BPS Website

The two schools in which I am employed, Buckingham Primary School and The Royal Latin School, have both been using Moodle as the main school website for a couple of years now.  Initially, at the Royal Latin School, we were tasked with creating a site that would allow teachers to update it with the latest news and information.  At this point, the school had a separate website and a Moodle based VLE.  After exploring a range of Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Joomla and Drupal, we decided to stick with Moodle and attempt to structure it to meet the needs of a website and a VLE.  After all, why have two separate systems, with two sets of logins and two times the administration, when one could do the trick?

RLS Moodle website

The ‘technical’ aspect of setting up Moodle to be the school website was straightforward; simply redirecting traffic heading to our school address to our Moodle.  Following this, the biggest challenges were firstly to create or adapt a theme that not only looked professional, but also included ‘website style’ navigation, and secondly, for Moodle to host the traditional website content, such as the prospectus, side by side with online learning materials.

The first of these challenges was the most difficult.  Creating a theme from scratch was time consuming, and at times very frustrating.  Just when we thought we’d got it right in Firefox, a test in Internet Explorer would prove we hadn’t!  Much patience, and understanding of CSS/HTML and PHP is desirable if you are considering attempting this from scratch!  We originally wrote a theme pretty much from scratch, with the theme based on our existing website.  This did help the transition for the user base from the old to the new sites.  Since then, we have changed themes a couple of time, and we now adapt themes from elsewhere, mostly from New School Learning, available for a very reasonable price!   Another great source of inspiration is the Moodle.org themes database.   Important aspects of the themes have been the navigation; we have explored a wide range of ‘drop down menus’; accessibility has been a concern – we’ve tried Java based navigation, but found it didn’t work on the majority of phones.   We now have a drop down menu from CSS Play installed, which is generally well received.  Changing the navigation involves editing the theme, and a knowledge of scripting webpages is needed.

Installation of the finished theme involves FTP accessing the Moodle website and uploading the theme to the themes directory.  However, even a nicely themed Moodle is unlikely to look as appealing as some of the stunning bespoke websites that many schools employ.  Setting up the theme is not something that the average teacher is going to do (without tears, anyway); it needs somebody with web publishing experience, or somebody who is brave enough to learn.  Support isn’t always readily available for this sort of thing, and much time could be sent in trawling forums for solutions.

Buckingham Primary School soon followed suite in using Moodle as the main website; this was instigated in the main by requests from parents of children at both The Royal Latin School and BPS; they wanted to see the latest news updated on the front page regularly, and Moodle does allow this with its ‘Front page news’ forum.   Another nice feature at BPS is the letters’ page.   A letters’ page is easily updated by the office staff.  This is based on forums with RSS feeds, so parents can subscribe by email very easily with a bit of help from Feedburner.  Both sites also make use of Moodle’s very neat calendar.   The calendar is attractive, and staff/student dates can be separated.  We’re now looking at alternatives that offer a bit more flexibility, but Moodle’s calendar has certainly served both schools quite well.

Our vision of having everyone able to update the website/VLE has been partly met.  It has been good for a number of teachers to share front page news.   At the RLS subject leaders update curriculum overviews regularly too, and at BPS teachers maintain year group pages.   The problem with this approach is that even when using Moodle (or any CMS), users do need a basic understanding of webpages and images.  On a number of occasions, I’ve had to compress 6mb+ images that staff have put on the front page news, not realising the impact of what they’ve done!  The number of staff that are keen to copy and paste from Word is high, and training is needed in alternatives.

Separating Moodle into private and public areas is relatively simple; public areas are mostly based around ‘courses’ with guest access allowed.  We’ve update the themes to mask the course title bit, and to hide the numbering to make the courses look less ‘Moodly’ and more website like.

Image slideshows are very popular on websites, and integrating one into Moodle can be a bit of a trial.  The main problem that I’ve found is that image slideshows tend to work best when of a fixed width; Moodle themes, however, are mostly fluid width.  This means that if you view your Moodle based website on a wide screen monitor, you can end up with a very odd looking site with an image slideshow in a sea of white background!  One way around this is to make the moodle theme fixed width, but this presents a whole host of new issues that can soak up hours in trying to fix.  The RLS and BPS sites are both fixed width, and both have Flash slideshows on the front page.

In Buckinghamshire, almost all schools have a Moodle VLE, and it has been interesting to see some schools where a thriving online VLE community is in place and the main school website has subsequently become relatively moribund.  I do sometimes wonder why such schools still bother with the website.

I suppose at the end of the day, whatever your choice of website/vle combination – the site is only every as good as the content.  If your school needs an incredibly well designed, stunningly attractive ‘showcase’ site to attract lots of new students, perhaps Moodle isn’t the answer.  If, however, you want your site to be a central part of the school community, with contributions from students, teachers, and parents then Moodle could be then answer.

Another factor to consider if you are thinking of using Moodle as a main school website is that Moodle 2.0 is just around the corner, and the current Moodle themes are not compatible.  If you create a new theme now, you’re going to have some work to do very soon when you upgrade in making it Moodle 2.0 compatible.   Even if you’re not going to upgrade, the likelihood is that you are going to want to update the theme at some point, with new navigation links or slightly different images; if you are in a primary school with very little technical support, and you don’t have anyone on the staff who would feel comfortable with making these sort of changes, then perhaps a more straightforward option is what you need.

As ever: your comments and thoughts welcomed!

Blogging and MyZone

Moodle has an interesting, and little used by many institutions, blogging facility.  Although it is very limited in comparison to, for example, WordPress, it does have its uses, and I have seen learners in both primary and secondary schools take good advantage of it.

At Buckingham Primary school, we use the moodle blog as a basic introduction to blogging.  Writing has been a focus for the whole school for the last couple of years, and the initial idea behind using blogging was to inspire reluctant writers, particularly boys, to write more frequently.  Also, in pupil surveys (Moodle surveys, of course!) , pupils had indicated that they would like the opportunity to write about subjects of their choice more frequently, and to have a wider audience for their work.  Moodle’s blog facilitates these requests quite nicely!

Again, at Buckingham Primary School we have a prominent link on our VLE to the ‘My Moodle’ page (yourmoodleURL/my), and we call it ‘My Zone’.   ‘My Zone’ is configured so that Moodle’s blog menu, and blog tags, appear for every user on this page.   Although not quite i-Google, it is still quite a neat ‘home page’ for pupils.

The first steps with primary pupils and blogging is, of course, to consider blog safety.  We have setup a blogging Moodle course and it is the first thing that we introduce to pupils before entering the world of blogging.   I’ve backed up the course and made it available from this post.

Link to Moodle blogging course

Blogging course

What has actually transpired over the last few years with blogging with Moodle at Buckingham Primary School is that a core selection of pupils have regularly blogged about subjects that interest them.  New friendships, often between pupils from different year groups, have been established electronically.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t had the wide scale impact on writing that we hoped, but it has allowed pupils with an interest to explore new ways of communicating.  Use of the blog has also peaked around key points in the school year.  For example: we run a ‘Baftas’ moving making competition every World Book Day, and we encourage pupils to blog about their movie making experiences and thoughts; this is a busy time for the blog!

At The Royal Latin School, older pupils are using the blog in a very different way.   Currently, pupils don’t have access to an online portfolio or an online file storage area.  There is also currently no access for students to their school user area from home.  Students who have forgotten their memory sticks are in a bit of trouble if they want to access their work.    Many students ‘send an email to themselves’, but this has the problem of filling small mailboxes very quickly.  The solution that I encourage many students to use is to ‘blog’ work home.  Adding a blog post and attaching a file is very easy for students; the only thing I have to remind them is to make sure that they set the post so that only they can view it, as opposed to ‘The Whole World’!    This temporary measure works well for many students, and it is also a good backup, and it suffices until we get a proper online portfolio setup.

Art Gallery screen shot

Following requests for support from several primary school teachers, I have put together a simple Moodle course that can be used as an online art gallery.  The course consists of forums for each year group, allowing pupils to post to their hearts’ content!  Each year group also has a slideshow already set up, hopefully making it easy for teachers to add photographs or scans of pupils’ work to the files area and subsequently to the slideshow.

This course is intended as  a ‘whole school’ course, capable of running alongside the school’s art curriculum.   I believe that one of the key motivational reasons for using a VLE/learning platform in primary schools is the audience that the VLE generates.   With this course, pupils get a chance to post their work for other pupils to view.  Establishing the ground rules of forum posting is very important with this kind of course.  We encourage children to be critical friends – posting positive praise.  If a criticism is to be made, it can only be added after two positives!

Three years ago, I put together a very similar course entitled ‘Poetry Page’, simply giving pupils an area to post their poetry.  It is still in active use today, despite not being directly used by teachers.  Many pupils love to share their work, be it poetry, stories, artwork, or music.  Many pupils aren’t confident enough to share but can learn so much from the efforts of other students.

Feel free to download the backup of the course.  Any ideas for improvements – please let me know!

Link to a backup of the Art Gallery course

http://voicethread.com

I’m now currently building a school tour using Voicethread, including inviting students from across the school to comment on videos and photos.  When finished, I will export a ‘finished’ version and have it on the front page of the school site!

Currently, I have subscribed to the ‘Class pack’, giving us one hundred accounts to use at The Royal Latin School.  I have sent an email to all members of the school community, inviting them to take part in adding a voice to the tour.  A small group of students have been wandering around school, filming different areas of interest using Creative Vado digital video cameras.  The clips have been added to our video Voicethread, with a view to all of the people who have applied for an account adding comments.  We also have a photos only based tour for students to comment upon.

Students can add text comments, record comments using a microphone, or they can use a webcam to record live footage.  Whilst recording, users can doodle on the screen, pointing out key features etc.  The response so far from students has been very positive, although most users have elected to post text comments rather than audio or video.

The tours will be used as part of our Year 7 induction process, hopefully giving new students a good idea of what school is like before they have even visited!  We have set up a Moodle induction course for the new year 7s, and Voicethread embeds nicely into a course.  We have had to adjust our filtering settings to get it running in school though.  Another slight problem is that students have been a little bit sloppy on the spelling and capital letters front; as the tour is a showcase for the school, it is important that students check their work, but this is easier said than done, as most are posting from home.

Voicethread can be used for free, although we have elected to subscribe so that we can make sure that our area is fully protected and only our students can post comments.

For the future, I would very much like to share the use of Voicethread across KS1, 2 and 3; it has so much potential for collaborative learning.

At Buckingham Primary School, every child is given the chance to contribute to the school council via forums, polls and questionnaires.  Additionally, the council meets formally to decide the agenda for the online council.  However, the inspection team were concerned about the lack of any formal election of school council members - so much for ‘Every child matters’!  Why couldn’t the team celebrate the fact that every child has a voice?

The inspection at the Royal Latin School was a pilot for the new inspection regime; I anticipated that the team would, therefore, be very keen to find out how the online provision has impacted upon learning.   The lead inspector did come along to our ‘Oscars’ evening and an inspector visited one of my lessons, during which pupils were creating movies using Flash.  Was this celebrated (or even mentioned) in the final report?  Not at all.

At both schools, pupils from across the school use the VLE to supplement and enhance their learning.  Pupils collaborate in forums, teachers prepare online quizzes, and the VLE is used to generate an audience for pupils writing, artwork, movies, music and much more.  The impact on the school community is considerable.  Were Ofsted interested?  Barely.

Personally, I don’t think that schools will invest precious time and increasingly precious money on their online provision until there is a section of the SEF specifically looking at this area.  If this was to happen I am sure that currently reticent schools would have to improve their provision, ending with a more enriched curriculum for all!

Hot Potatoes

I’ve just got back from a training session with a group of teachers who, generally, have been ‘reluctant’  Moodle users.  Despite being enthusiastic about ICT in general, they have taken some convincing that Moodle is worth spending the time on!  However, today I introduced using Hot Potatoes to create quizzes and crosswords and they loved it!  By the end of the session they had all created at least one quiz, some with images and hyperlinks, and uploaded the quiz to Moodle.  This brought real meaning to the gradebook and how it can be used to monitor pupil progress.

Simple, easy to use and quick – surely just what the teachers need?

Making quizzes in Moodle, on the other hand,  can be time consuming and confusing, especially for users who are new to working online.  Alright, the quizzes can be shared across course, but big deal, a Hot Potatoes quiz can have background images!  Hot Potatoes runs offline, with the quizzes being uploaded at a later date.  This is inconvenient in that software needs installing, but it does mean things run quickly and smoothly.  The crossword, cloze procedure and mix features are very useful too, the crossword in particular being popular with students.

In case it isn’t obvious, I currently believe that Hot Potatoes, combined with the excellent Content Generator Scorm compliant penalty shoot out for fun, is the ideal combination for teachers to make online quizzes for Moodle.

I do, however, keep an open mind.  I am keen to see what Moodle 2.0 upgrades are made to the quiz.  I’ve also explored using the Word template for making Moodle quizzes;  I think it’s good. but not as good as HP!

Hot Potatoes is available from:  http://hotpot.uvic.ca/

After working on making movies using a variety of applications for the last 1/2 term, The Royal Latin School last night celebrated in style with its own ‘Oscars’ ceremony.  The event was attended by well over two hundred excited parents and students.    We watched short extracts from films nominated for eight different categories.   The full version of the winning film for each category was then displayed, with students encouraged to make an acceptance speech!  Finally, the parents voted for the best overall movie using ‘Voting System’ handsets (ninety of them!) and the headteacher awarded the winning shield.

All films entered into the competition were posted onto the school’s moodle based website.