Go to your audience

Moodle database, forum, and glossary activity entries can be exported to an RSS feed which Twitterfeed can use to to push content to social media services.

Schools often have difficulty with the notion of changing traditional practices. For example, extraordinary outreach might not be a top priority when your audience is required to report to you on a regular basis. With the advent of online learning, many teachers may never see their students in a physical environment. Such interaction can be rare even in a blended learning model, and some may question the overall quality of physical interaction in a traditional classroom given the impact of rising poverty, such as decreased student attendance and disengagement. [1]

Mobile smart phones with Internet access are increasingly available to many students and their families. In poor communities, studies indicate that a smart phone may be the main point of online access for families. [2] “Overall, young adults are leading the growth in smartphone ownership in the U.S., with 74 percent of 25-34 year olds now owning smartphones, up from 59 percent in July 2011. Interestingly, teenagers between 13 and 17 years old demonstrated the most dramatic increases in smartphone adoption, with the majority of American teens (58%) owning a smartphone, compared to roughly a third (36%) of teens saying they owned a smartphone just a year ago.” [3]

As consumers increasingly rely on smartphones as a major source of Internet access, studies shows that social media represents the largest share of time spent with these devices. “Social sites and activities account for almost one-third (31%) of smartphone online usage – double the proportion for email at just 16%.” [3] Thus, a teacher who pushes content automatically from their Moodle course databases, forums, and glossaries to a social media service,  may have a positive impact on course participation and activity.

Prerequisites: RSS in Moodle and Twitterfeed account

Any database, forum, or glossary in a Moodle course can automatically generate an RSS feed. To activate RSS feeds in Moodle, there are a few settings that must be enabled by the site administrator. Once RSS feeds are made available by the site administrator, the teacher of any Moodle course may activate RSS feeds for use in any database,  forum, or glossary activity. The RSS feed will update every time an entry, post, or reply is added by anyone enrolled in the Moodle course. Upon activation, each activity will generate its own URL for the RSS feed which can be used to configure Twitterfeed to automatically post the contents of the RSS feed to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or App.net.

If you already have a personal or professional social media account, consider creating a new one for exclusive use with your Moodle course(s). As of this writing, many social media services require a unique email address for each account. If needed, simply use a free web-based email service such as Gmail to create the required email address, and use it to confirm your new social media account.

Twitterfeed is a powerful aggregator service that allows an RSS feed to be published to any supported social media service. As of this writing, Twitterfeed supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and App.net. Create a Twitterfeed account to aggregate your RSS feeds and automatically post their contents to any supported social media services.

Making the connection

With RSS feeds enabled in any database, forum, or glossary in your Moodle course(s), select and copy any RSS feed URL. Login to your Twitterfeed account and click on the Create New Feed button. Create a Feed Name and then paste the RSS Feed URL generated by Moodle. The Advanced Setting features allow you to determine how often the RSS feed is checked, the number of articles to post, as well as the format of the post. Please note that if student anonymity is a concern, you can configure the Post Setting to include title only so that student names are not published to social media.Click the Continue to Step 2 button to select the social media service where you want to publish your content. If you have created a specific account for use with your course, provide the required credentials. Once you are done, click the Create Service button to finish.

Twitter widget formatted inside a table located in the Moodle course summary.

Leeds City College has published a short tutorial as a Moodle course by Sukhwant Singh Lota that provides step-by-step directions and screen shots for anyone interested in ‘Pushing Moodle Content to Twitter.’

To promote your social media account so students may easily follow, consider using a widget to display updates from your social media account and placing it prominently inside your Moodle course. For example, a Twitter widget can be customized to match your course theme. The customized Twitter widget can then be placed in an HTML block or the General section summary in your Moodle course.

Sources 

[1] Marcus, Jon. “The Poverty Gap: Schools Grapple with a Growing Population of Poor Children.” Harvard Education Letter. Harvard University Graduate School of Education, July-Aug. 2012. Web. 19 Feb. 2013. <http://www.hepg.org/hel/article/539>.

[2] Brenner, Joanna. “Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.” Pew Internet: Mobile. Pew Research Center, 31 Jan. 2013. Web. 19 Feb. 2013. <http://pewinternet.org/Commentary/2012/February/Pew-Internet-Mobile.aspx>.

[3] ”Young Adults and Teens Lead Growth Among Smartphone Owners.” NielsenWire. The Nielsen Company, 10 Sept. 2012. Web. 19 Feb. 2013. <http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/young-adults-and-teens-lead-growth-among-smartphone-owners/>.

As a Moodle Partner, we have fielded hundreds of inquiries regarding the capabilities of many different third-party modules. On behalf of our Moodle hosting clients, we have engaged in testing and found a number of third-party modules to be very useful, including:

• Book activity: Create multi-page resources with a book-like format. Currently under development for use with Moodle 2.0.
• Certificate activity: Provide students with a PDF certificate upon meeting specified course criteria. Currently under development for use with Moodle 2.0.
• Configurable Reports block: Examine custom course and user reports and custom MySQL queries.
• Dimdim Web Meeting activity: Integrate Dimdim webinar capabilities which allow opportunities for blended learning within a Moodle course.
• Feedback activity: Survey your students with custom questions and scales which is now a part of the standard distribution in Moodle 2.0!
• Login & Logout block: Promote social networking features in Moodle by providing users with a time-based greeting, user profile image, last login data and profile update link.
• Menu block: Elimates the endless scrolling required by lengthy Moodle courses. Center section summaries are used to create navigation buttons that can collapse all other center sections. Moodle 2.0 includes a new Navigation block with similar features.
• MrCUTE Jr. File Repository block: A simple file repository that allows file sharing among courses. Moodle 2.0 contains a file repository API to better facilitate repository integration.
• Register activity: Track and calculate time spent by a user working on a Moodle course.
• Sidebar block: Allows activities and resources within multiple instances of a block.
• User Administration block: Provides numerous tools to ease user administration tasks in Moodle.

Moodle 2.0 has incorporated the Feedback activity and also provides a variety of other new features and tools such as the Navigation block. However, existing third-party modules developed for use with Moodle 1.x will no longer work with Moodle 2.0. In time, patrons and developers may release updated modules designed to work with Moodle 2.0, thereby continuing the tradition of third-party development which has so dynamically enhanced the efforts of the Moodle Community.

ClassroomRevolution Helps Albany Analytical Stay Alive!
With superior Moodle hosting and support Albany Analytical is able to transform its business to meet new challenges.

In 2005 Albany Analytical was at a crucial point in its history. For over a decade, this niche consulting firm had flourished in the growing US economy, providing consulting and training in Six Sigma quality methods to the world’s largest corporations. But times were changing; travel was becoming more difficult and companies were beginning to cut back on both travel and training expenses. Traditional face to face training workshops were being trimmed out of most budgets. Penny Mondani, the owner and principal consultant of Albany Analytical, was intrigued by the opportunities of the Internet and believed strongly that e-Learning was destined to become an integral part of future corporate training initiatives.

After a frustrating and expensive eight months, Albany Analytical found a Moodle Partner, ClassroomRevolution who rescued its Moodle installation, BeeLearn.com. Just four months later Albany Analytical successfully launched BeeLearn.com in June 2006 with a full range of courses in business process improvement techniques. Within two years the Six Sigma business had dwindled, but because Albany Analytical received so many inquiries regarding the use of Moodle features and the design of BeeLearn.com they were able to successfully transform the business and began offering Moodle content development services to clients of all sizes and industries.

Ms. Mondani began her quest for software and methods to convert her training materials – and her “teacher’s voice” – to an online format. She had written detailed instructor notes before and had created self-paced training manuals for clients, but she wasn’t sure how to create an online course that would capture her anecdotes and jokes or be as engaging as her face to face workshops had always been.

Her online searches brought her to a few names, all with fantastic claims. She knew what was critical to the success of adult learning, but she didn’t know the first thing about online learning. One of the companies she contacted had nothing to demonstrate, and as she quickly learned, their “enterprise” software was completely customized; they wouldn’t even give her a quote. As the adage goes, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it”.

Finally, after a few such inquiries, she thought she had found the pot of gold in a small software company offering a solution that was self-contained – “in a box” – and was “just $5000”. Five months passed and it was back to square one; this “easy solution” did nothing that it was supposed to do and was miserably dysfunctional.

Albany Analytical had gone online the previous year and that site’s web designer’s search of SourceForge.net yielded Moodle as a highly-praised LMS open source application. One of Albany Analytical’s Six Sigma clients, who had just finished her master’s thesis on e-Learning, sent a study from Humboldt State University showing that Moodle held its own against the “big guys”. The right solution had been discovered in Moodle!

The web designer installed Moodle on a new site, BeeLearn.com and agreed to help Ms. Mondani “figure it out”. He suggested they create a third website to serve as a “catalog” of Moodle courses, with listings and full descriptions. This site, built in a popular open source content management (CMS) application was quirky to use, costing several hundred dollars for the web designer to install, maintain, and host.

Ms. Mondani spent the next several weeks attempting to create courses on BeeLearn.com. The pages loaded so slowly that she timed out most of the time. And this was without any student traffic! Features didn’t work as promised and links broke every day. It became apparent that the web designer could not “figure out” Moodle and he was more of a hindrance than a help. He continued to bill her for his time and his hosting fees despite the lack of performance of the site.

By February 2006, Ms. Mondani had spent eight months and over $7000 on software and labor. She had an entire binder of all the passwords, login ids, and special instructions for the components of the three websites: News, Forums, Shopping Cart, CMS, course content, etc. She had learned a lot, but had nothing to show for any of the time or money.

Things were looking bleak.

It was then that she found a Moodle Partner, ClassroomRevolution, who rescued BeeLearn.com, and through their support plan, taught her to use Moodle. Albany Analytical successfully launched BeeLearn.com in June 2006 with a full range of courses in business process improvement techniques. It had taken a frustrating eight months to go nowhere; it took only four months to go from nothing to a full-service Moodle site – once the right software, the right host, and the right people were involved.

A few months after the new, functional BeeLearn.com was launched, Albany Analytical converted the original business website – AlbanyAnalytical.com to a Moodle installation and closed out the third site. With Moodle, there was no need for a “catalog site” – features such as news, forums, content management, and PayPal enrollments – were easily accessible because they were integral to Moodle. All of that functionality was already built into Moodle, but the original web designer didn’t know that. A lot of money was spent on him, setting up sites that weren’t needed and/or that didn’t function properly and attempting to integrate shopping carts, billing software, content management, news, and forums with each other. The content management (CMS) in Moodle was so much easier to use than the CMS site and it was free with the Moodle installation!

Over the next two years, Albany Analytical received many inquiries regarding the use of Moodle features and the design of BeeLearn.com. Other Moodle users wanted to have their sites look as “clean and crisp” with “cool stuff” like BeeLearn.com! Because of increasing interest in training design and the creative use of Moodle features, Albany Analytical began offering Moodle content development services to clients of all sizes in all fields in 2008.

With CR’s hosting support, technical expertise, and Moodle know-how, Albany Analytical is able to offer even the smallest clients superior Moodle services. Through a small network of highly skilled and dedicated professionals, Albany Analytical offers copy writing, editing, research, graphics, test design, and superior course creation services to ensure that clients’ training objectives are met. Our clients reap the benefits of Ms. Mondani’s 25 years as a professional trainer, her course design expertise, and her new found passion for Moodle.

To learn more about Albany Analytical’s Moodle content creation services, please visit Albany Analytical for plans, pricing, and success stories. To view courses demonstrating just some of the features and capabilities, check out Pluto, Fort Swampy, and Sunny Hospital at BeeLearn.com!

Providing the highest quality Moodle services, including fully managed Moodle hosting, is our first priority as we have demonstrated time and again with our diverse base of Moodle hosting, Moodle training, and Moodle support contract clients.

We provide Moodle hosting services on our exclusive dedicated servers that have been optimally tuned to ensure that Moodle hosting clients can benefit from a first-rate experience whenever they use Moodle.

We specialize in fulfilling the needs of K-12 and post-secondary educational institutions, government agencies, professional organizations and corporations interested in leveraging the utility of Web 2.0 technologies such as Moodle to serve their unique needs. We design, implement and customize Web-based technologies that promote communication and learning opportunities. In addition to our Moodle hosting services, we offer several different on-site and online Moodle training solutions to ensure the effective use of these technologies.

Moodle Partner

Our membership in the Moodle Partners program provides us with direct access to Moodle founder and lead developer Martin Dougiamas, as well as the other core developers of Moodle. Such access has helped us develop valuable Moodle experience over the past five years.

Our involvement in Moodle Partners program also guarantees the continued development of Moodle because 10% of all of our Moodle sales are sent back to the Moodle Trust. These funds are then used to maintain the current Moodle code and hire developers who work on refining existing Moodle features or introducing entirely new ones.

ClassroomRevolution, LLC is a fully registered and insured limited liability corporation (LLC) located near Syracuse, New York, in the United States.

ClassroomRevolution is the vision of company founders Thomas Caswell and Jeffery Watkins. Utilizing our experience as award-winning, certified classroom teachers and technology coordinators, we have made it our mission to provide all of our clients with these high-quality services in order to expand the effective implementation and use of Web-based learning and communication technologies.

Company Timeline

• 1996: Caswell publishes educational technology article for the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)
• 2000: Caswell and colleagues from Walden University present at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Atlanta, Georgia
• 2000: Caswell recruited to coordinate educational technology for secondary schools in the Oswego City School District in New York
• 2000: Watkins named Technology Chair for the New York State Council for the Social Studies.
• 2000-2003: Watkins named technology director for New York State Council for the Social Studies Annual Convention
• 2001: ClassroomRevolution first formed and offers educational technology consulting and training services
• 2001-2003: Caswell and Watkins develop RegentsPrep.org, a free, interactive online resource for high school students taking the high-stakes Regents Examinations in New York State
• 2003: ClassroomRevolution gains an Internet presence and evolves into a partnership as a result of successful collaboration and mutual interest in the educational benefits of open-source technologies
• 2004: ClassroomRevolution provides web hosting and open-source theme design for international award-winning student web design submission for a competition sponsored by the U.S. State Department. Participating students earn $10,000 in scholarships and a trip to Washington, D.C. to collect their honors
• 2004: ClassroomRevolution joins the Moodle Partners program as an official service provider in the United States
• 2005: ClassroomRevolution delivers Moodle training and informational sessions at annual conference organized by New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education (NYSCATE) in Albany, New York
]]> http://classroomrevolution.com/moodlerevolution/feed/ 0 http://classroomrevolution.com/moodle19released/ http://classroomrevolution.com/moodle19released/#comments Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:53:53 +0000 admin http://beta.classroomrevolution.com/?p=60

We are pleased to announce that our contributions to the Moodle Trust have once again culminated in the successful development of the latest feature-packed release of Moodle, now at version 1.9.

As always, our dedicated servers are optimally configured so that we can continue to provide reliable Moodle hosting services for the latest release of Moodle. If you have any questions, please contact us for more information.

]]> http://classroomrevolution.com/moodle19released/feed/ 0 http://classroomrevolution.com/openmoodledocumentation/ http://classroomrevolution.com/openmoodledocumentation/#comments Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:49:44 +0000 admin http://beta.classroomrevolution.com/?p=58

The effort to provide effective documentation for Moodle began a few years ago with the introduction of a community wiki at MoodleDocs. With the rapid release of new features and refined interfaces in Moodle, this community wiki has earned accolades and praise for the wealth of information shared there. In fact, recent releases of Moodle have contained a context-specific MoodleDocs link at the bottom of any page with configurable variables, resulting in a dramatic increase in the usability of Moodle.

New Moodle documentation resources have also emerged, including MoodleTutorials.org. These efforts exemplify bold new innovative resources that can provide video tutorials for Moodle experts, as well as advice for those just beginning to use Moodle. The sample at right is a streaming Moodle overview video that is a little over 2 minutes long.

ClassroomRevolution.com, LLC continues to support the open Moodle documentation process by submitting and editing MoodleDocs articles and MoodleTutorials videos on a regular basis. For those seeking professional services, we also offer Moodle training and Moodle support services as an authorized U.S. Moodle Partner.

]]> http://classroomrevolution.com/openmoodledocumentation/feed/ 0 http://classroomrevolution.com/comparemoodlehosts/ http://classroomrevolution.com/comparemoodlehosts/#comments Sun, 02 Aug 2009 22:54:03 +0000 admin http://beta.classroomrevolution.com/?p=29

We encourage all prospective clients to compare hosting policies and discover how our expertise can provide peace of mind due to our proven reliability and value. Because of our committment to providing high-quality hosting services, we will never oversell our hosting accounts. We have been contracted to rescue a number of Moodle sites which have been installed on discount hosting services. As the number of users attempting to access resources rises, the Moodle site slowly become unusable. This experience has taught many organizations to be wary of such discount hosting solutions.

Moodle sites that load very slowly, or that time out, have often been loaded onto discounted hosting accounts on servers with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other accounts. Moodle is dynamic software that can require an extensive amount of server resources to run properly, and simply cannot perform adequately if it is forced to share resources with too many accounts hosted on the same server.

Technical Support

As modern consumers, nearly everyone has experienced both superior and inferior technical support. Unfortunately, not all technical support policies are created equally, often offering few actual technical services without purchasing an expensive support plan. All of our Moodle hosting clients automatically receive the following technical support services at no extra cost:

• 24/7 technical support for all Moodle software errors & server performance issues, including unlimited named technical support accounts.
• Installation and customization of standard Moodle, including: image resizing, spell-check, and 3-5 third-party blocks, modules, or other modifications.
• Moodle upgrades for all security-related concerns and any major (e.g., 1.8 to 1.9) or minor point releases (e.g., 1.6.1 to 1.6.2).

These basic technical support services are provided to our Moodle hosting clients free of charge in order to maintain an optimal Moodle experience. Moodle hosting clients with more advanced needs are also able to purchase our flexible and cost-effective Moodle support services.

Bait and switch

Some Moodle hosts also offer entry-level shared hosting accounts that provide attractive pricing but are often paired with inadequate storage or bandwidth capacities. For example, if a hosting account allows up to 500 users, but only provides 500 MB of storage, is it reasonable to expect that each user will only need 1 MB to upload assignments and attachments? Of course, as soon as these limits are breached, these companies can then offer far more expensive hosting accounts in a classic move that some have labeled as “bait and switch” or “up-selling.” We are simply content to offer a variety of hosting options that can meet any organization’s needs. If upgraded capacities are ever legitimately required, we will pro-rate any usage that has already occurred and apply the remaining funds offset the account upgrade.

Better hosting?

We offer a number of superior features with our hosting accounts. Regardless of the account, we allow an unlimited number of Moodle courses with any of our shared or dedicated Moodle hosting accounts. Even our CRTeacher.com shared Moodle site provides up to five course shells for each site subscriber. All of our hosting clients can choose to use any of our available custom Moodle themes. CRTeacher.com subscribers may choose among many of our themes for each of their course shell accounts. CR-5.0 annual Moodle hosting accounts allow a client to choose a custom Moodle theme and provide logos or images which we place in the theme’s header for a branded effect. Finally, any annual hosting account at the CR-10.0 level or higher, includes the design and creation of a custom Moodle theme based on client specifications for a completely branded solution.

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