Congratulations to the Synergy Learning Ladies Race for Life team who have raised £470 so far for Cancer Research UK.
Here is a photo of Laura, Caroline, Andrea, Marie and Donna sporting their medals after breezing past the finishing line on Sunday 30th May.
If you want to add to the donations so far visit www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/synergylearningladies
An entertaining, clear and simple explanation of a VLE by City Learning Centres // Sheffield East
Mahara is an eportfolio system that works in tandem with Moodle. Like Moodle, Mahara is an open source software with developer support available through it’s own community and peer support available through blogs, wikis etc.
Why use Mahara?
As an online portfolio, Mahara is a place to store institutional and personal learning articles or ‘artefacts’. Students can use these artefacts to demonstrate their development over time to various audiences including prospective universities and future employers.
Mahara also provides a comprehensive blogging tool, social networking and a CV builder. Users have their own personalised profiles which they can use to add employment and education history, accreditations, achievements and goals.
Communities can be built within Mahara – users have the ability to connect with other users, create and maintain lists of friends. One of the features that differentiates Mahara from other ePortfolio systems is that users control which items and what information within their portfolio other users see.
Moodle and Mahara.
Mahara is designed to compliment Moodle, in fact many of the Mahara development team have also been involved in major Moodle development. This means it is simple, straightforward and cost effective for Moodle educators to integrate Mahara as an eportfolio system.
A Moodle to Mahara network is very similar to Moodle to Moodle networking with the Mahara system being built on top of the Moodle network. The networks can be set up to connect one Mahara system to one Moodle system, many to one, one to many or many to many systems.
A single-sign on capability allows users to be automatically logged in to both their Mahara and Moodle accounts by providing a username and password at only one of these sites.
Once set-up any Moodle content created could potentially become a Mahara artefact with students easily being able to export from Moodle to Mahara. The Moodle content appears in Mahara rendered to HTML or a file that can easily be read by common applications (eg PDF).
Most importantly, like Moodle, Mahara is constantly being developed and updated thus providing a very solid framework for which to build on.
If you are interested in finding out more about Synergy Learning’s Mahara services visit www.synergy-learning.com/mahara or email info@synergy-learning.com.
It hasn’t escaped many Moodlers attention that for the second year running the members of the eLearning Guild have ranked Moodle as the Number 1 LMS.
If reports are to be believed Blackboard’s market share is dropping while Moodle’s is doing the opposite, and social networkers are airing where their preference lies. It is clear the educational world is increasingly coming round to the seductions of Moodle. But why?
In 2009 the University of North Carolina (USA) conducted a comprehensive study comparing Moodle and Blackboard Vista, to determine which system they should implement across the Institution.
For your information I have listed a few interesting points made in their report explaining their decision to go with Moodle;
With regards the Usability of Moodle:
The faculty and students involved rated Moodle very highly on key factors of ease of use, flexibility, facilitation of teaching/learning goals, and correspondence to one’s teaching/learning style. Tools and functions crucial for designing and implementing Moodle courses (Assignments, Discussions, Learning Modules, Assessments, etc.) were rated as being preferable to those available in BbV by both faculty and students.
On all tools and functions evaluated, a large majority of faculty expressed a preference (either pro-Moodle or pro-BbV), and as in the Fall, these preferences consistently favored Moodle by wide margins. Once again, ease of use and learning, adaptability, and sufficiency of Moodle tools were important factors for these faculties.
With regards the cost of Moodle:
…the University would realize a cost savings of 52% in year 2011-2012 by switching to Moodle as the standard University Learning Management System.
With regards the Moodle Community:
One attractive feature of Moodle is its open source architecture, which promises flexibility and adaptability to our faculty and student needs. This feature also encourages participation in a nationwide, indeed international, community of teachers and course designers who constantly explore and implement new features within the Moodle LMS.
Conclusion:
The evidence gathered by this committee strongly favors a transition to Moodle on both pedagogical and financial grounds. Moodle provides better or comparable functionality with the benefit of increased relevance and control for what in the long run will be lower cost.
It is worth reading the University of North Carolina’s full report for a full understanding of what is involved in a transition from Blackboard to Moodle.
http://lmseval.uncc.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=62&Itemid=9
For more information on Synergy Learning’s Moodle Services email info@synergy-learning.com
In 2009 Moodle was ranked Number 1 LMS among eLearning Guild members for the second consecutive year, with 24% of respondents selecting it as their primary LMS.
learningsolutionsmag.com:
“In May 2008, Blackboard and Moodle were neck and neck for the dominant position among eLearning Guild members for their LMS product usage, each with about 20% of the responses. Blackboard recently purchased ANGEL Learning™, a small, privately-held LMS company funded in part by Indiana University, with a devoted following of several hundred clients, 25% of which are corporate customers. Although this purchase will increase Blackboard’s enterprise market share to 21.02%, it is still only a close second to Moodle among Guild members.”
For the full story visit Learning Solutions Magazine
Our Creative Director, Jonny McAllister, is working away on our Moodle Test Drive site, fitting it into his busy schedule (apologies Jonny for adding to your workload!)
Here is a quick look at where we are at presently. There are no images added as of yet, and there are a lot of Moodle tweaks to be made, but already you can see an incredible difference between this and what I could create with my basic Moodle knowledge.
The idea of the Moodle Test Drives is to show people the possibilities within Moodle. There are of course a number of benefits to choosing Moodle other than just the customisable software. I have had a look over the Moodle case studies that have recently been added to the Synergy Learning website to compile a list of Moodle benefits that were highlighted by companies who are using the software package:
The integration of Moodle also offers the option of distance learning and with that comes a number of other positives:
If you are interested in implementing Moodle, or getting more from the Moodle you already have and there is anything you would like to see included in our Moodle Test Drive site, or have any questions or comments then you can join us on Facebook (click here) and get the conversation started.
‘Moving into the new Decade’
13th/14th April 2010, Senate House, University of London
MoodleMoot UK 2010 is almost upon us. Hosted for the first time by ULCC it boasts a great line-up of speakers, including Synergy Learning’s Technical Director Alex Büchner
Speaking about Large-Scale Moodle Networks, Alex will be explaining Moodle Networks and examples of different structures. Alex will present a case study and forthcoming networking and community hub functionality in Moodle 2.0.
On Day 2 Martin Dougiamas will be beamed live from down under to talk about the role of Moodle in future strategic developments and what the future holds (TBC).
Other Keynote Speakers include:
Moodlemoots are a great opportunity for teachers, developers and administrators with different levels of elearning experience to get together and learn from one another as well as discuss the advancement of the elearning agenda.
For more information on Moodlemoot UK 2010 visit moodlemootuk2010.org.uk
The Twittersphere is hot with news of the release of Microsoft’s free Office Add-in for Moodle.
The plug-in, which works with Office 2003 and Office 2007, allows you to open Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents directly from Moodle, as well as save your documents straight into your course files area, bypassing the Moodle web interface completely.
Martin Dougiamas, the founder of Moodle explains how this was done (via Moodle.org):
“They’ve [Microsoft] done this by calling Moodle web scripts directly which is probably not as stable as using web services designed specifically for this purpose (such as the ones in the upcoming Moodle 2.0), but their approach does have the huge benefit that it works with any recent 1.x Moodle out of the box with no modifications to the Moodle site.”
It would appear from Jon Perera’s blog (Microsofts GM of Education Products Group) that teachers are the intended beneficiaries of the latest Microsoft Add-in:
“At the core of student success are teachers. However, teachers today are being asked to do more with less, and are continually looking for ways to more effectively help students learn.
Like Moodle, Microsoft Office is prevalent in classrooms around the world…So we explored ways to improve how educators can intuitively and efficiently use the two products together. What we developed is simple. The Microsoft Office Add-in for Moodle provides educators an easy way to find, open, and save their Microsoft Office files housed in Moodle..”
The Add-in is compatible with the current version of Office for Windows PCs, but not the Mac. Microsoft is currently evaluating how to support Moodle in Office 2010, which also includes browser-based Office Web Apps that run on both Macs and PCs.
The Add-in is free and available for download at www.educationlabs.com. You also can see a short video of how the new Add-in being used.
If you have any more questions on how to make sure your Moodle gets the most from the Microsoft Add-in email info@synergy-learning.com.
Advice NI is a membership organisation that promotes, supports and develops the independent advice sector across Northern Ireland. It is an established training provider, accredited with the Open University to offer National Vocational Qualifications and is an accredited centre to deliver Open College Network NI qualifications.
Advice NI made the decision to make their training available online in response to advice workers finding it difficult to be away from their work for full days in order to participate in learning activities.
Other advantages included:
Synergy Learning worked with Advice NI to develop blended learning programmes, through a dedicated Learning Online website and face-to-face workshops.
Why Moodle?
Advice NI’s research found Moodle’s competitive advantage included:
Synergy Learning’s approach
When creating an online learning environment, Synergy Learning conduct a Learning Needs Analysis. This involves analysing the existing paper based training content.
We work with the client to understand the Aims and Learning Outcomes, the content is listed, the learner is identified and from this a learning strategy can be developed.
This strategy will determine what the eLearning environment will look like and what models will be used; communication methods, assessment, assignment, feedback etc will all be decided.
Once these facts have been agreed Synergy Learning work with the client to:
Developing online resources
A product of the Learning Needs Analysis is to list possible resources that will be used. These are dependent on the content that is involved, the types of learners using the content, accessibility issues and the available environment.
When producing the materials, consideration is given to the fact learners do not all learn in the same way. Learners take a variety of approaches and use these approaches in varying degrees in different situations e.g. visual, textual, auditory, kinesthetic, active and reflective.
In a similar way we look at the learning content and consider the theoretical perspectives such as drill and practice, constructivism (mental models and scaffolding) and social constructivism (social activities, communities of practice and common knowledge).
At Synergy Learning we develop materials to suit each of these learning approaches. These models include animation, graphics, diagrams, text, learner interaction, step by step activities, demonstrations, simulations, video, sound/speech and learning as well as assessment tasks.
The Results
Advice NI’s students have embraced the new online learning format and there have been a number of positives to come from the new site.
Fiona Magee from Advice NI had the following to say:
“Advice NI were extremely happy to find a Moodle partner on a local level. Synergy Learning provided us with the most effective and efficient e-learning platform for our learners. We feel the partnership has been very resourceful for both parties and we will continue to build on this partnership to offer our learners the best e-learning experiences.
“We won an Aontas STAR award in 2009 for our NVQ Advice & Guidance e-learning training and were highly commended by the E-Well-Being awards for our e-learning site in 2008. We feel through the increase in website hits, learner feedback and the winning of such prestigious awards Advice NI has achieved fantastic results which only enforce our ethos. We feel with development of technology and partnership with Synergy we will continue to grow.”
I am a year 13 student studying ICT, Geography, Chemistry and Mathematics for AS.
I am currently researching career options and I decided to complete a work placement to collect more information about businesses and the working environment. The work experience will also allow me to complete my UCAS personal statement.
I decided to come to Synergy Learning because I am currently thinking about completing a computing course at university and working in ICT.
At Synergy Learning I was introduced to the business and given an overview of what Synergy Learning does and what they work with. Everyone was very friendly and helpful and the whole environment was very comfortable.
Thanks to the staff at Synergy Learning, I have learnt many new skills; I used an Apple Mac for the first time and was introduced to how HTML and CSS work. I also learnt how to use Photoshop and I enjoyed working and designing in it.
It was great to work at HTML and help with a section of a project.
My time here has given me a great insight into not only how an ICT business works and the amount of work that goes into a project but has also provided me with a better understanding of how Moodle works which will help me with using the Virtual Learning Environment in my school.
I really enjoyed my time here and would like to thank everyone at Synergy Learning for allowing me to participate in their work and for helping me gain a better understanding of all of the processes and components in their work.
Rachel
Synergy Learning
Holywood House
1 Innis Court
Holywood BT18 9HF
T: +44 (0) 28 9028 8830
E: info@synergy-learning.com
