Poet Ponders the Digital

Moodle is definitely proving to be more flexible and, sometimes, more efficient than Blackboard. I created five groups for class today in under 15 minutes, something I could not do as quickly in Blackboard. I then created a Wiki for each group in only three steps. The Wiki in Moodle does use HTML instead of Wikitext, but that's okay with me and should be okay for students. The system is new for most students, but they seem to have far less difficulty than my previous classes with Blackboard. That's a definite positive to using Moodle. The campus interviews I have for tenure-track posts use Blackboard. If hired, I would certainly want to advocate for Moodle, now. Unfortunately, such choices are seldom up to instructors and few IT departments want to support several platforms. Reporting is overly detailed in Moodle; I would prefer a chart or something by student. Still, it is nice to be able to check so many student activities. Next week I collect my first online assignment and r...

This semester I am using Moodle for online course content, after six years of Blackboard use (including WebCT, WebVista). I thought I'd chronicle my experiences; I know it helps me refine my thoughts and it might help other instructors. As I design my course, which starts Jan. 19, 2010, I am finding some things take a bit of extra work with Moodle. This is because the system tends to present every possible variable for an activity, even when only two or three are required. It would be nice to have a "show basic" option for some tasks. I realize some instructors use every option, so those should be easily accessible, but cut the clutter is a good design philosophy. When I do use an option, such as setting the maximum points for an assignment, the system uses a "pop-up" or "drop-down" list, when I would rather key in the numeric value and tab to the next field. Scrolling through every number, from 1000 to 1, for "points possible" is annoying. I...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley August 19, 2006 Wanting to Share Visalia: Our Wiki Entry Nobody seems to know how to say “Visalia” or “Tulare” when I travel. I explain where I am from by mentioning Fresno and Bakersfield, but it turns out most people have no real understanding of where those cities are, either. “How close are you to Los Angeles or San Francisco?” people asked me at the “Computers and Writing” conference in Lubbock. The intention of the gathering was to share ways to better include technology in meaningful classroom assignments, so I turned on my laptop and headed for some familiar Web sites. “It’s surrounded by farmland,” I tried to explain. “And on a clear day, you can see the Sierras.” I turned to Google Earth to show satellite images of farmland. That still didn’t do the trick. The Texans wanted more information if I was going to claim some place in California was anything like Lubbock. “Just show me the entry on Wiki,” a Texas Tech professor suggested. ...