Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by Martín Langhoff -
Number of replies: 25
Hi - I'm one of the core moodle developers, and I am volunteering some time to get Moodle on the XS ("School Server") that is part of the OLPC project. Moodle has quite a central part in this, so it's important that we prepare it with a good initial configuration for it.

Though I have been working on Moodle for ages, I've never seen Moodle "in action" in a K-12 environment, so I wouldn't know how to provide sensible "defaults".

Do you think you can help, posting about about things (with Moodle mainly, perhaps and similar/complementary tools) you've found that work well with K-12 age groups? Links to earlier discussions are ok -- I didn't even know this forum existed so I haven't been following it! wink

The target is to see how to make the most of what we have today (not to spec a Moodle rewrite, though it will be interesting to see how it influences future directions). I am not after absolute best, just trying to understand what tricks and modules are known to work well...

[For more background, including technical notes, see http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=73022 ]
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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by Brett Hinton -
Issues we've had to address:

1. Email accounts are required in Moodle and for those kids in lower grade levels (who might not have an email account) that can be an issue. We get around that by having them fake the email account, but I wish there was a better way smile

2. The profile auto-defaults to "auto-subscribe" for forum posts. We try to catch all of our students before they do this so that they turn it off, but inevitably some get through and then get "lots" of email from forum discussions. Similarly, we found that turning on the Show unread posts by default really helps students to better track what forums they haven't read yet. (but that settings is defaulted to off - I wish we could change the default to the opposite for both of those settings.)

I'm not sure what other "defaults" you might be looking for but here are a couple of other observations:

1. Depending on the size/range of students being taught, we normally restrict the blogging feature such that only students that share a course can see other people's blog post - this lets us have everyone in a K-12 community using 1 Moodle install while preventing the 9-12 group from interacting unsupervised with the younger kids.

We find our teachers using the following modules/activities most frequently with students:

1. Resources (for both links and text) especially in making it easier for students to access websites without typing in the URL (which can be problematic for some if it is very long).
2. Assignments (especially the text for short answers to tasks and or reading assignments and also the upload file ability for more project type activities)
3. Forums - heavily used and the funnest to watch to see the kids interact and "get" things as they discuss them.
4. Book module - great for creating a webquest-type activity structure for kids to engage in with a wiki and a forum activity with it to allow groups to work together on the task part of what they are supposed to do (this would be for 5-12th mainly).

Here is also a good link to some suggestions for Moodle use for K-12 teachers (see the Good Practices and the Teaching Do's link)

http://docs.moodle.org/en/Teaching_do%27s_and_don%27ts

Not sure if this is what you were looking for, but it's my attempt to help any way - sounds like a cool project!
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In reply to Brett Hinton

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by Lesli Smith -
I second Brett's observations on the way forum defaults work versus what would be best for k-12. Thanks!
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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by Gary Anderson -
It should be kept in mind that there will be both similarities and differences with the use of educational computers in schools that have current Moodle installations and the target audience of the OLPC computers which are children in the least developed countries:

A couple similarities:

1. Tasks tend to be broken down into smaller pieces for younger children than for older students. So in some cases there may be more assignments in a course than Moodle will have in say a college setting.
2. Teachers have established routines and paradigms for education, so use of laptops for instruction might be a very long-term process, at least in terms of formal instruction.

Example of a couple differences:

1. These children may have never have owned a book, and their school library (if there is one at all) may have so few books that a child can not check them out. Hence their OLPC laptop may be their sole source of an encyclopedia or other reference and the content of their Moodle folders may be their only access to reading material.
2. School computers in current schools may think of the tools just for specific objectives in their curriculum. With the OLPC, learning on their laptops (which the child will own) will happen often away from and separate from guided instruction, and hence tools to explore, learn, and discover on their own may be even more important. Hence content beyond that which is just for "school learning" will be very important.

Others thinking about this, especially if they have spent time in developing countries, may have other ideas of how Moodle might be used in such environments.
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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by John Patten -

Hello All!

I am not familiar with the OLPC Server app. So I'm not sure if the OLPC server duplicates some of the functions of Moodle. However, I do have an XO smile

I would think Moodle would provide a very structured, academic interface for children using XO in developing worlds. Learning should be a combinataion of serendipitous exploration, which children using the XO may have more of in their learning environment, and facilitated/guided instruction.  I see Moodle as providing the facilitated instruction. Besides facilitating learning, it seems it would also provide a means for collaboration between students. I may be prejudice, because we use Moodle, but it would seem extremely valauble to have a environment for learning that is familiar, opensource, and for the most part in our deployment, trouble free, and enbales students from around the world to communicate , share, and learn from each other.

Unlike our higher ed partners, K-12 Moodle users, from my experience use Moodle to extend the learning day, provide resources that are organized, easily accessed from a central page, and communicate with their students and parents. Moodle sites are developed to support a whole semester of learning, or they can be developed to support one story from their text. (I'd be extremely curious as to how our partners in the XO projects would utilize Moodle with out really having a familiarity with the technology? Would the Moodle use by teachers and students be similar?)

FWIW, I originally, posted a note in the other OLPC thread about how we use Moodle here in our school district:

Original post from OLPC thread: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=73022&parent=393681

Just curious, what would stop students using the XO from paricipating in a Moodle site, say, here in the United States?

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In reply to John Patten

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by Martín Langhoff -

what would stop students using the XO from paricipating in a Moodle site, say, here in the United States?

Technically nothing. In practice, language culture, limited internet connection, and sheer lack of locality.

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In reply to John Patten

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by Gary Anderson -

John:

Those are excellent points, especially about providing the structural component of the education that Moodle allows.

Internet availability will probably be quite variable among different schools.  Some may have almost no Internet while others might have high speed access.  So some will be able to access sites in the US.  And I think that is especially exciting, especially pairing up classrooms in developing countries with our students.  Instant pen-pals, plus cultural exchange, access to learning resources, sharing of pictures, breaking down barriers, etc.

There is probably the need for some customization of the Interface for the XO and the likely environment it will be in.  Probably most of this can be done with themes.  There is a certain screen size for the XO, and the border on XO interface that comes in suggests that care must be used with the screen real estate when XO is the target.  And, perhaps the size and choice of icons and other style elements might be differnt for age 6-12.

So, my question is to those who teach at the elementary/early middle school level:  Do you use any custom themes or make other choices on course layouts that might help for an XO theme for Moodle?  If so, what seems to work for this age group in terms of what students see?

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In reply to Gary Anderson

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by John Patten -

Hi Gary!

In terms of themes, I think if someone were to come up with good CSS layout that would fit the XO display size, with ample header space for customization, that would go a long way. 

In terms of what we've done, I've pretty much found an exisiting template and just change out the colors, header graphics, etc.  Also, to make the interface a little more simple for our younger students, we simply move blocks to the left margin (leaving the right margin empty), and add icons or graphics that are also links to activities in Moodle such as the glossary, databases, etc., in the center activities panel.

I have a attached a few screen shot examples below. Not sure if that's what you meant in terms of customization...these are pretty much just switching colors and headers on an existing theme.

LostAndFoundTheme

 

crossroadstheme

earthdaytheme

 

somersetTheme
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In reply to John Patten

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by Gary Anderson -
John:

Thanks! That was exactly what I was looking for in terms of ideas for themes.

Any chance that you could post one of those themes? Especially in terms of how to deal with the borders but also other elements would be quite helpful for getting ideas of the best way to deal with the special environment (age and special screen dimensions) for this project. And if students or faculty at our school make adjustments to what you post, I will make sure we share those also.

It is a portion of the project that I know we want to get stared on.

Take care,

--Gary
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In reply to Gary Anderson

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by John Patten -

Hi Gary...

Those themes are all based off a theme in the Moodle Themes link, i believe it was "Nature color - Forst Theme."

In terms of how they were created, headers were created in graphics program roughly based on the sizes of the original template art work.  Minor adjustments can be made with the style sheets, in terms of adjusting the sizes of the space on the page to accomodate your header graphics size. Everything else was just a tweaking of the style sheets.  I am fortunate to have access to the Moodle server so I basically have the server open on screen and my desktop workstation open with PhotoShop or Gimp, etc.  I put the colors together and in the paint program, get their web color name, and start entering them in the color style sheet for that theme. It takes a while, and a little trial and error to understand which color tag changes what on the template. But when you have both the actual color style sheet open on the server and make changes directly to the page, refreshing the browser on the desktop machine gives you the immediate feedback on your alteration of the color style sheet.

There must be other ways to do this, especially if you don't have access to the server, but I haven't explored them. My problem is I don't do the theme customization enough to remember where all the tags are in the style sheets and each time I make a new design in a theme, I have to re-learn where everything is located on those pages tongueout

Hope that helps!

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In reply to John Patten

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by Gary Anderson -
Thanks, John. Your themes seem to be good matches for the targeted age group with colors, large print, nice banners, etc.

The XO theme(s) will probably want to consider the borders that happen with the sugar interface when you get to the edge(you lose the outer margin), the defined size of the XO screen, the age group of the audience, and the look and icons of the OLPC program. It also has a no-color/no-backlight mode, and the theme should work well with that to reduce power consumption.

I will probably have my software students in our high school work on this theme in a month or so, but if others have ideas or have found other references on these items, it would be great if you could post them.

--Gary
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In reply to Gary Anderson

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by Martín Langhoff -
Yes - those themes are cool, with strong colours.

From a theming point of view, here you can see the UI guidelines -- very strong and iconic: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines

One important thing I want to stick to is "Low floor, no ceiling" in terms of disabling (but not removing) stuff until the barriers of entry are extremely low. And then users can discover more bits and pieces as they learn and get more confident.

An important question I have is - are there other tools that you use with Moodle or alongside Moodle? I am thinking mainly web-based but anything goes I guess...
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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by Anthony Borrow -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Martín - Mostly for 9-12 (high school), I see teachers using Moodle to upload files and presentations (PowerPoints, pdfs, Word documents). Occasionally forums are used and quizzes are given. I found resources, forums, and quizzes to be the heart of Moodle in my blended environment. I wonder how something like DimDim or other whiteboard type technologies might work in the OLPC world. With lower bandwidth I'm thinking that it may not be the best but that would be the only package per se that I could see working along side of Moodle. Of course we need to wait and see what happens with a file repository. I've only played some with DOOR. Peace - Anthony

p.s. - The ability to develop a portfolio using something like Mahara or some other code would be good. As for contrib modules, I liked to feedback to do class evaluations and I think certificate might be helpful too for documenting that learning has occurred.
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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Moodle and younger kids?

by Martín Langhoff -
One of the things that made I am discussing a bit with early OLPC adopters is how to change Moodle's text-heavy UI to fit Sugar's HIG and work with younger kids.

Are there any good examples of this? K-6 range? CSS should give us enough rope to get a lot of it done, but I am not familiar with what UIs work with them.

Edit: Also - are there other tools that you use alongside or instead of Moodle with the young ones?]
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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: Moodle and younger kids?

by Tony Hursh -
WebQuests seem to be popular with our students who teach the primary grades. Some of them have also done some interesting work with eXe
and Hot Potatoes (which unfortunately has a rather odd license -- might preclude it from being distributed with the OLPC).

We've had a few students who've designed Moodle courses for young kids, although none of them have gone so far as to create a custom theme.

From what I can see, some points of commonality are:

1) Minimal use of blocks -- everything concentrated in the main area in the center.
2) As would be expected, large, colorful fonts are popular.
3) Not too much material in any one week/topic.


Attachment lifecycle.jpg
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In reply to Tony Hursh

Re: Moodle and younger kids?

by Tony Hursh -
Something else that would be useful is a Scratch integration module. It's possible to play Scratch projects using Java, but you have to upload several files and write some HTML to do it. Something that worked like the multimedia filter would be nice (i.e., just post or upload the .sb project file and Moodle takes care of the rest).

Actually, do the OLPC machines even include Java? The last I heard they didn't, but maybe that's changed now that Sun has made Java Free Software?


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In reply to Tony Hursh

Re: Moodle and younger kids?

by Martín Langhoff -
The XOs include Scratch itself smile (and kids in Uruguay and doing some cool stuff with it!)

If there's a Scratch file in Moodle, then the Browser will download it and open it in Scratch automatically.

At least everything is there, maybe I have to add the appropriate MIME Type to Moodle, and test that it works end-to-end smile
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In reply to Tony Hursh

Re: Moodle and younger kids?

by Art Lader -
Well... Here is what I am working on for younger students in my district - http://facultyroom.org/course/view.php?id=22

Log in with user name janedoe and password joeblow.

Might be helpful to someone. Hope so! smile

-- Art

Attachment artlader.jpg
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In reply to Art Lader

Re: Moodle and younger kids?

by ahmet b -
Hi Art,
I work for a K-8 School and your design really is nice.
here is a couple questions to get help from you.
1-how did you add this 'listen' feature?
2-the tabs you have? how did make this. it doesn't look moodle smile
3-the page outline is good too. how did you get rid of the menus etc., around the page?
by the way, I have 1.8.4
Thanks



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In reply to ahmet b

Re: Moodle and younger kids?

by Art Lader -

Hi, Ahmet,

I, too, am currently using version 1.8.4, so that's good.

For the primary school course, I am using Michael Penney's Flexpage course format -- http://www.moodlerooms.com/intel.html. That makes it very easy to put in the tabs or not, get rid of menus or not, and so on. It takes a little getting used to, but it is great for this sort of thing!

For the "Listen " bit on each page, I just record the text on the page and save it as an MP3. Then I upload it to Moodle. When I link to that file, Moodle creates a Flash player for it. I just have to add the ear. smile

I hope that is a little helpful. (The primary school teachers here have been quite positive about it.)

Best regards,
Art


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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: Moodle and younger kids?

by Mauno Korpelainen -

Hi Martin,

I have three kids (10, 8 and 4 years) and my home town is using moodle in all other levels of education but not in primary schools (however hard I have tried...) The reason is that our primary schools are using a popular commercial learning environment (maintained by a Finnish publishing company) that looks fabulous, has tons of learning material ready to use (mostly flash exercises but they could be php exercises as well) and is made for children. You are absolutely right that we could do a lot with css to make moodle look like kids environment. In fact I considered some time ago suggesting that we should have a different version of moodle for kids - a sort of Junior Moodle. Not only different themes but the whole environment could have simplified design and some customized activities. For example quizzes could have totally different style. The main problem is that most primary school teachers are interested to use material and even learning environments but not so familiar with writing code or designing themes. I'm teaching mathematics in upper secondary school and Adult Education department myself but things like this have always attracted me.

Attached some examples from this environment that my kids use - these images are from my son's (8 years) material.

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Example 4

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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: Moodle and younger kids?

by elearning edu -

I think in terms of creating the front end for moodle using php code.  In fact earlier I did this for my clients.  But the issue was the preference of html/css due to its advantage in the end user's ability to modify html.  Php based code modification requires basic knowledge in php.  An example is

http://virtualteacher.org/moodle/frontend/

Nagarajan

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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: Moodle and younger kids?

by stuart edgecombe -
Hi Martin

We use Google Apps alongside Moodle. We are a small school with no central network and three campuses so Google Apps works as our intranet, allowing us to save and share work that is easily accessable with just an internet connection. The students can create their work there download it into a word or open office format and insert it/link to it inside their moodle work. Obviously the same goes for the teachers. I can see web software as being a strong option for the OLPC project, especially with Google Gears coming out soon giving users the ability to work offline. The pairing works really well for us Google with it's application features and Moodle as our collaborative community.

We also use Picasa web albums to provide photo storage and link or embed that into our moodle site. This reduces the storage needs on our Moodle server.

I teach Grade 3 and we use moodle as an information and resource hub for our school community (newsletters, homework, photogallery etc) and discussion forums. We are going to be experiementing with wikis inside of moodle and short assignments soon. I hope to have the students manipulating graphics and displaying them in moodle using gimp, piknik etc and in the future animation using Scratch.

Stuart
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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by Kristian Still -
I have posted your need for help on Twitter, I will let the folks at classroom 2.0 and Edtechtalk know, and thats me networked out!

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In reply to Kristian Still

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by Miles Berry -
Hi Martin,

Thanks for such an inspirational session on the OLPC at MMUK09! I've downloaded sugar and have it running happily inside a VM on my MBP smile

We've been using Moodle with primary aged children (typically 9-11 years old) since 2004. My pupils actually quite like the serious, grown-up interface of Moodle as is, although I'd agree with folks above that a more graphic led interface would fit in better with Sugar.

I love Tony's idea of a Scratch media filter, easy integration of voice resources and responses would be cool (nanogong?), as will be the drawing/painting integration that TinyMCE3 brings to Moodle 2. Alongside our Moodle, we have an Elgg instance, which provides space for digital show and tell and more informal learning, although this could be done inside Moodle too.

To my mind, effective use of Moodle in primary education isn't about interface design or features as much as it's about course design. A good primary VLE should reflect good primary practice; my own list would include:
  • A rich, stimulating learning environment
  • Emphasis on learning through experience
  • DIY resources
  • Space for creativity and collaboration
  • An emphasis on social learning
  • Opportunities for informal, independent learning
  • Emphasis on exploration, experiment and play
These are characteristic of Sugar, as far as I can see, and also of Moodle when it's used well.
Further thoughts at http://milesberry.net/?p=261 and reflections on our first year of Moodling at http://milesberry.net/docs/MBA.pdf
Moodlefairy's book would be worth reading.


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In reply to Miles Berry

Re: Need good hints on K-12 usage for OLPC project

by Martín Langhoff -
Thanks for the excellent links.

I was a bit... less than smart at not cornering you and Mary Cooch for a serious grilling while at the moot. We talked a bit, but I hadn't connected Mary with the book and the blog, probably because I was generally washed out after the keynote and talks that followed it.

I am going to buy her book ASAP. Will probably get the PDF and read it in this long weekend. And your thesis paper too.

Even if the UI design isn't all... having low barriers to entry means we get users to actually use moodle... smile so simplifying things is important.
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