Join Elevating Innovation Virtual Conference on Nov 8
The inaugural Elevating Innovation Virtual Conference will be organized on November 8 by Digital Promise and Verizon Innovative Learning. During the edtech conference, educators will hear from keynote speakers and learn directly from edtech experts about strategies, activities, and research-based practices to best leverage educational technology.
The levating Innovation Virtual Conference’s programming will begin at 11 a.m. EST on Tuesday, November 8th with a keynote presentation. After which there will be 45 minutes interactive sessions focused on the following topics:
Learning with Immersive Technologies
Student Creation, Collaboration, and Communication
Innovative Learning Design and Delivery
Student Well-being
Project-Based Learning
Design Thinking
STEM and STEAM Education
Personalized Learning
The edtech conference will be completely free of cost for all participants. If you are interested, you can register your seat from this link.
The event will offer a perfect opportunity to the participants to explore and learn directly from edtech experts and practitioners through a variety of interactive sessions. The event will conclude with a keynote session presentation.
The Elevating Innovation virtual conference is for K-12 district and campus leaders, instructional coaches, classroom educators, and others who want to learn and explore ways to leverage technology meaningfully.
Get ready for the OLC Innovate 2023 conference in April 2023
OLC Innovate 2023 – the edtech conference will take place April 18 – 21, 2023 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville. OLC Innovate, a joint conference presented by OLC and MERLOT, provides a platform for educators & innovators to share best practices, test new ideas, and collaborate on driving forward online, digital, and blended learning.
The OLC Innovate 2023 will have multiple pathways to learn including Pre-conference Master classes, Uniques Session formats and Summits. The registrations for the conference will open soon and the early bird registration discounted prices will be available until February 21, 2023.
The event will be organized at Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville. You can make your reservations by Monday, March 27, 2023 to take advantage of the special daily conference room rate.
Submit your presentation proposal for OLC Innovate 2023
This is the time to share your innovative ideas with global network of colleagues, community, and those who inspire and seek inspiration. The OLC Innovate team is looking for proposals that reflect and showcase our vibrant community — promoting theory, research, methodology, and/or applied effective teaching and learning practices in online, blended, and digital learning environments.
Here are the important dates for the presentation submission and approval:
October 19, 2022 (by 11:59pm ET): Proposals due
December 22, 2022: Notification of acceptance
January 16, 2023: Deadline for presenters to accept
February 21, 2023: Deadline for presenters to register/edit abstracts
March 28, 2023: Deadline for presentations to be uploaded to or linked in the conference system
For more details about the OLC Innovate 2023, you can visit the official website here.
Join Speexx Exchange - The digital learning event for HR and L&D on 23 November
Speexx Exchange is the the digital learning event for HR and L&D professionals. This year the event will be organized on November 23 in InterContinental Hotel Berlin. The edtech event is the perfect opportunity for HR & L&D Professionals to network with industry peers in person and online.
Advantages of Joining this year Speexx Exchange conference:
Join 500+ experts and thought leaders from the global HR and L&D community from more than 20 countries.
On the program: networking, latest industry research, best practice presentations on global digital transformation projects.
Online: A great interactive hybrid experience – just like you were in the room yourself.
Speexx Exchange is a hybrid event: Network with industry peers in person and online.
The annual reality check on the state of digital corporate learning and coaching
This year the event will be organized in a hybrid way which provides opportunity to join in person as well as completely online.
The event program includes a lot of good sessions from industry experts with keynotes from Laura Overton & Jeremy Blain.
Speexx Exchange is an international community of global thought leaders, friends and customers. Get the latest results from Europe’s leading independent benchmark research and return to work with brand-new data insights to underpin your team’s success. No future talk, just hard facts.
Get ready for MoodleMoot Ukraine 2022 on November 4-5
The MoodleMoot Ukraine 2022 will take place on 4-5 November 2022 as a completely online event. The event will be held as a virtual event with a focus on theory and practice of using the Moodle learning management system.
The MoodleMoot Ukraine is organized regularly since the inception in 2013. This will mark the 10th year of the edtech conference in Ukraine. This year, the conference is being held remotely, in video conference mode. The conference will have the following topics for discussion:
Experience in implementing and using the Moodle system in distance education and network support of the educational process.
Development of the Moodle system. Creation and use of new Moodle modules, integration of Moodle with other software tools.
Organizational, pedagogical and methodical problems of using the system Moodle learning management.
The entry for the event will be available free of cost and can be booked through the official website of MoodleMoot Ukraine 2022 here.
You can also join the Moodle Ukraine community on the Moodle forums here.
Let students contribute to the Moodle Quiz using Student Quiz plugin
Moodle – as the name suggests is Modular in nature. The Moodle plugins are one of the main reason behind the popularity of Moodle as an LMS. With the help of the Moodle plugins you can easily extend the Moodle functionality in all areas. The Moodle plugins directory contains more than 2000+ free to use plugins. In this post, we will see how you can use the Student Quiz plugin in Moodle.
The student quiz plugin enables students to collaboratively create their own question pools in Moodle. The best part is that the created questions become part of the Moodle question bank and can be reused in other Moodle quizzes. This can be a great help for a single teacher who is struggling to create questions on his own.
The advantage of student quiz plugin is that it allows a better learning experience because knowledge is actively constructed by the learner, not just passively received from the environment. And even if an individual student contributes a few questions only, a larger cohort can easily build up an extensive question pool.
As a teacher you can approve/disapprove questions, or hide or delete questions including:
whether students’ names are displayed or kept anonymous.
whether questions are published right away or have to be approved first.
the number of points assigned to questions contributed and answers given.
what user roles to exclude from participation.
what questions types are allowed to be added to the pool.
whether students are enforced to rate questions.
whether students are enforced to comment questions.
You can also use the student quiz plugin as gamification technique with the ranking points earned based on the number of questions created. Using ranking points Student Quiz motivates students to deliver high quality questions and to improve their learning progress.
You can check out this quick video to get started with the Student quiz Moodle plugin:
Recently the plugin has been updated for Moodle 4.0 and is among the most popular Moodle plugins around. You should definitely give it a try to engage your students and get a question bank created easily for your Moodle course. You can download the latest version from the Moodle Plugins directory here.
What are the other good Moodle plugins which you should be using? Pl share with us in the comments section below.
Check out the marks per section in Quiz using this Moodle plugin
Moodle LMS is highly modular in nature which makes it widely popular among educators around the globe. Many big universities like Open University are using Moodle for their online learning portal. Moodle Plugins are the way of extending the features of core LMS. There are more than 2k plugins contributed by the Moodle community developers. In this article we will have a look at the Marks Per Section reporting plugin which can help you display students marks in a quiz on per section basis.
The Marks Per Section plugin is a Quiz report plugin showing marks per section. To get started with the Marks Per Section plugin, you need to download it from the Moodle Plugins directory. Since, it is Quiz Reports type Moodle plugin, you need to install it into your_moodle_site/mod/quiz/report/markspersection directory followed by completing the installation process through the Notifications page.
Quiz Reports Per Section
If you are not familiar with Moodle plugins installation, check out the complete Moodle Plugins Installation guide here. This report shows the marks for the sections of the quiz. Like other quiz reports, the teacher can filter attempts and users, change the number of attempts by page and order the table of results by any of its columns.
For this report to work, all you need to do is to add sections into your quiz and then access the report from from the Quiz settings menu.
Moodle – the world’s most popular learning management system in world, is highly flexible and modular in nature. Being modular is also one of the main reasons behind Moodle’s popularity across 300 Million users in 240+ countries. In this article, we will cover the Moodle Tiles Course Format plugin which displays course topics as “Tiles”.
The Tiles course format plugin is developed by David Watson and it is one of most actively maintained plugin for Moodle in recent years. It is also one of the most downloaded course formats Moodle plugin in last one year.
How to install Tiles Course format
To get started with the Tiles format plugin, you need to download it from the Moodle Plugins directory. Since, it is a Course format type Moodle plugin, you need to install it into your_moodle_site/course/formats directory followed by completing the installation process through the Notifications page.
The tiles format plugin can help you to display the course section into tiles rather than a list. When clicked, tile content is displayed under the tile with an animated transition. The layout adapts to different screen sizes and orientations.
Activities and resources may be shown in sub-tiles format, or in standard Moodle list format, depending on the course setting applied by the teacher. For each tile, the teacher can pick an icon from a predefined set, or upload a background photo.
Here are the key features of Tiles Format plugin:
Tiles are used to show course topics and activities
Animation is used to expand tiles to reveal content
Icons or photos on each tile increase visual appeal
Modal windows (animated pop ups) to show content
Colours for tiles are customisable
Theme compatibility is broad (Boost, Clean, Essential, Moove and Adaptable).
Easy to switch into Tiles from other formats (e.g. Topics, Grid) without changing course content
User friendly (e.g. tile icons are provided and don’t need to be uploaded)
Mobile responsive (adapts to different screen sizes and orientations)
Progress shown on tile with % in a circle, or as a fraction
Once installed, you can change the format for any existing course easily or choose the Tiles format for any new course. The settings page is pretty simple and self explanatory, which is pretty easy for anyone who is conversant with Moodle LMS. You can also choose any photo as the tile instead of the icon.
The plugin is very intuitive and can turn your Moodle course into an engaging course. You can also give it a try on your Moodle development site.
What are the other Moodle course formats which you are using? Do share with us in the comments section below.
Moodle Teachers - Create beautiful courses using Designer course format
Moodle – the best open source LMS in the world is known for its modular nature. You can simple expand the features by using Moodle Plugins which are already available or developing your own. Moodle allows you to expand the features in all areas including themes, activities, filters, course formats, enrollment and all. In this post, we will learn about the Designer Course format plugin which can help you with making eye-pleasing course formats.
Generally, Moodle courses are having only one layout per course. But Designer course format allows you to have a mix course format across sections. You can make any type of layout for each course section which can help your learners to progress across sections easily. You can choose to have collapsible sections, section overview, List layout, link layout and collapsible cards.
How to install Designer Course format plugin
To get started with the Designer course format plugin, you need to download it from the Moodle Plugins directory. Since, it is Course format type Moodle plugin, you need to install it into your_moodle_site/course/format directory followed by completing the installation process through the Notifications page. You can also follow this guide to learn how to install a Moodle plugin.
How do I setup the Designer Course format?
Once installed, Designer course format will be available for teachers to select from when setting up their course. You can visit the Course settings page to choose the Designer course format as below:
Designer Course format
Under the course type, you can choose Normal, Kanban Boards, Collapsible Sections and Flow which will give you various different layouts on the course page. You can choose to either show all sections on all one page or only one section per page.
The plugin is developed by Stefan Scholz with the goal to enable any teacher to create a course that looks and feels great. I am really impressed with this plugin, after testing it briefly on my Moodle dev site. I would suggest you to please test out this awesome course format plugin on your Moodle and you will also be impressed with its amazing course layout options.
What are the other popular course formats you are using for your Moodle learning environment? Please share with us in the comments section below.
Student Attendance is a part and parcel of every classroom. It is easier to take attendance in physical classroom but how you can take attendance in your online class in Moodle. In this article, we will learn about how you can take attendance and how students can see a summary of their attendance in the class.
Moodle LMS has a stable and popular plugin named – Attendance which allows you to take attendance in the Moodle course. You can install the Attendance activity plugin to your Moodle and after the administrator configures it, you can use it in your course as a teacher. Please read this guide to understand how to install a new Moodle plugin.
The attendance activity allows teachers to maintain a record of attendance, replacing or supplementing a paper-based attendance register. The teacher can track the attendance for each student and provide grades for the same.
As a teacher, you can mark the attendance status of a student as “Present”, “Absent”, “Late”, or “Excused”. These text strings are configurable and even additional strings can also be added. Adding the attendance activity in a Moodle course is a two step process – first, the activity is added and second the sessions needs to be set up for which attendance is to be tracked.
Taking student attendance in your online class in Moodle
An attendance activity can be easily added to your Moodle course like any other activity.
Turn the Editing Mode on.
Click “Add an activity or resource” button
Choose – Attendance.
Click Save Changes.
Adjusting the attendance descriptions
By default the Attendance activity will create a single status description with “Present”, “Absent”, “Late”, or “Excused” and points assigned for each of them. You can edit them by going to Attendance Activity > More > Status Set (click 1 in image below).
You can also add a completely new set of descriptors (click 2 in image below) with grade points, Available for students & Automatically set when not marked etc.
Attendance activity
Adding attendance session
After configuring the activity, its time to add sessions. The attendance activity supports single session or multiple sessions. In the multiple session, you can specify the date and time for your class along with the frequency and finish date.
Taking Attendance
So after all the configuration steps, we are ready to mark the students attendance. You can take attendance for a session by clicking on the little Play icon on the session rectangle’s right-hand side. You can take attendance for each student thereafter. In case you want to mark all students as present, just click the P column on top.
The plugin also comes with handy features like students self-recording attendance capability and QR based attendance.
What are the other most useful Moodle Plugins which you are using for online teaching? Do share with us in the comments section below.
What is Tract App? How you can use it for Project Based Learning
Tract is a new edtech platform which provides a safe platform dedicated to project based teaching and learning. To add fun, students will get coins as they learn and create content. The best part of Tract App is that it will help your learners to become lifelong learners. The lessons are created by the college and high school students to show their love for the subject. The teachers go to help students to become epic content creators by vetting, reviewing and curating to ensure its educational rigor.
So, lets take a deep dive and understand about the Tract App.
Tract is the latest entrant to the edtech sector but with a unique added value. The motive behind the Tract app is to turn the students into lifelong avid learners. They share their creativity with junior learners who can complete the lessons and corresponding activities, called missions, on their own.
The core idea behind Tract is for students to learn from other students. The subjects and concepts taught in Tract are chosen by students for students. So you will find lessons around Minecraft, Tiktok and even financial education.
Peer-to-peer learning is what sets Tract apart from other learning platforms. All Tract learning paths are delivered by High School and College-age kids who are enthusiastic about their subjects and eager to share their knowledge.
How to get started with Tract App?
You can signup for free of cost at https://tract.app/ using your Google, Microsoft or Clever account. Once you’ve created an account take some time to explore the paths and missions within Tract. You can start creating a new class or explore the library to check out the community created content.
Welcome screen Tract
In the library, you will get readymade content for your use on various topics like:
Tract App Library
Each of your classrooms has its own unique code for students to enter to join your classroom. You can also add the students through csv import. Then you can add assignments for your class from the content library.
Then within each classroom you can see the paths your students have chosen and the missions they have completed. You can also review the submissions students made to complete missions and moderate those submissions if necessary.
Students earn digital coins for completing each path. Learning Paths that have more missions earn more coins than those that have fewer missions. Students can redeem the earned coins for digital and physical prizes.
What are the best Tract features?
Project based learning – Learning paths put students in the creator’s seat from the start, allowing students to design content and challenges for others. Teachers who want to encourage inquiry, PBL, and student-led lessons will find Tract has all the bases covered.
Never stop learning attitude – The creative way motivated the students to earn digital and physical prizes for completing the lessons and their corresponding activities.
Use Genius Hour creatively – The tract app can make your students to use the Genius Hour, 20% time or Project Based Learning effectively and creatively.
How much does Tract Cost?
You can get started with Tract app for free of cost as a teacher. However, we were not able to understand about the paid pricing plans available and details.
