I'm a secondary school teacher, teaching remedial maths. A lot of the
concepts I teach are visual but have specific language attached to
them. To help students learn the language, I have written a
very simple program using 'director' which can generate a matching quiz
from a folder of named images. Sadly its an *.exe file as the
commands I used aren't available in shockwave, hence it doesn't mesh
well with moodle.
My students love this activity and have produced some nice work for the 'smarter kids' to practise with.
It occurs to me that this could be a neat activity to build into
moodle. Students could upload images to a directory and click on 'quiz
builder' . The quiz builder could then pick up the names of the images
in the folder, shuffle and resize the images and then put the whole lot
on the screen to show their mates.
Is there a brillant programmer out there who is looking for a project?
In reply to Anne Nicolson
Re: Idea for adding simple constructionist activities to moodle
by Hannes Gassert -
> Is there a brillant programmer out there who is looking for a project?
Lots of them, but most would like to get paid
Lots of them, but most would like to get paid
In reply to Hannes Gassert
Re: Idea for adding simple constructionist activities to moodle
by Jelle Boomstra -
Yes indeed. 30 EUR per hour, 3 hours per functionpoint would make me happy...
In reply to Jelle Boomstra
Re: Idea for adding simple constructionist activities to moodle
by Anne Nicolson -
Yep If I was rich........ and not an underpaid teacher.
Also I point out that good ideas don't normally come free either!
Also I point out that good ideas don't normally come free either!
In reply to Anne Nicolson
Re: Idea for adding simple constructionist activities to moodle
by Don Hinkelman -
Keep posting your ideas here. I really like your suggestion! 
However, when you said, "any brilliant programmers out there...?", unintentionally, you hit a sore nerve for many of us in our community. 
>>Yep If I was rich........ and not an underpaid teacher.
Yes, we teachers are usually underpaid.
However, most of us poor teachers have a salary, while the majority of programmers at Moodle do not have any salary. Many wait for Martin to collect enough donations to hire them for a short job. Most do not know where their next month's income will come from. So we teachers must be very careful not to take their efforts for granted. Unfortunately, there are no bored IBM programmers lurking on these forums looking for great ideas to spend their time on weekends.
>>Also I point out that good ideas don't normally come free either!
Yes, good ideas have value. But on these forums, there are hundreds if not thousands of good ideas (keep posting!!). Poll-forums, project modules, repositories, flexible roles, blogs, and on. There is a five year queue of ideas--the ones that get implemented are the ones that get funded.
So what can we poor teachers do?
>>Yep If I was rich........ and not an underpaid teacher.
Yes, we teachers are usually underpaid.
However, most of us poor teachers have a salary, while the majority of programmers at Moodle do not have any salary. Many wait for Martin to collect enough donations to hire them for a short job. Most do not know where their next month's income will come from. So we teachers must be very careful not to take their efforts for granted. Unfortunately, there are no bored IBM programmers lurking on these forums looking for great ideas to spend their time on weekends. >>Also I point out that good ideas don't normally come free either!
Yes, good ideas have value. But on these forums, there are hundreds if not thousands of good ideas (keep posting!!). Poll-forums, project modules, repositories, flexible roles, blogs, and on. There is a five year queue of ideas--the ones that get implemented are the ones that get funded.
So what can we poor teachers do?
- *all of us* give small donations once or twice a year to moodle.org
- organize fund raising campaigns--apply for grants at our schools
- learn PHP and have ultimate control!
In reply to Don Hinkelman
Odp: Re: Idea for adding simple constructionist activities to moodle
by Greg Szczotka -
A very inspiring piece of thinking
And what about young people who aren't even qualified teachers but are very passionate. I will soon be a psychologist and my education is out of sync with what I am up to at the moment. I'm going to learn PHP and provide excellent moodle language courses. In the future I also want to create psychological courses. I know that there are already a few of them available.
I also wonder if anyone runs international moodle courses. That would be awesome
In reply to Don Hinkelman
Re: Idea for adding simple constructionist activities to moodle
by Anne Nicolson -
Thanks Don 
In reply to Anne Nicolson
Re: Idea for adding simple constructionist activities to moodle
by Hannes Gassert -
I've been thinking about your idea a little bit.
Generalizing your idea, what you want to do is generating a quiz based on image annotations, based on metadata. This could be a title (Mona Lisa), but also an author (Leonardo), an epoch, a style.. whatever.
So (being a computer scientist..) I'd recommend using something like PhotoStuff to semantically annotate your images, upload data+metadata and generate the quiz using these metadata. If people here agree on using semantic annotations then I'd volunteer for hacking the Moodle-side quiz generation stuff.. really.
If it's something reusable, using reusable data and formats, then I'd be on board, I think
Generalizing your idea, what you want to do is generating a quiz based on image annotations, based on metadata. This could be a title (Mona Lisa), but also an author (Leonardo), an epoch, a style.. whatever.
So (being a computer scientist..) I'd recommend using something like PhotoStuff to semantically annotate your images, upload data+metadata and generate the quiz using these metadata. If people here agree on using semantic annotations then I'd volunteer for hacking the Moodle-side quiz generation stuff.. really.
If it's something reusable, using reusable data and formats, then I'd be on board, I think