Teaching Don'ts
Don't forget to check users' profiles
Sigh... Some students have questionable judgement. You never know what they will post to their profiles. Best to check now and again. Depending upon your school system, your local laws, and your personal beliefs, of course, you may or may not do anything about what you find, but it is best to at least know what's there.
Don't encourage users to run Power Point presentations in their browsers
Users, of course, want to simply click on a PPT presentation and run it inside their browsers. This usually works out pretty well, but not always. You will have far fewer complaints and problems if your users download PPT presentations to their desktops and run them from there. Encourage them to do so. By the way, this is not a Moodle problem; it is a browser problem.
Do not upload large Power Point presentations if your Moodle disk space is limited. Convert your PPTs to .swf files using Open Office. The only disadvantage is that you will lose all animation.
As an alternative to using Power Point at all, you might want to consider the presentation module or the lesson module.
Don't be afraid to experiment
Moodle is designed to be played with. Set up a test course for yourself and experiment with the different modules - you can't break anything!
Don't be distracted by shiney stuff
Just because you can do something in Moodle does not mean that you should do it or have to do it. Moodle is very robust software and many of its features are fun to play with. That is cool, but, remember, the point is not to build a cutting-edge web site (although that really is a lot of fun). The point is learning.
- What is it you want your students to know?
- What is it you want them to be able to do?
Let those questions dictate how you use Moodle.
