Moodle? Can Chat forum be Synchronous?
We just installed Moodle. One of our teachers wants a "real time" chat to help blind students learn key commands for excel. Can the chat forum be used in real time or only asynchronous?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Tammy Moore on
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Chat is all synchronous. It doesn't function unless the students/teacher is there in real-time together. Let me know if you need any Moodle help. I have been using Moodle since 2003 and may be of use. :0)
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Permalink Reply by Bob on
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Anne, the chat feature is synchronous (real time). There is a discussion forum that is not in real time (asynchronous)and perhaps that is what you are referring to but the chat feature is in real time give or take a few microseconds.
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Permalink Reply by Anne Pemberton on
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Tammy and Bob,
Thanks. I think I was on a fforum before - but it was called Chat Forum.... now I've found the Chat ....
the moodle is at: http://www.enabling.org/moodle
Either and both, please stop by and, if synchronous, perhaps we can chat.
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If you are interested, I will be having a Moodle For Teachers course running through the summer. It will have various channels that you can chose from so that as you learn Moodle you get the fun of getting to select from many different ways that content can be distributed in: VoiceThread, Cmap, podcast/vodcast, YouTube, OneNote, Word 2003, and of course the live classroom (Elluminate). We plan on building new content platforms in to the content side of the course as they come available.
It isn't slated to start officially until mid to late May, but if you want the fun of exploring the course while the construction dust is flying go ahead and sign up and enroll in the class. Go to http://www.virtualhomeschoolgroup.com/ and look down the course listing for the Moodle section (It is our section for training and collaboratively building Moodle courses) for Moodle For Teachers.
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Tammy,
I logged in on your moodle, which is more sophisticated than ours. What choice of input for plain old read the text on the screen? What is cmat?
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Our teachers use a lot of different learning tools for the content delivery in their courses besides just what is in Moodle itself. The joy of being able to embed and link makes nearly any content delivery method within reach to offer to the kids. Text they already have in their textbook, so merely adding text to the Moodle would be redundant. The Moodle is designed to be a place to extend, offer in a different learning style format, and to build social connections. :0)
You reach a lot more kids with the content when you use some of those tools for your content delivery. For instance, in my biology and chemistry courses, we meet live in an Elluminate classroom, but the kids also have an asynchronous option in case they need to miss a class, have a family vacation, or just want to go at their own pace. Instead of text only, they can watch a VoiceThread that uses the exact same slides as we use in the live session with audio and onscreen annotations such as how to solve a given problem. Visual spatial kids benefit from the Cmaps (concept mapping tool) which help them get a pre-scafforld of the content so that they can better 'file and retrieve' what they learn (I am visual spatial and concept maps are so very helpful).
The portability of podcasts is something I hope to build in to my courses in the summer when I do my refinements to my courses. I also want to offer a 'creatives track' within my courses which will coordinate what they are studying with companion courses on creating learning products of their own.OneNote is another integration that I am planning on. In the past we have done e-notebooking (see the density e-notebook resource course), cmapping for life-long learning, creating 3-D learning objects using Blender. My favorite was a project we did while studying arthropods (crayfish focus) in which two of the boys worked as a team. One made a crayfish complete with tail flip animation and the other the observation tank with a bubbling treasure chest that opened and closed with the bubbles rising up. I want to run the companion courses so that the kids can select a creative focus and use it in correlation with the biology. It should be a blast.
Sorry, got carried away I guess. I am excited about the plans. :0) If the course you are designing already has text available to your students, why not experiment with a non-text option? VoiceThreads are personable and comment-able. Podcasts are portable. OneNote files gives the students the ability to have a head start in note taking but with integrated lecture audio easy editability that a traditional text document will not give them. Word comes the closest to being just text, but with Word they also have the ability to edit, interact, annotate, and highlight that they wouldn't have with a web page on the screen.
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Wow, Tammy, That is truly taking education into the 21st century and beyond.
I have tended to avoid putting much into sound files because I have acquired a significant southern twang to my talk. But, I may have to get over it!
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Permalink Reply by Ian Grove-Stephensen on
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A southern twang is surely a tremendous asset! What are listeners' prejudices about Southerners? Honest, loyal, approachable all come to mind.
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Hi, Ian,
What a nice thing to say!!! Thanks!
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I am an Illinoian who has lived in the Sountheast and now in the deep South. I love the differences in speech patterns.
When all I want is a web page of information that I am going to 'grab and go', having it be impersonal is just fine - perhaps even preferable. However, when I want to take a course I want something more than information. A course is more than a web page because there is a person to go with the information. At the very least there is a teacher/mentor and when lucky enough to find a course where you can interact with other classmates you have an even richer experience. Your voice is a connection to a human that so many web students look for when they take a course. Oh they may take note of the Southern accent in their first hearing or two, but beyond that, they are getting to know you as a person.
I guess at a foundational level, it all comes down to' what is a course'. If all the course is tends to be static information it might as well have just been a typical 'grab and go' web page without the reader having to mess with registering and log in. Just make it an open web page. What is a course? A course is where you have someone there to help and be a companion to you while you learn with tools that assess how you are doing whether it be by traditional objective measures (quizzes) or creative and open-ended means (projects). Don't be afraid to move beyond the 'grab and go' with your course. :0)
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Tammy,
Thanks so much for your insight. When I took a my courses on online teaching several years ago, this aspect of the technology was not yet available, and we were doing what you call "grab and go". I have such a course on Universal, which does not happen in time constraints, so someone can do the course when they please, but there is no interactions with anyone but me. Many people never finish the course. I've been reluctant to tie myself down to a time factor on courses, but perhaps that is exactly what is needed to make the courses meaningful to the students.
I look forward to doing your course in May and updating my knowledge of online teaching and learning. At the time I took the CalState courses, I was the only person in the classes who saw online courses being of use in K-12. I think you have been able to add the ingredients to fulfill my "prophesy".
Thanks
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Permalink Reply by Mark Cruthers on
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