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Workshop Summaries - Monday, July 26, 1:00p - 4:00p

Workshop A: An Introduction to Moodle for Beginners. This workshop provides a basic introduction to Moodle. No prior experience with Moodle is expected. Participants will learn to create a Moodle course and add basic elements such as a syllabus, documents, and links to websites. Michelle Moore, Chief Learning Officer at Remote-Learner, will lead the workshop. Michelle has a Master's degree in instructional technology and taught secondary school for 10 years. She has trained thousands of teachers and business trainers how to use Moodle over the past 6 years. Michelle has been recognized each year since 2005 at NECC, the national K-12 conference put on by ISTE, as being among the "Best of The Best" Presenters. Workshop is limited to 25 participants. The workshop will be held in a computer lab - you do not need to supply your own computer.

Canceled    Workshop B: Moodle in Elementary Schools. The focus of this workshop will be the design structure and practical applications specific to using Moodle in an elementary setting. Participants will learn about the ways Moodle can be used for instruction and assessment using a variety of resources and activities geared specifically for the primary level. Intended outcomes include adding resources and activities (focus on creating a quiz, labels, links, online activity, and forum), integrating multimedia, and creating a learning guide/checklist for students. A structured lesson for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades will be provided, but feel free to bring your own lessons and ideas! This workshop will be led by Kenton Smith, Curriculum & Technology Integration, Westfield Washington Schools, Westfield, IN. Workshop is limted to 12 participants. The workshop will be held in a computer lab - you do not need to supply your own computer.

FULL   Workshop C: Using Moodle to Facilitate Your Face-to-Face High School Class. Engaging high school students can be difficult. Deb Antoine, Radio/TV Instructor at Capital Area Career Center in Springfield, Illinois and consultant for the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service at University of Illinois Springfield, uses Moodle to facilitate her face-to-face Radio/TV class. Facilitating with Moodle helps keep her students on-track and motivated. The features in Moodle coupled with Web 2.0 tools help make the course more engaging and interactive. This 2-3 hour workshop will give participants the opportunity to participate as a student in a Moodle course rich in resources and to experiment in a Moodle sandbox which they can access after the workshop. Workshop is limted to 12 participants. The workshop will be held in a computer lab - you do not need to supply your own computer.

FULL   Workshop D: Best Practices in Moodle Administration (IT focused). This workshop will provide a survey of best practices for Moodle technical administrators, ranging from performance tuning, monitoring, authentication, security, and many other subjects. Jonathan Moore, Vice President of Business Development at Remote-Learner, will draw from a collection of besdt practices derived from managing over 900 hosted clients, over 1,000,000 registered user accounts, and over 5 years of Moodle community development. Jonathan is also the co-author of Moodle Developer's Manual, from Packt Publishing. NOTE: This is a BYOC workshop - you must Bring Your Own Computer.

FULL    Workshop E: Hacking the Heck out of Moodle Without Going to Hell. Invariably Moodle schools encounter "corners" of Moodle they'd like "round off" or "sharpen". One very viable alternative to waiting for the change to be made by Moodle HQ is to methodically customize your own Moodle instance -- make it your own. This workshop will cover: a) Places other than moodle.org to look for ready-made customizations. b) Foundations of getting started with "reliable hacking". c) Moodle and third-party resources available for soon-to-be developers. d) Overview of the Moodle core structures. e) Good places to start customization, good places to avoid. f) Strategies for maintaining your customizations into subsequent versions. Bob Puffer, Academic Technology Specialist at Luther College, Decorah, IA, will lead the workshop. NOTE: This is a BYOC workshop - you must Bring Your Own Computer.