After the COVID-19 pandemic the whole scenarion for teaching has changed. Now, the teachers need to use more resources online like Presentations and make more interactive assessments.
It is the part and parcel of the Moodle teachers job but in this post, I will share details about one more free education resource – SlidesMania which will help you in making thrilling presentations.
You can use SlidesMania to create stunning presenations on different themes. Once you have created a presentation, you can use this guide to embed presentation files in Moodle Course.
Slidesmania offers Free creative PowerPoint templates and Google Slides themes which you can use to create stunning presentations. SlidesMania has been selected as one of the 2022 Best Digital tools for Teaching and Learning by the AASL.
The site hosts hundreds of interesting presentation templates on wide variety of topics. You can either download the MS PowerPoint templates or else use the Google Slides templated. All the designs are completly editable and customizable.
You will also find some useful tips to take the google slides and powerpoint presentations to next levelon SlidesMania.
What are the other popular tools, you are using to create presentations for your Moodle LMS? Do Share with us in the comments section below.
In another milestone, minor version of Moodle – the world’s most popular open source LMS is released today. The new version – Moodle 4.0.1 is available to download from Moodle.org.
The new point release contains minor fixes from Moodle 4.0 release. Here are the brief fixes:
MDL-74461 – Not always possible to easily navigate back to section from an activity page
MDL-74514 – BigbluebuttonBN is polling the BigblueButton server too often
MDL-74481 – LTI Advantage: Non-Editing Teacher has role Student
MDL-74478 – Awarded badge for activity completion, despite not receiving a passing grade
MDL-74450 – The course secondary navigation should be displayed in the site home settings page
MDL-74317 – Edit mode cannot be turned on/off when using other capabilities
MDL-74436 – Fatal error when importing “course” events from ics file
MDL-74427 – Coding error detected when deleting question category
The next major version 4.1 is scheduled to be released in November 2022. It will have major focus on improving the User Experience for Moodle LMS. There will be many new features like:
Improving the integration with MoodleNet
Investigating and commencing the project to improve messaging in Moodle (proposed integration with Matrix messaging)
MUA projects to improve the Database and Assignment activities
Mahara is the world’s most popular open source web eportfolio system. It is a stand-alone system that can be integrated into a wider virtual learning framework. It allows users to record and share evidence of lifelong learning.
The new version of Mahara i.e. 22.04 is released with many new features. Here are the major highlights:
The highlights of Mahara 22.04 version are:
Support for Elasticsearch 7
Check portfolios for similarities with Ouriginal in Moodle
Assign a new role: Institution support administrator
Move institution members more easily via SAML
Upload files via web services
Set up portfolio completion collection on the group level
Prevent changes to sign-off blocks in templates
Download SmartEvidence frameworks
Install and update languages
You can download the latest Mahara version from the official website here.
Using powerpoint slides in elearning course is almost a first requirement for all teachers. There are many tools in Moodle which can be used by the teachers to deliver similar information instead of using powerpoint files. However, since many teachers have slideshows ready, so in this post we will learn about using powerpoint files in Moodle.
There are many options to create slideshows in Moodle. Many plugin provide the similar options as mentioned below but we will be covering only the ways relevant to Moodle 4.0
Microsoft Powerpoint files & Google Slides
H5P Course Presentation Content Type
iContent plugin – It was a good plugin but it is not maintained actively in Moodle Plugins directory. So we will not be covering this.
Presentation Plugin – It was a good plugin but it is not maintained actively in Moodle Plugins directory. So we will not be covering this.
Today, we will see how to use the Microsoft Powerpoint files & Google Slides in Moodle course.
Using the Powerpoint in Moodle course comes with the usage required. If you just want the students to download the presentation from Moodle and go through at their own leisure, you can use file resource. So before proceeding further, let me ask you few questions:
Do you want to embed the slideshow in Moodle course?
Do you want to share the presentation with students so they can go through that on their own.
Can you export the slides into another format like PDF or even video?
Can’t you create the same content in Moodle Book resource or Moodle Lesson activity.
Embed Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation in Moodle course
Let me start with the example that you have a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, and you want to share it to the students to let them download. To get started:
Login to your Moodle course and turn on the editing mode.
Simply Drag and drop the PowerPoint file onto the course section, where you want to add. It will be added as a file resource
Whenever the student click on that file resource, it will be downloaded (depending on the their browser settings), to their device.
Done.
Now let’s take another example that you want to just show it in your course without directly downloading to the students’ devices.
Upload your PowerPoint pesentation to any slide share platform like Google Slides, SlideShare.net etc.
For SlideShare:
Scroll down and click the Share button and copy the embed code.
Login to your Moodle course and turn on the editing mode.
Embed it into Moodle course either using Label or Page Resource.
Use the HTML code button in the second row of Atto Editor to embed the code.
For Google Slides:
Click File > Publish to the web > Embed.
Choose Size and copy the embed code.
Login to your Moodle course and turn on the editing mode.
Embed it into Moodle course either using Label or Page Resource.
Use the HTML code button in the second row of Atto Editor to embed the code.
In case you are using Microsoft PowerPoint online through web browser. You can directly embed your presentation in your Moodle course easily. Here is a brief screencast showing how you can embed PowerPoint in your Moodle course:
Please follow these steps:
Login to your Microsoft Office 365 account through – https://www.office.com/?auth=1
Create your PowerPoint Pesentation or upload it if you have already created.
Once you open the presentation, just go to File >Share >Embed.
You will get the embed code from the popup.
Now, Go to your Moodle course and click on add an activity or Resource And then choose page resource.
Choose the HTML code in the editor toolbar and paste the embed code here.
Click Save Changes.
In the next part of this series, I will cover the H5P Course Presentation content type. Trust me, H5P is the most exciting way to create & reuse interactive content easily.
Educate Online – the US based startup has expanded into Indian education market. The US based startup offers high quality distance education to every child in the world. The goal of expanding into the Indian market is to provide online learning opportunities to the local community and share the local edTech market.
Indian EdTech market is one of the rapidly growing segment in the country which is estimated at $2.8 billionand is expected to reach $10.4 billion by 2025. Educate Online has hired a team of local experts led by CEO Amit Saneja.
Educate Online offers a student’s full journey from international high school to career building. The whole journey of High-school education, University admission and then career planning will be on offer. Alexander Zheltov, CEO and co-founder of Educate Online, mentions:
We are sure that the Indian market has enormous edTech potential. Indian schools taught 250 million students, so we have a huge and perspective market to work on! That’s why Educate Online wants to use all its experience from other markets and insights from Indian market research to empower Indians to get a world-class education and educate 1000 local students by the end of this year, and in 2023 increase this figure tenfold.
For more details about the programs offered by Educate Online, you can check out their website here.
LearnR is a brand new Moodle theme developed by Chris Kenniburg who is the developer of popular Fordson theme. LearnR is a Boost Child theme designed especially for your learners. It utilizes the new features coming in Moodle 4.0 to provide incredibly structured navigation and pathways to course materials.
LearnR theme by Chris Kenniburg, builds on the new layouts and user experiences introduced in Moodle 4.0. The theme is developed in continuation to Fordson, Evolve-D & Pioneer theme and is focused on a student going from “login to learning” quickly and easily
LearnR Theme Demo
The innovative features in LearnR theme are:
Consistency – LearnR pursues consistency by making all content full width with navigation that is predictable, simple, and structured for users.
Customized course header images which will provides visual cues for learners on which course they are in.
Ability to focus the learner with a single pathway to learning
Direct users on the homepage, dashboard, or my courses page with innovative “Icon navigation bar”
A latest course drop down menu automatically builds individual course menus for students based on the last 7 courses they visit.
An innovative “course section style chooser” allows the site admin to choose from pre-built section styles for course homepage
You can download the LearnR theme from Moodle themes database here. Kindly note that it is available only for Moodle 4.0 and not for lower versions. So please make sure to try if you are using Moodle 4.0 version.
Moodle Users Association is the non-profit organization which connects Moodle users across the globe. The MUA allows the members to push for new features in Moodle Core by voting for them.Every year the Moodle Users Association goes through two project development cycles. Based on the votes received by MUA members, the projects are then pushed into Moodle core.
Atto Accessibility, Moodle Question bank Improvements, Course Overview in Dashboard etc are few examples of projects contributed by Moodle Users Association. At present, the MUA is in the middle of Project Development Cycle: January – June 2022.
There are 10 projects which have been shortlisted for the Jan-June 2022 development cycle. The top voted projects are as below:
Rise Up, the Paris based employee learning platform solution, has raised €30 Million in a funding round from SaaS focused investment fund Connected Capital. With the latest investment capital, Rise Up plans to work towards European growth. The expansion plan includes expanding its team and product suite as well as localisation of its learning and development solutions for European markets.
Rise Up was founded in 2014 by Arnaud Blachon and Guillaume Blachon. It offers a personalized training experience to stimulate learning and enable your employees to take a leading role in their own development. The AI driven solution offers a personalized learning approach to each individual with features such as intuitive blended learning environment, motivational chatbot and a Microsoft Teams integration. The Rise Up algorithm makes it possible to suggest training and review scenarios and on time for employees.
Speaking about the investment, Arnaud Blachon, Co-founder and CEO of Rise Up said:
“As we continue to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, hybrid learning is fundamental. Rise Up offers an inclusive learning platform that transforms this crucial business challenge into an opportunity for our customers. Our partnership with Connected Capital, with its focus on B2B SaaS, and their experience with HR tech companies in particular, will allow us to further strengthen our position in local European markets.”
We are impressed with its efficient growth over the last years – Connected Capital
The client base of Rise Up is spread across 400 customers and million active learners. Rise Up mission is to develop a solution capable of stimulating learning through an ultra-personalized training experience by capitalizing on AI and neuroscience. Investment Manager of Connected Capital, Sander Pennings, added:
“Rise Up’s rich product suite combining LMS, LXP and content authoring is already adding crucial value to companies ranging from SMEs to large corporations such as Axa, Schneider Electric and Domino’s. We are impressed with its efficient growth over the last years in its current markets and are excited to contribute to the company’s accelerated international expansion.”
Moodle Partner network is extended in Guatemala with the addition of new partner – Corporate Learning. In a recent news, Moodle HQ team reported the addition of Corporate Learning as the new partner. They have a strong clientele in Central America and has hosted MoodleMoot Guatemala for four years.
Corporate Learning have expertise which delivers custom development of Moodle, installation and configuration services on clients’ servers, Moodle cloud services and training programs. They have delivered solutions which helped their customers to focus on knowledge management and digital transformation.
After getting appointed as the official Moodle Partner in Guatemala, Álvaro Navarro, General Manager of Corporate Learning, said:
“As a certified Moodle Partner, we look forward to the opportunity this provides us to expand our services across sectors for the benefit of students in both traditional education and corporate or workplace settings.
We have been lucky to have a relationship with Moodle for several years. To formalise our relationship by becoming a Moodle Certified Partner reinforces our commitment to the Moodle community. Plus, the support and certification of Moodle guarantee the quality of our services.”
Moodle is the world’s most popular Open Source Learning Management System. It can be used to the learning requirements of all sectors from education institutions, corporate etc. It can be customized to adapt to all requirements for specific needs.
Recently, one of the Moodle administrator wanted to continue using the existing instance of an Activity plugin. However he want to remove any future additions of activity in the Moodle courses. Tim Hunt – the lead for Moodle’s Quiz module, came back with a simple & effective solution.
According toe the solution Tim shared, the future addition of any activity in the course can be disabled simple by removing the mod/add new instance capability from all roles. That will make sure that the teachers are not able to add new activity in their courses while keep the previous instances in place.
Let’s check the solution in details in below steps:
Navigate to Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Define Roles
Click the Cog wheel icon next to the teacher role.
On bottom of the page, you will see a search box, filter the plugin capability. Like in the below example, I am disabling the Mod/Simple lessons capability from teacher role.
Click Save Changes.
You need to repeat the same for all Roles to override the default permissions. What are the other helpful tips you have received on Moodle Forums. Please share with us in the comments section below.
