Glenys Hanson

Hi there,

In Moodle 1.9.16, I'm redoing Hot Potatoes exercises intended for distant users with whom I have no face-to-face contact, so detailed instructions of how to do each exercise type are necessary. So as not to clutter up each exercise with lengthy explanations, I've put them as tutorials in a Book. Now I want to make a link from each exercise to the relevant tutorial. I know how to do this as an absolute link but not as a relative link. If I use absolute links, and then move the course elsewhere, the links will all be broken. As there are several hundred exercises, this would a pain to have to redo.

Is there any solution?

Cheers,

Glenys

Hi Tim,

As I've just written, to Itamar, I think a lot is possible in face-to-face situations that is infinitely more difficult in on-line, distance courses "to get people to open up".

It's even possible for that to happen in a work team - I know because I've lived it. Not because of a skilled facilitator but, because of a hostile environment, the group felt that that's what they had to do to survive.

Cheers,

Glenys

Hi Itamar,

It's not that I think students aren't already capable of working, or don't already wish to [work together, constructively, amicably, and respectfully of each other] it's that the academic environments to which most of them have previously been exposed have not given them the opportunity of that, so many of them have not conceived of it as a possibility. At least, that's what they've told me in face-to-face classes where I've been able to create a different environment.

I find it far more difficult to create such an environment on line in distance courses - that is, where students feel it's OK to make mistakes. (If other people have been able to do that I'd really like to know how and if possible, see how, they do it.) No, I don't really think that just observing the Moodle.org would result in students being confident to do experiment without fear of failure in another forum. My attempts at humour often fall flat.

___

You say, "I'm not sure why my proposal that "the author virtually suggests (inadvertantly, to be sure) that  the real cheaters are the edcuators" cannot be serious."

But the author doesn't say, "the real cheaters are the edcuators". It's your interpretation that he "virtually suggests (inadvertently, to be sure)". Come on, with "virtually" and "inadvertently" anybody can be understood to mean anything.

Just to take your first observation:

"First, Promote healthy school culture and authentic learning.

Which only means that educators don't do that or at least do it ineffectively. But if this is possible as the author assumes, and if educators are competent as educators assume, it only means that educators are cheating."

It seems to me that your first "if" clause is valid, there's no need to promote something that already exists, but the second one is not. Who are these educators who are competent as they (or maybe other educators) assume? They are not mentioned in the article. Why not assume that educators (or some of them) are incompentent, but not cheating?

Looking forward to your reply,

Glenys

Yes, my criticism of your sophistry was itself intended to be sophistry - though I couldn't put it as elegantly as you do.

Hi Henny,

it's maybe a problem of filters on your site: your admin has to turn some of them on. See below the settings I have. (It's kind of strange you can use .swf files - it's recommended not to enable that filter though I don't understand why.)

Cheers,

Glenys

Hi Henny,

I just visited your Moodle site. In the address bar, I saw the address as: moodle.digischool.nl/ but when I copied and pasted it elsewhere it became: http://moodle.digischool.nl/

I find the easiest video format to use is .flv (that's what they use on YouTube).

To save server space, these days many people upload their videos to YouTube (or similar sites) and then embed them from there. It's very easy.

Here's an example I think you'll enjoy: There's An Alligator Under My Bed

I've attached the the .jqz file so you can see exactly how I did it.

This is the code I inserted:

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/sNE8p0E4NVU&amp;hl=en_GB&amp;fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/sNE8p0E4NVU&amp;hl=en_GB&amp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

This is quite an old exercise (2 years old), so there are maybe other ways to do it these days.

Cheers,

Glenys