During a seminar on e-learning which we organised last week, moodle was introduced to a number of the teachuing staff. One of the most important questions that arose from this meeting was; how can a moodle user annotate or make notes within the online materials.
One alternative that has sprung to mind is the use of the Book module. The screen could be split into two parts, with the original material on the left, and the personal notes regarding that particular material on the right.
Would this be a possiblity within the Book module? Is something like this already in the pipeline? If not, would it be possible to work together on such a projekt?
Hi Jörg Schäfer!
Three things:
HTH
WP1
Three things:
- A while back Ger Tielemans suggested a similar module with a split page view. I cannot find the post. I suggest you contact him about it.
- Someone else (a while back) posted a link to software (commercial) that provided a way to give students feedback directly within a document. It used either flash or javascript. Again, I cannot locate the post or the link but hopefully, someone who knows about it will see this post and provide the link. I will also keep looking.
- Consider using the MoodleWiki module to achieve what you are trying to do.
HTH
WP1
I've always thought that a way for students to "take notes" would be great, but haven't looked into it much yet. Take a look at this thread where Janne D suggested a way to annotate pages. I don't know if he finished this code. Also, he was not making this for personal notes, only shared comments. But it is a place to start: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=17533
You might also look into using SCORM instead of the Book module--maybe there is a way to insert a text entry box into a sco that could act as a note taker?? Anybody know about this?
Please let us know if you figure anything out
Chardelle
Hi Chardelle,
I have continued the discussion about a way to annotate pages in the glossary forum, because someone asked about it in that forum and because the new version is now hooked up to the glossary module. As such it is no longer useful for annotating text (a popup added to a certain word shows up everywhere this word is used.)
I might change it round if people could come up with a mechanism to find out where a student would want to add the note to.
Some other things I tried (besides attaching the annotations to a specific word in a glossary)
Private / public annotations wouldn't make such a big difference. I just learned from using the private bookmarks block that it takes too long to check what students store inside their moodle.
I have continued the discussion about a way to annotate pages in the glossary forum, because someone asked about it in that forum and because the new version is now hooked up to the glossary module. As such it is no longer useful for annotating text (a popup added to a certain word shows up everywhere this word is used.)
I might change it round if people could come up with a mechanism to find out where a student would want to add the note to.
Some other things I tried (besides attaching the annotations to a specific word in a glossary)
- adding id's to all the paragraphs in a text so a person could click on a paragraph to annotate it. Problem: the id numbering breaks when a teacher adds a paragraph afterwards. Forbidding teachers to change their texts seems a bit odd.
- using javascript to return the student's cursor position, storing the cursor position together with the annotation. Problem: the javascript only worked with text in a textarea. This looked ugly and broke all the formatting.
Private / public annotations wouldn't make such a big difference. I just learned from using the private bookmarks block that it takes too long to check what students store inside their moodle.
Oh Jan, sorry, I mixed your name up with the other Janne. Thanks for filling us in on this. Your new code is clever--reminds me a little of your random content block.
As for where to annotate--that is the question! Are you saying that this isn't something that could just be added to an html page anywhere? (You mention id's above) In other words, you couldn't just have one comment added somewhere on the page? Maybe just a link to a popup window?
As for private: are you saying that if you don't care what students put into their own private comments ("takes too long to check what students store inside their moodle") that private comments would work?
FYI,
I just took a quick look at an ilias demo. Their "courses" are similar to Petr's Book module. At the top of each page there is a Notes link and an "add a note" icon. The Notes link takes you to the Notes Index where you can search, print, etc. your notes. The icon opens up a text editor where you can add a note and mark it. See screenshot. Pretty cool.
Thanks,
Chardelle
Hi Everyone!
Folks, check out the link provided by Ger to Harvard Law School. It looks similar to the commercial software I referred to above. I think N was also in the thread that it was discussed. Maybe she would remember where it is.
Anyway, check out Ger's Link. That software is OpenSource and looks promising. One problem however, is it uses Perl. Whereas, the feature in iLias uses PHP [I think] feature that Chardelle posted. (Although that looks interesting as well).
Y-Notes also looks cool! But, it also appears to use Perl. It might be an interesting project for this summer. If no one beats me to it. But, how would it fit into Moodle? As a new mod or as an option in an existing mod??? Can it be build with PHP??
WP1
Folks, check out the link provided by Ger to Harvard Law School. It looks similar to the commercial software I referred to above. I think N was also in the thread that it was discussed. Maybe she would remember where it is.
Anyway, check out Ger's Link. That software is OpenSource and looks promising.
One problem however, is it uses Perl. Whereas, the feature in iLias uses PHP [I think] feature that Chardelle posted. (Although that looks interesting as well). Y-Notes also looks cool! But, it also appears to use Perl. It might be an interesting project for this summer. If no one beats me to it. But, how would it fit into Moodle? As a new mod or as an option in an existing mod??? Can it be build with PHP??
WP1
I like those notes! IMO they could be implemented in the Moodle core to make them available in all modules.
If only I had more free time
If only I had more free time
NOP,
My old wish was to have a kind of "meta modul" where you could splitt the screen in two parts and choose another modul in each part:
Interesting combinations:
- Resource on the left, discussion /chat on the right
- resource on the left, journal on the right
- resource on the left poll on the right etc...
Another old suggestion: d3e, used in the famouse JIME magazine, coded in php as a collab annotation tool. (It comes in two flavours D3E that needs file-preparation and the simpler Ubiquituos.. something for Mike?)
Also old collab annotation example: http://y-notes.sourceforge.net/
(But rejected in the forums, because it was not well coded? I do not remember exactly)
A newer version of this idea?http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projects/annotate.html
Having now the great block of shared files and shared weblinks, I took the old bookmarks from William, removed the file attachment option (so, not doubling the shared files block) and offer it now to the users as a flat sticky notes system:
- On every Moodle page the students sees this finger with the ribbon in the navigation bar and can attach a note.
- Under his personal profile (in participants) the user has access to his privat note taking mechanism (with self choosen categories)
- The notes are visible in all his courses and the student can jump to the page from a link in the note. (I still hope that William's Bookmarks become part of the core Moodle, because you must do a lot o hand-coding)
- Limitation: it only works on screens with a navigationbar.. (But it must be possible to put the button also in the header of a resource-page?)
We'd love to work on this if anyone can find funding for it.
Ilias apparently has a system for it which might serve as a prototype, but I haven't had time to look into it yet.
I think it would be a tremendous feature to have in Moodle, IMO it's one of the biggest problems with using online resources for teaching, and one of the big reasons so many students print out so many documents here: to take notes, underline, etc.
Ilias apparently has a system for it which might serve as a prototype, but I haven't had time to look into it yet.
I think it would be a tremendous feature to have in Moodle, IMO it's one of the biggest problems with using online resources for teaching, and one of the big reasons so many students print out so many documents here: to take notes, underline, etc.
Dear all,
First of all, thanks for the many interesting ideas that you've brought up (again) here. Yet another example, if we needed it, of the remarkable cooperation within the moodle community.
The discussion seems to be going in two directions:
- A seperate Module: This was my first thought as well. Like W Page, I can foresee us attempting this project (e.g Split Screen - half Online Material (like BOOK), half Annotation) during 2005 with the help of our students and collaboration with yourselves
- A global function: This would be the ideal solution of course. The ideas put forward by Ger are great and exactly what we need. We'd love to help but are unsure how to go about incorporating such a solution within moodle as a whole. How do I obtain more detailed information regarding the moodle structure?
Cheers
Jörg
Ger, could you share your hack of Williams' bookmark?
Jorg,
That code is fairly old, but it has been used as the basis for a couple of things. You can find out more about it here: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=3125#40454
As I recall, I never got it to work and gave up. Did you every get this working WP?
Hi Jorg, one thing I though of was something like wiki, where each student keeps their own notes and can track by page, perhaps a wiki-fied add on to book?
Ideally, notes would show to the student who put in the note either inline, or as a pop-up, but not show to other students (presumably the teacher could view it by logging as the student, but really there should be not much need for the teacher to see the notes if they are only for the student.
It seems to me the biggest programming challenge would be to keep the notes lined up with the text, eg. if the teacher modifies the text, a student's notes for paragraph 3 would stick with para 3, even if it becomes the 5th paragraph after a teacher modifies the text. Wiki's already do this, so perhaps that could serve as a basis for a note taking module?
To me, the idea is to mimic what a student can do by printing a document out and annotating it.
Ger's example from the law site was interesting, but with all notes shared the document quickly becomes unreadable, and of course you have the issue of inaapropriate notes.
Ideally, notes would show to the student who put in the note either inline, or as a pop-up, but not show to other students (presumably the teacher could view it by logging as the student, but really there should be not much need for the teacher to see the notes if they are only for the student.
It seems to me the biggest programming challenge would be to keep the notes lined up with the text, eg. if the teacher modifies the text, a student's notes for paragraph 3 would stick with para 3, even if it becomes the 5th paragraph after a teacher modifies the text. Wiki's already do this, so perhaps that could serve as a basis for a note taking module?
To me, the idea is to mimic what a student can do by printing a document out and annotating it.
Ger's example from the law site was interesting, but with all notes shared the document quickly becomes unreadable, and of course you have the issue of inaapropriate notes.
I think an important consideration for whatever method is chosen is that the way the information is stored/formatted should allow the student to take the text and the notes with him when the course is finished, and after access to it is no longer possible. Something that could be stored offline as some sort of simple text document for future reference. Otherwise, a student who is interested in retaining their notes will still be better off saving or printing the document rather than using any inbuilt function.
Hey yall,
I'm glad you've been talking about this because it is something that I have imagined using even before I came accross moodle.
I envisioned using a Flash frame that could call up a given HTML page. Above the "source" layer, invisible layers could be added which would bear the page annotations. You could call up a "student" layer, a "collaborative" layer, or a "teacher's" layer and perhaps even view them "stacked". The layer would be saved at the end of a session to be called up later in association with a given page.
I have no programming knowledge beyond html and so I have no idea how a thing like this could be accomplished. Until yesterday I did not know IF it could be accomplished. But then I came across the following page.
http://www.sidenote.net/mainsite/ (look at the SideNote application under the "solutions" tab)
Check it out. It is very much what I envisioned (except for the dependance on the company's server) and seems to be what is being discussed here as well.
I don't know that this get us any closer to making it happen in moodle, but somebody has accomplished it elsewhere.
Best wishes,
Matt
Just a side note -
If you're an educator, you might want to consider Adobe Acrobat 7.0 to make .pdf documents 'annotatable' - the professional version costs a bit and is required to set the pdf file up for annotations, but then any of your students can comment or draw on the pdf using the free Adobe Acrobat 7 reader.
Cheers!
(another) Matt
If you're an educator, you might want to consider Adobe Acrobat 7.0 to make .pdf documents 'annotatable' - the professional version costs a bit and is required to set the pdf file up for annotations, but then any of your students can comment or draw on the pdf using the free Adobe Acrobat 7 reader.
Cheers!
(another) Matt
Yes, but that is on their local machine. We need a version of pdf where the annotations are stored on te server and accessible on school AND at home.
Hi,
Acrobat 7.0 is not an absolute requisite. Some FOSS tools like PDFCreator, PDFToolkit and others can set PDF permissions, too.
The problem ramaining is that those annotations are on a per-user basis, they are not shared and consolidated across users in a classroom or course.
- Enrique -
Acrobat 7.0 is not an absolute requisite. Some FOSS tools like PDFCreator, PDFToolkit and others can set PDF permissions, too.
The problem ramaining is that those annotations are on a per-user basis, they are not shared and consolidated across users in a classroom or course.
- Enrique -
Looking at this again this weekend, a modified wiki seems like it might be a good method.
If an instructor posts a wiki with a summary, and posts the text in the summary, then with wiki set to user, each student can add their comments at the bottom, viewable only by themselves.
But ideally, students should be able to add comments inline. This would require the teacher being able to add pages to a user type wiki, pages that students could then annotate themselves (perhaps with a different default font color?).
It should also have 'export document as html' and/or 'print document' functions.
Anyway, seems like to me that wiki would be the best platform to build this functionality off of since it already has the ability to store user and/or group text individually.
If an instructor posts a wiki with a summary, and posts the text in the summary, then with wiki set to user, each student can add their comments at the bottom, viewable only by themselves.
But ideally, students should be able to add comments inline. This would require the teacher being able to add pages to a user type wiki, pages that students could then annotate themselves (perhaps with a different default font color?).
It should also have 'export document as html' and/or 'print document' functions.
Anyway, seems like to me that wiki would be the best platform to build this functionality off of since it already has the ability to store user and/or group text individually.