UoG are pleased to host the next #Mahoodle event on Monday 1st July 2019 at the Oxstalls campus in Gloucester.
The event is open to anyone who uses Moodle and/or Mahara, at whatever educational level - from schools, through FE/HE to workplace, adult and 3rd Sector training. There is no cost for attendance at the event itself.
Please watch this site for upcoming details, booking form, programme, etc.
In order to improve sustainability, it is intended that all information will be provided electronically, with no printed programme on the day, so if there is any additional information you would like to see provided here, please contact roelmann@glos.ac.uk
Register to Attend
Registration is now closed. However, if you still wish to book a place, please contact Richard directly (roelmann@glos.ac.uk) and we will try to make arrangements for you.
Programme
You can see the programme on the 'Programme' tab below. A downloadable pdf version is also available
First of all, a huge thank you to everyone who came to yesterday's #Mahoodle19 and especially to everyone who contributed, whether as a speaker, panel member, or with the great contributions from attendees. The day was a wonderful opportunity to share features, practice, developments, uses, pedagogy and perhaps most important of all, to meet up with other members of the #Mahara and #Moodle communities. And also a huge shout out to those, often in the background, who helped make the day a success - From Sam Taylor who first asked me if we could host the day at University of Gloucestershire and then arranged the sponsorship of the catering, to our admin and catering staff at the university who sorted out the rooms and the refreshments, through to my colleague, Roger, who spent the day managing all the little techie details to make sure microphones, presentations and recordings were working smoothly.
The Mahoodle day goes beyond a local user group and brings in people from across the UK and Ireland - with a visitor from New Zealand as well (Sorry Don, not wishing the Black Caps too much luck today though!). Although not everyone was able to make it on the day, we had a great turn out and traffic and air delays didn't slow down those visiting from other parts of the country too much.
Much like the communities themselves, the day got off to a great start with Don Christie of Catalyst NZ discussing issues around Open - for software, for education and for practice. He brought in some of the Privacy debates and the way NZ are beginning to deal with the interests of the Maori people in those 'big data' discussions. The coffee time discussions following Don's talk were full of comments around some of the more commercial EdTech companies and recent discussions around the use and ownership of student data.
Other presentations during the morning gave us insights into the work being done by Cambridge International to support teachers around the world, through to Marieke, Aurelie and Chantal describing their journey to developing and encouraging the use of Moodle and Mahara with the staff at the Royal Agricultural University. Lisa, having made it across from Ireland that morning, shared the excellent progress that DCU, shared with other Irish institutions, have made on developing the use of Portfolios - and, I think, surprised everyone with the scale of support she provides as a sole (part time) learning technologist supporting 15,000 students (and staff) using Mahara. Sam followed on from some of the news Lisa had given about DCU developments and gave us some extremely useful insights into new features in the latest versions of Mahara, and left everyone keen to make sure they are using the most upto date versions possible! Both Gavin and Edd gave us insights into using competencies and SmartEvidence, with Gavin comparing Moodle's competency set up and Mahara's SmartEvidence, and Edd feeding back the progress Solent have made since last year in their adoption of Smart Evidence.
We will be trying to get some of the videos of these presentations up and onto the #Mahoodle19 site as soon as possible, within other commitments for the team here at UoG. Please bear with us while we get them tidied up for publishing.
The afternoon had Dan Jeffries demonstrating some of the excellent features of H5P - with a few concerns expressed around accessibility issues, but it was agreed that those should be considered when authoring content and built into the activities as a first principle. Tools Dan demonstrated included the interactive videos, the essay question type and branching activities. 'Essay' is something of a misnomer, but it is, like the one in Moodle, a quite powerful pattern checking tool to highlight a student identifying certain key words and phrases when used appropriately (It's never going to replace a tutor marking a properly written essay).
Aurelie and Richard Samson closed the afternoon with some information around user groups, particularly MUGSE and the MUA - Community is a huge part of both tools and the networking and support we give each other through those communities is vital!
Again, a huge thank you to all who came and took part in this excellent day.