. We've added an experimental Cloze iDevice as well as the External Web Site iDevice and an experimental SCORM Quiz iDevice, the ability to change languages has been added (English, German, Chinese, Greek, Spanish are currently available, and the inclusion of a new style. Expect significant improvements and additions in the following months.
The SCORM export interfaces expetionally well with Moodle - and provides Moodlers with a FLOSS alternative to author content resources offline.
Download eXe @ : http://exelearning.org/
Chat to you soon.
Wayne
Thought I'd drop a note to allert you to the latest release of eXe. This is our strongest release to date and has seen the team overcome some significant technical difficulties. We've added an experimental Cloze iDevice as well as the External Web Site iDevice and an experimental SCORM Quiz iDevice, the ability to change languages has been added (English, German, Chinese, Greek, Spanish are currently available, and the inclusion of a new style. Expect significant improvements and additions in the following months.
The SCORM export interfaces expetionally well with Moodle - and provides Moodlers with a FLOSS alternative to author content resources offline.
Download eXe @ : http://exelearning.org/
Chat to you soon.
Wayne
Thanks Wayne. I've installed release 0.10.
brgds
Paul
brgds
Paul
No worries,
Any suggestions or thoughts for improvement are well received. You can use the eXe support forum for this purpose. Have fun.
Wayne
Any suggestions or thoughts for improvement are well received. You can use the eXe support forum for this purpose. Have fun.
Wayne
thanks Wayne - I see from your support forum that someone I know is using the software, so I can cut some corners
Hi Paul - hope that it doesn't take too long to find your way with eXe otherwise we're not doing our job too well 
. Seriously - there is room for improving useability in eXe - so any feedback is welcome. We want to get this right before Release 1.0 scheduled for April 2006.
Chat to you soon.
Wayne
. Seriously - there is room for improving useability in eXe - so any feedback is welcome. We want to get this right before Release 1.0 scheduled for April 2006.Chat to you soon.
Wayne
Hi Wayne
We have our Kickoff Meeting on Friday, and then there's an OS conference in Holland immediately after that so things are pretty busy in the next days, but I plan to have good look at eXe when I get back.
brgds
Paul
We have our Kickoff Meeting on Friday, and then there's an OS conference in Holland immediately after that so things are pretty busy in the next days, but I plan to have good look at eXe when I get back.
brgds
Paul
Hi Paul,
Look out for Brent & David - two of the eXe developers who will be at the OS conference in Holland chatting about the project.
Enjoy your trip.
Wayne
Look out for Brent & David - two of the eXe developers who will be at the OS conference in Holland chatting about the project.
Enjoy your trip.
Wayne
thanks very much
I find out the script I can add to my site Meleze_Formation - Home
and will try that as soon as possible.
I find out the script I can add to my site Meleze_Formation - Home
and will try that as soon as possible.
Hi Wayne,
I have installed the eXe and created one demo file to try it on Moodle. I have exported the file as SCORM 1.2 and as IMS content package. But when I tried to add a SCORM activity in Moodle (Using bothe files), figures, hints, and scripts did not appear!
Any idea why is that?
Regards,
P.S. I am attaching a screen shot of the SCORM activity that appeared on Moodle.
My five cents:
1. content management: since we have the nice HTML editor, we drift away from the option to distribute content in different formats: is it not possible to integrate a friendly form with an XML-editor under the hood that can connect to things like cocoon, aurigadoc..
Second part of a good CMS is to have a real central repository where courses can share resources of all kind (This was the biggest wish on the nice Moodlemoot in Belgium last wednesday) ...AND there is needed: a kind of librarian registration system with rules.
3. e-portfolio integration:
- if a student creates a nice piece of work in Moodle, he needs ONE BUTTON to send it as a candidate to his own porfolio.
- coming there, he sees the candidates in the waiting room and decides where he wants them to live in his e-portfolio.. (single place? multi places?)
- the user needs a very easy multipart presentation tool to make different presentation sets for different audiances. (interfaces with preformated presenation sets like the simple webpage editor from Enersoft)
- the e-portfolio needs three access areas:
-- a. the personal area for the student alone..
-- b. the share area, where the teacher and the student agree about who can have access for comments and reviews
-- c. the public space where the student - only the student - can decide which parts are presented to the world in which format.
4. I have big doubts about using lessons: it does not support any standard an cannot export/import to other systems: If my teachers want to invest in a complex design, I advice them to use Reload/CP (or eXe?) and runit in the scormplayer.
Simulations games.. you mean a kind of group activity?
Why not spent your money on integrating the IMS/LD engine in Moodle as the central rule engine, combined with a QTI engine? (The specs are there for IMS/LD, Coppercore proves that you can built a working enige based on these specs.. (So where are you waiting for? Why accept less when you can have the best? Politics behind the grant conditions?)
Hi Ger!
As your reply is to Richard Wyles´ eduforge response to the COVCELL posting, you have given comments on their priority list (I post the proposed module list from our original application below; see also earlier postings.) BUT we are now in the consultation, research and elaboration stage of the project where our initial proposals are developed and revised in the light of currently available functionality and current teacher needs (though we are of course bound by the core principle of modules enhancing collaborativity and individual presence).
So, in response to you comments, I can say that we sympathise with much that you have to say. In particular your comments on e-portfolio and student control of their own working space is something that is figuring strongly in our current discussions (related to what we call the "virtual briefcase" below) and this may well feature as one aspect of develop in which we are interested.
We are not in this project concerned with content management but one of our partners, Humboldt University - Berlin, has in fact been working in this area and has developed its own content management system -- you can message Andreas Vollmer or Olaf Kriseleit for more info about this.
Again, content format is not the focus of our project but in fact one of our partners, Paul Richardson from ODG, has made a plea for SCORM compatible content and has been talking about eduforge´s eXe tool in this regard... (he is currently at a conference in Holland where the eXe team are presenting their tool).
Hope this gives some idea of where our current discussions are going -- and more input/comments would be very welcome.
All the best,
Matthew.
Cohort-oriented Modules for an open-source learning management system (e.g. Moodle) designed to contribute to a virtual campus for language learning (interface for Moodle available in these project languages: DE, EN, ES, IT, Basque), specifically:
As your reply is to Richard Wyles´ eduforge response to the COVCELL posting, you have given comments on their priority list (I post the proposed module list from our original application below; see also earlier postings.) BUT we are now in the consultation, research and elaboration stage of the project where our initial proposals are developed and revised in the light of currently available functionality and current teacher needs (though we are of course bound by the core principle of modules enhancing collaborativity and individual presence).
So, in response to you comments, I can say that we sympathise with much that you have to say. In particular your comments on e-portfolio and student control of their own working space is something that is figuring strongly in our current discussions (related to what we call the "virtual briefcase" below) and this may well feature as one aspect of develop in which we are interested.
We are not in this project concerned with content management but one of our partners, Humboldt University - Berlin, has in fact been working in this area and has developed its own content management system -- you can message Andreas Vollmer or Olaf Kriseleit for more info about this.
Again, content format is not the focus of our project but in fact one of our partners, Paul Richardson from ODG, has made a plea for SCORM compatible content and has been talking about eduforge´s eXe tool in this regard... (he is currently at a conference in Holland where the eXe team are presenting their tool).
Hope this gives some idea of where our current discussions are going -- and more input/comments would be very welcome.
All the best,
Matthew.
Cohort-oriented Modules for an open-source learning management system (e.g. Moodle) designed to contribute to a virtual campus for language learning (interface for Moodle available in these project languages: DE, EN, ES, IT, Basque), specifically:
o Collaboration an enhancement of standard chat functionality to allow students to discuss with each other the current item they are viewing (exercise, slideshow, lecture, document) and collaborate in their understanding of it.
o Current Usage Tracking Collaboration will require a system that tracks current usage of the site (e.g. all those viewing Document A can chat about Document A).
o Study Hall a shared workspace that allows active collaboration on course activities.
o Virtual Briefcase -- a support system that provides structure e.g. individual learning plans, self assessment, general assessment, and learning logs.
o Lecture Hall a module to bring the lecture hall online not just video or slideshow but the two synchronised (i.e. an open source version of Microsoft Producer which is integrated into the Collaborative system described above)
Yeah, Paul commented that if material needs to be made for use with Moodle during the COVCELL project, partners should give some thought to using the eXe editor, for the benefit of everyone. I tried to explain the importance of standards to the people present there, but the stance which remains at COVCELL is that it is not a priority to use standards such as SCORM, unless they can be used without slowing down work towards the actual goals of the project.
Personally I do hope we get at least some SCORM compliant courses in the course (excuse the pun) of the project, as I do think it would benefit the partners even though how or why is not clear to all of them at this stage
Personally I do hope we get at least some SCORM compliant courses in the course (excuse the pun) of the project, as I do think it would benefit the partners even though how or why is not clear to all of them at this stage
...all those viewing Document A can chat about Document A
.
I like this idea of cueing studenst into activities. I only wonder how your added functionality can be aware of the status of the other activities in Moodle, so it can react: You must add all kind of "Flags" in the Moodle system to be able to do that.
Then you have two choices:
- Invent a tracking-system on your own (that worries me)
- or read the specs of IMS/LD, look at their prototype Coppercore, toy with it using Relaod/LD, and talk to Martin about his plans: this would be my choice.
By the way I prefer that students - despite or thanks to individual differences - learn richer in collab-peer-groups (cohorts) instead of living on their own in an artificial-scorm-world. *) (Nothing wrong with using scorm, but always in combination with the better Moodle cohort activities)
Students must learn to set personal goals - also in groups - and learn how to negotiate / realise these goals together, talking to eachother (chats) finding the truth together (forums, group wikis, glossaries), dealing with eachother (dialogue, internal mail block (=memo's) but also reflect / organise for themselves (journal, privat wiki, ePortfolio)
*) I understand that it is confusing for the not technical audiance when you start to cry "yes, I still advice to use a standard, but I advised yesterday only one (scorm) and now two (scorm + ims/ld)"
But you are clever guys so, a clever refrasing of these words..
Basically agree with you on all this -- esp the importance of teaching them to work together in constructive collaborative groups. The technical question that you raise is one that our technical team has been discussing (with some input from Martin) and I´ll make sure they check out your suggestion.
Thanks for the excellent input. Matthew.
Thanks for the excellent input. Matthew.
i have an idea about role plays,
we are using the chat for role plays, with groups in one class. We are setting up users with the names of the roles and adding the description of the role in the userprofile. The other kids in the play dont know the discription of the others. the Kids are getting the logininfo hidden. The role-play is written simultanous in each group. So all the kids are bussy.
At this point its a lot of work.
Improvement: Maybe someone can develop that the handling of the new role-user is easier. Maybe there are temporary users only available in the course for the time of the role play. The kids should get the new identity with only a click within the course, maybe the roledescription is easier to find.
What to do with roleplays?
After the roleplays we let the kids write in the same groups a solution for the problem an they present them in the class (Wiki). Sometimes we get different solutions. Or the kids are writing an article for a newspaper about the roleplay (chatprotocol as source).
So is someone interested in this?
nice greetings
leo
we are using the chat for role plays, with groups in one class. We are setting up users with the names of the roles and adding the description of the role in the userprofile. The other kids in the play dont know the discription of the others. the Kids are getting the logininfo hidden. The role-play is written simultanous in each group. So all the kids are bussy.
At this point its a lot of work.
Improvement: Maybe someone can develop that the handling of the new role-user is easier. Maybe there are temporary users only available in the course for the time of the role play. The kids should get the new identity with only a click within the course, maybe the roledescription is easier to find.
What to do with roleplays?
After the roleplays we let the kids write in the same groups a solution for the problem an they present them in the class (Wiki). Sometimes we get different solutions. Or the kids are writing an article for a newspaper about the roleplay (chatprotocol as source).
So is someone interested in this?
nice greetings
leo
Hi Leo,
We're (the NZVLE project team) are very interested and have been thinking a bit about this lately, so very timely!
Our thinking goes like this. Userprofile is enhanced with HTMLArea for profile description (we did this part last week). Then there is the ability to assign temporary profiles for the role play as you have suggested.
The other key element is the Groups functionality. With a bit of tweaking/extension we see this as providing a lot of the functionality we need to provide rich role plays. All activities could be used, and there could be some chats, forums etc. that a specific group can see and then cross-group activities. e.g. Role Play for a Marketing game - 2 groups represent separate companies, they have internal activities and interaction activities.
We're happy to apply some development resource to this.
regards
Richard
Hi Rich,
its fine to get a fast reply. I wasn`t shure if this is an issue for others too.
Should we post in the chat forum or in an other topic?
nice greetings from austria
Leo
Hi Richard. This is great. Keep us informed of your plans on this so that we can synchronise effectively! Best, Matthew.
Hi Matthew & Leo,
Please give me 2-3 weeks here. We'll post up our intended approach and would like to get Martin Dougiamas' thoughts. We just have too much on over the next couple of weeks.
cheers
Richard
we give you all the time you need 
So i have very exact thougts about the role play thing. I know moodle very well, i use moodle very often (kids from 10 to 18) but i have one Prob. I am no Programming guy. I can make Pictures of my thougts (like screenshots) to make it easier understanding me. Should i try this till end of December?
nice greetings from cold and snowy austria
Leo
Leo,
that would be great. We have some good programmers.
Greetings from a wet and windy Wellington, New Zealand (it's meant to be summer!)
cheers
No problem at this end, Richard! We won´t be finalising our plans until the beginning of February! Let´s just keep in touch. Matthew.
Gratuitous cross post! I just made a new thread in the General Developer Forum about the plan for the role play development:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=41171#189390
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=41171#189390
Hi Leo. I have to admit that I hadn´t considered developing the user-interface aspect of role-playing (i.e. creating "pseudo-users" or "aka´s") but role-playing itself is one very important instance of collaborativity in language learning, so this may well be a possibility. I´ll add this to the suggestion list and discuss with my colleagues. Thanks again! Matthew.
One thing it would be useful to have in Moodle would be some sort of module for teaching different scripts. For languages that simply use a different alphabet, the needs are simple, but for languages that are character based, like Chinese or ancient Egyptian, there is little out there to help teach these things. In terms of learning to write, it would be helpful to have something like an Oekaki Poteto integrated into Moodle.
This definitely sounds like an important area for development, though I am afraid it isn´t covered by the terms of our application (cohort-orientation) -- so I´m afraid that we cannot spend money on this kind of development. Surely there are others out there working in this area...?
It seems like there are several teams out there with government fund working on moodle. Perhaps these people can all come together for a conference ...
It would certainly be interesting to get those with public funding together and see what ground the development efforts cover. But my feeling is that the public/private/voluntary funding issue isn´t the main one, as much as the area -- it would certainly be interesting for us to get together with those developing in the general area of the project, whatever their funding, to see how synergies are most productively handled...
Hi all,
My name is Omar Dhaher. I am teaching at the Information Technology department of Al-Quds University at Jerusalem, Palestine. We have been using Moodle for about a year now (http://eclass.alquds.edu, and http://www.itce.alquds.edu/etraining) and each semester number of class goes up. The University's administration has decided to adopt the system as the official platform for E-learning.
We are also working with the Ministry of Education and the Palestinian Education Initiative (www.pei.ps) in order to use/adopt Moodle in high schools. I find this project very interesting, and I am interested in any type of involvment in this project.
Regards,
Omar Dhaher, MBA, MS-ISM
Al-Quds University
Information Technology Department
E-mail. dhaher@itce.alquds.edu
Dear Matthew,
gratulations for your great project. We' re going the same way and I know 
, how difficult it is, to start an EU-Project.
We are the EKOS-Team and we're very interested to cooperate with you. EKOS is an eContentplus project with this partners:
- Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, D Informatic, Technology, Metadata Enrichment, Prof. Dr. Thomas Schmidt, Hamburg
- University La Sapienza, I Technology, Material, eLearning, Prof. Dr. Paolo Renzi, Rom
- (Lernplatz.net, D Material, eLearning, Community-Building, PR, Paola Streibelt, Wiesbaden: Co-Partner)
- LIFE ACADEMY®, A Courses, Evaluation, MA Esther Djahangiri, Wien
- Mediatouch, I, Technology, Dissemination, Andrea Bicciolo, Rom
- ECIPA CNA, I - Courses, Moodle, Dissemination, Dr. Adriano De Vita, Venedig
- CETI Cultural and Educational Technology Institute, GR eLearning, Evaluation, Technology, Dr. Maria Topalidou, Xanthi
- InterSmart Communication, F Courses, eLearning, Peter Isackson, Paris
- Wbt SRL, I - eLearning, QM, Technology, Dr. Marcello Giacomantonio, Ancona
The EKOS project is aimed at demostrating the use and at creating LOMs for the access, use and re-use of digital content for eLearning.
The principal aim of EKOS is to enrich a critical mass of digital content and disseminate it between the actors as open source LOMs and SCORMs. We have in Consortium a big quantity of very good language courses to enrich with metadata, so that should be very useful to have your input to enhance their quality adding your concepts and the adeguate metadata too.
I would be happy to keep in touch with you.
Best regards
Paola Streibelt
Hi Paola. This is great news. As our project is not developing content, your input would be a great asset for us. What is your project time-scale? Is there somewhere where I can look at more info on your project? We´d certainly be interested in working together.
BEst,
Matthew.
BEst,
Matthew.