Moodle Moot NZX 2016

I am excited to write about the upcoming Moodle Moot NZX being hosted by HRDNZ and Northtec.

Join us for Moodle Moot NZX 5th-7th October in the 'Winterless North"

It's a special year, as HRDNZ celebrate 10 years of being a Moodle Partner (wow!) and we would love you to join us for the best Moodle Moot ever !

New Zealand Moodle Moots are regarded as one of the best in the world. They are always well organised with excellent speakers and workshops, but what sets them apart from other conferences is the friendly atmosphere and support, the feeling of belonging to a community, and high level of participation and sharing by attendees.

This year the Moodle Moot is a celebration of HRDNZ being a Moodle Partner for ten years. To recognise this milestone, everyone attending the event this year will also be entitled to 10% off any of the HRDNZ MoodleBites courses - yay!

This year the Moodle Moot is structured to begin with a community day, followed by two workshop days. 

The first community conference day is a great opportunity to meet people and get yourself focused and energised ready for the workshops. Keynote speakers are Scott Hunley talking about The Internet of Things, Justin Hunt (creator of PoodLL) speaking on the Life of a Moodle Developer, and Hazel Owen on Creating meaningful assessment in Moodle. Stuart Mealor will reflect on Moodle over the last ten years, and we'll also hear from some other great voices across New Zealand. 

There will be four workshop streams: teaching, administration, management and developers. This is ensuring there is "something for everyone". I am contributing a couple of workshops this year so hope to see and hear some of you there. You can switch between streams, and you'll find me in the teacher and management streams.

So a big thank you in advance to NorthTec for hosting venue and all that goes along with that role, and thanks to the HRDNZ team. Do take the opportunity to say a big thank you to our hosts and make some new friends over the three days. I find Moodle friends become friends for life!

Register here.

iMoot15 and mootau15

At #iMoot15 Miriam and I facilitated as session aimed at getting a conversation going and gathering information in the Moodle community about how we manage enrolment, access, and semester rollover. Miriam and I hoped that this would feed into the working group at #mootau15 on archiving and roll-over.

Our institute is reviewing how we manage enrolment, access and course rollover in Moodle. We have struggled to find solutions that work across the board and maintain an exception list that we see increasing. Initial conversations with other institutes suggested that the perfect solutions are yet to be established. We hoped this iMoot discussion would build on the work started at https://docs.moodle.org/28/en/Year-end_procedures and in the forum https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=50298 and that we could find out more from the Moodle community about what the issues we collectively have so as we can understand them better and work towards resolving them.

Our iMoot presentation is here and the details on the Moodlemoot working groups are here. Note there are two working groups, so check out the assessment analytics working group too.

If you are able to share your institutes current enrolment/access/rollover practice please complete our form here or get in touch with us.

We have so far found that most institutes do not automate creation of groups, and many duplicate courses each time they are run. Each institute has their own approach to where the teacher’s role starts and ends.  With everyone using different student management systems, and having different strategies around re-use of courses and access periods for students to their learning resources (and artefacts the students create!) it is very helpful to share ideas on how to meet the requirements of your institute and your learners.

You can also comment on this blog post if you prefer. Looking forward to further discussion.

Moodlemoot Australia 2015

I hope you have all registered for mootau15 and I will see you at Monash University in (Clayton) Melbourne, 6 to 8 July 2015. This is going to be one very exciting Moot, boasting an impressive range of keynotes and with a new schedule format that makes the most of the time together. The introduction of working groups to the Moot format brings together users, researchers and developers to work together to make Moodle better.

Monday 6 July is professional development day. There will be keynotes and sector based sessions, working groups, and drinks reception.

Tuesday 7 and Wednesday 8 July are community days, focusing on the interests of users in different roles. More keynotes, role based sessions, new features and roadmap, and more social activities.

Thursday 9 July is developers’ day. Even though the main conference is over, this will be a day of action for working group members and developers. There will be new developer training and a hackfest with working group interaction.

See you there!

Moodlemoot NZ 1-3 October 2014

It's time to register (and propose a talk!) for Moodlemoot NZ 2014. This year we will be enjoying sunny Nelson as the hosting venue is Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology. Block out Wednesday 1st to Friday 3rd October 2014.

The first day is workshops, with four offerings:

• Moodle Foundation for newer users
• Moodle Administration
• Mobile Moodle
• Moodle in Government

There will be the usual three tracks: technical, general and teaching.

Martin Dougiamas (founder of Moodle) will share "Moodle from the horses mouth" and Dave Sturrock (NMIT) will also keynote.

The usual fun and frivolity can be expected at the conference dinner.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Moodlemoot NZ 2013

If you haven't already heard, it's Moodlemoot time again in NZ. You'll be in the right place if you find yourself in Hamilton at the University of Waikato this Monday to Wednesday 22 - 24 April 2013.

The first day is workshops, with four offerings:

• Moodle Foundation for newer users
• Moodle Administration
• Multimedia in Moodle
• Cool Course Competition

Moodlemoots in New Zealand usual boast three streams: technical, general and teaching.

Keynotes this year include Martin Dougiamas (founder of Moodle) and Don Christie (ex-President of the NZ Open Source Society, councillor of InternetNZ, co-Chair of NZRise).

The usual fun and frivolity can be expected at the conference dinner, this year at Viligrads.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

With only a few days until Moodlemoot 2011 I thought I would write a bit about what to expect (in addition to a good time).

Guest International Keynote Speakers:

• Martin Dougiamas - a man who needs no introduction in the Moodle community; Martin will be presenting remotely on "Where 2.0 now?"
• Gavin Henrick of Remote-Learner in Canada and Enovation Solutions in Ireland - Gavin will be sharing his experiences with us in his keynote "Moodle from multiple perspectives"

There will be a great range of presentations throughout the conference, including technical sessions like Dan Marsden's talk on "Crot and Turnitin: plagiarism detection tools" and school sessions like "Moodle and Teaching as Inquiry" with Mark Osborne.
Perhaps the best bit on the programme - "Open Space" - time for 'user generated' discussion - it's led by you! and the conversation can go anywhere.

As usual, we will have workshops running the day before the two day conference.

• Mobile Moodle workshop with Thom Cochrane and Vickel Narayan
• Beginning Moodle Administration with Teresa Gibbison
• Moodle foundation - essentials for newer users with Miriam Laidlaw
• Using Moodle in NZ schools with Anton Coltham and Jacqui Land

The conference dinner, a not to be missed experience, will be held at "The Floating Pavilion" at the Viaduct.

If you haven't already registered this is really the last chance, so go to the online registration form here now. I look forward to seeing you there!

iMoot call for presentations

iMoot is an online international conference (run on Perth time) organised by Pukunui (a Moodle Partner in Australia with a Kiwi name) with three streams (how to's, academic papers, and case studies).

Registration is AUD50 early bird. The call for presentations has been made so start thinking about what you might be interested in presenting on.

Announcing iMoot 30 April to 3 May - http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=166133&parent=728350

Call for presentations - http://2011.imoot.org/mod/data/view.php?id=10

Moodlemoot NZ 2011 new dates

Due to a date clash with Moodlemoot Australia 2011, we have changed Moodlemoot New Zealand 2011.

Here are the udpated details:

Moodlemoot New Zealand 2011 is organised by HRDNZ (Moodle Partner)

The venue is Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland

The dates are Tuesday 26th-Thursday 28th of July, 2011

We expect it will be the largest NZ Moot ever! Looking forward to seeing you there.

Moodlemoot 2011 NZ Announcement

I am excited to let everyone know that Moodlemoot 2011 NZ has been announced. Read the announcement notice on http://moodlemoot.co.nz/ and bookmark the website for future reference.

Dates: Tuesday 19th - Thursday 22nd of July 2011
Venue: Unitec, Carrington Road, Mt Albert, Auckland

Travelling with the XO laptop

Last week I spent four days in Melbourne. I don't think it is possible to travel anymore without a netbook and this trip I wanted to challenge myself to travelling with only one backpack to keep me as mobile as possible.

I took the olpc laptop - the XO - as my travel laptop. I wanted to use the operating system that olpc deployments use with a few tweaks. So I lived in Sugar and the Gnome desktop. I installed Skype, xchat for irc, empathy for jabber, and a few packages to make it all work. (Details here - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Tabitha)

The hardest bit was touch typing on the membrane keyboard. I normally type up to 80 wpm with 99% accuracy but I think I was reduced to about 40wpm and 60% accuracy initially, though I did improve during the four days.

The XO laptop was light and easy for me to transport. Its robust so I was never worried about breaking it by squashing or dropping my bag. It easily connected everywhere I went and had enough battery (I took a spare just in case) for what I was doing.

One of the aims was to ensure I was ready for my volunteer trip to Samoa on 30 July where I will only use the XO as part of supporting olpc deployments in two primary schools on Savaii. I feel prepared now.

Another advantage to using the XO for the trip was that people came up and asked me about olpc so it was a great conversation starter. A lot more Australians know what is going on in their own country now (there are deployments to aboriginal children) and it is great to get that awareness level up.

If anyone wants to play with the olpc laptop and they are local to me, they can just ask. You are most welcome to ask me questions about olpc and Sugar (the learning platform), from the technology side and the educational philosophy behind these not for profit organisations. If I can't answer your question, I will point you to where to ask.