Special thanks to Stephen McMahon from the IES Abroad Dublin Center for submitting these photos!

June/July 2012

Dublin

Moodle Faculty Incentive Award Winners!The Moodle Faculty Incentive Awards are given to faculty who demonstrated growth and creativity in their use of educational technology in the past year. Thank you to all of the Centers that submitted nominations. The Greatest Growth in Educational Technology at an IES Abroad Center award will be announced in September. Congratulations to the following winners in other categories and notably to Buenos Aires for six nominations and three wins:

Most Creative Interactive Moodle ActivitiesThe most important feature of Moodle is the ability for students to interact with each other and with the instructor. Applications were received from Centers with instructors who demonstrated the most creative use of Moodle to foster interactivity. Examples included SCORM, blogs, wikis and other interactive features available in Moodle. The award is a $500 USD professional development grant to be used for software, books, materials, or registration at a professional seminar. Each of the awardees will also conduct a webinar for other Centers.

• Ann Foerster, Freiburg• Natacha Llorente, Buenos Aires• Birgit Glock, Berlin

Faculty Leadership Travel AwardsIES welcomed nominations for �ve awards to be given to faculty leaders who have demonstrated consistent creativity in using educational technology to ful�ll the learning outcomes in their course. Each of the �ve awardees will make a three-day visit to another IES Abroad center to give a talk on his/her area of academic expertise, and to conduct seminars and/or trainings on the use of educational technology in the classroom. The award also includes a $1,000 grant to each awardee in addition to expenses for the awardee’s Center visit.

• Trúc Long Võ Trân, Paris & Paris BIA• Thomas Staub, European Union• Costanza Asnaghi, Milan

• Valentina Follo, Rome• Diego Alonso, Buenos Aires

• Michel Berthet, Paris• María Mejías, Barcelona

Best Use of VideoThree awardees were selected from submissions of Moodle-based activities that used video such as a video log and a student-designed video. Each of the videos selected ful�lled one or more learning outcomes for the course and used an example of student work. Each awardee can select one of the following awards: a netbook computer, a tablet computer, or a Flip camera.

• Maria Cangiano, Buenos Aires• Gemma Draper, Barcelona

• Paola Yaconis, Buenos Aires

June/July 2012

Moodle Tip of the Month...Guides and tutorials for the Moodle modules and blocks featured in themonthly newsletter can be found on the MoodleLearn website: https://moodlelearn.elearning.iesabroad.orgUse the following generic log-in: User ID - iesstudent Password - Student1

Moodle Semester Preparation - Course Import

Dublin

Each term, the Center Moodle Admin must import courses, students, and events into Moodle. Courses are originally created in Atlas, and it is in Atlas that instructors and students are assigned to sections. Courses are pulled into Moodle from Atlas and appear on the Moodle Course Import page. From this page, the Center Moodle Admin can import courses into Moodle.

Note that courses do not appear in Moodle immediately after being imported. Moodle synchronizes with Atlas 15 minutes after each hour; courses appear in Moodle after the hourly sync process.

When a course is imported into Moodle, its default settings make it “not enrollable” and “not available” (i.e. hidden to students). In order to import students into Moodle the course must be made enrollable and available for students. To do this, the Center Moodle Admin should go to the Administration block, click on “Settings,” change these course settings, and �nally click “Save changes.” If these course settings are not changed, the student import process will not work and students will not be enrolled in their courses in Moodle.

Set Course enrollable to ”Yes”

Moodle Course Settings

Select “This course is available to students.”

The Lesson Activity can be used for �ash cards, quizzes and drills, for example when teaching vocabulary. A step-through guide on the Lesson Module can be found on the MoodleLearn website under Faculty Resources.

This newsletter was sent to provide the latest information for IES Abroad Moodle.IES Abroad Chicago

33 N. LaSalle Street, Chicago, IL 60602-2602Phone: 1.800.995.2300

Moodle Semester Preparation - Student ImportStudents can be imported into Moodle when they are in “Arrived” status in Atlas. The student status in Atlas is changed from “Con�rmed” to “Arrived” when the Enrollment Management Department in Chicago receives the signatures of the arrived students from the Center. Please note that the Education Technology Team cannot change the status of a student. Also note that students cannot be imported into Moodle before the program arrival date.

When students are ready to be imported into Moodle, they appear on the Moodle Student Import page. The Center Moodle Admin can then import the students into Moodle. Note that students do not appear in Moodle immediately after being imported. Moodle synchronizes with Atlas 15 minutes after each hour; students appear in Moodle after the hourly sync process. To verify that students have been imported, the Center Moodle Admin can click on the Participants link on the course page.

Only students who are enrolled in courses in Atlas can be imported into Moodle from the Moodle Student Import page. Moodle depends on Atlas for all sync information, including student enrollment in classes. Any student who is added manually to a course in Moodle but who is not registered for that course in Atlas will be removed from the course in Moodle during the hourly sync process.

Center Admins can �nd a Moodle Semester Preparation Quick Reference Guide located on the MoodleLearn website under Center Admin Resources.

For general questions about the Moodle Import process, please contact the Educational Technology Team:

• Kattrina Cannon - Education Technology Manager, kcannon@iesabroad.org

• Erika Quinn - Education Technology Specialist, equinn@iesabroad.org.

Moodle Import Page - Center Admin View

New Moodle Student Guide Available!Incoming students new to Moodle? Introduce them to Moodle with the new Moodle Student Guide. This helpful guide provides step-by-step instructions for students to log into Moodle, reset their passwords, and navigate the Moodle front page and courses.

The Moodle Student Guide is available for download in Microsoft Word or PDF format on the MoodleLearn website under Center Admin Resources.

After students have been imported into Moodle, the Center must explain to students how they can access the Center’s Moodle site. Email noti�cations to students can be sent through Atlas or through Moodle.

Moodle Book Module!

The Book Module is a resource that can be used to build online books chapter by chapter. The Book Module makes it easy to create multi-page collections of resources in a book-like format inside a Moodle course. Previously created websites can be imported into the Book Module, and books can be printed in their entirety or by chapter.

Moodle Tool Guide for Instructors

The Book Module allows you to have main chapters and sub-chapters. The Module itself is not interactive, but it is possible to link to Choice activities, Forums, and other interactive modules from within a book. A book can also include multimedia objects such as Flash movies.

For instructions for using the Moodle Book Module, log into MoodleLearn to �nd the step-through guide under Faculty Resources.

Wondering which Moodle activities to use to achieve the pedagogical results you want for your course? Take a look at the Moodle Tool Guides for Instructors. The Moodle Tool Guides for Instructors are charts that help you �nd the best Moodle activity for the result you want to accomplish with your students.

You can �nd the Moodle Tool Guides in PDF format in the Faculty Resources section of MoodleLearn. The Moodle Tool Guides are available in English, Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Catalan, and Portuguese.

Upcoming MoodleMootsA MoodleMoot is a gathering to discuss and learn about Moodle. Some MoodleMoots may include workshops, guest speakers or collaboration and discussions among guest attendees. Here are the 2012 MoodleMoots scheduled for the upcoming months:

• Midwest MoodleMoot 2012 - Goshen, Indiana, USA, 25-27 July

• US West Coast MoodleMoot - Los Angeles, California, USA, 31 July-3 August

• Wisconsin MoodleMoot - Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, USA, 6-7 August

• MoodleMoot Romania 2012 - Arad, Romania, 20-26 August

• Swiss MoodleMoot 2012 - Luzern, Switzerland, 7-8 September

• 1st Moodle Research Conference - Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 14-15 September

• MoodleMoot Brazil 2012 - São Paulo, Brazil, 19-21 September

• MoodleMoot Spain 2012 - Madrid, Spain, 19-21 September

• MoodleMoot Hong Kong 2012 - Hong Kong, 20-22 September

Important: Back Up Your CoursesAll IES Moodle courses are con�gured to automatically create backups every Saturday at 12 noon in your Center’s time zone. Please note that Moodle may be slower on weekends due to course backups. Backups include user data (e.g. grades, student work) and can be used to restore student data (e.g. grades, assignments). Only the two most recent course backups are retained. Instructors also have the option of saving the backup �le to their hard drive by clicking the �le and going through the regular “Save” procedure. After adding new content to your course it’s a good idea to backup your changes immediately.

International Technology Terms!In this month’s IES Moodle Newsletter,

we’ll take at look at how technology terms can be written in di�erent

languages!

Italy Andora (Catalan)

The technology term of the month is:User Interface - A user interface, also called a "UI" or simply an "interface," is the means by which a person controls a software application or hardware device. A good user interface provides a "user-friendly" experience, allowing the user to interact with the software or hardware in a natural and intuitive way.

interfície d'usuariinterfaccia utente