Note:

If you want to create a new page for developers, you should create it on the Moodle Developer Resource site.

User:Chris collman

From MoodleDocs

Hi, I am still a new user, been working with Moodle since Jan 2006. Yes, I keep changing my photo at Moodle.org My Moodle profile tells a different version of the story.

If you believe in these things: On the DISC assessment scale I am a low D, high I, moderate S, and a very low C.

"We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit"
~~Aristotle


Moodler interests

Help for new users goals

As a Moodler, I am interested in giving help to the so called "Newbie": The KISS, "what are the basic things I need to know". Typically "my" newbie is like me - a little bit of a teacher and a little bit of a site administration. Initially my help focused on "how you make Moodle do things", more or less a translation of developer talk in MoodleDocs.

In 2010 the next refinement in help for any "new" (or evolving) Moodler is to provide examples of uses. "What can Moodle do for you" - where people allow others to witness the essence of their Moodling. My help here is finding ways to cross link these with MoodleDocs.

Helping people is a challenge because everybody "sees what they want to see, hears what they want to hear, you dig?" (says the Rockman in The Point), this includes my next door neighbor or someone in another country. Plus there are so many ways to use Moodle, all new (or old) users certainly do not all have the same goals!

I appreciate all those who improve upon my work and Helen Foster for the alignments with the big picture.

Examining other people's questions, helps me learn and jump from my Confuzzled ruts to happy learner.

Recent projects

History at moodle.org: Started Moodling Jan '06, in 2008 was asked to help moderate the Lesson forum and I helped develop a new Lesson topic in demo.moodle.org, given some additional Admin rights in MoodleDocs and in the Modules and Plugin database. In Moodle.org, most of my time is spent editing words and looking at user comments.

I watch about 800 pages in the en_MoodleDocs, very few are development pages. I am noticing fewer and fewer edits are showing each day and they are generally small ones. Big difference from 2006-2008. I make a point to find answers to forum posts in MoodleDocs. I look at special pages links if I have a few minutes. Moodle 2.0 is about to entered my MoodleDoc world and that will create a new round of thoughtful edits.

September 2010

This summer and fall is all about understanding how to bring a 1.5.3 content into a production 1.9.9 Moodle. So I have become more active in areas around this project. I had previous worked on Themes and languages. I spent lots of time with FTP and phpMyAdmin on one of over a dozen localhosts, looking at Certificate, Questionnare, Activity Locking and moodledata. I got a lot of experience in breaking things and then with one hand tied behind my back (knowledge) fixing things.

In March- April my MoodleDocs was spent with Themes, followed Helen's twitters to some new apps and toys for Moodle and some impulsive cross linking in older pages to other pages. I created some new pages.

In Feb I worked with others on Metacourses and File upload pages. Want to clean up my Tracker entries and look at those for Lesson.

In Nov-Dec, one of regular job's F2F classes ended, then in December one of my outside compilation projects had a site failure. )At my salary job, I basically customized a Moodle server and populated it with old/new courses. Oh yes, we do have a little construction project going on in our house. Then there were the holidays. I seemed to have emerged and back to "normal" things by end of January.

Current Moodle work projects involve:

  • NH Moodle User groups - side volunteer project to see if there is interest (yes there is).
  • Waiting for the launch of my recompiled, re-themed of a clean install 1.9.7 Moodle Ubuntu server!
  • Monitoring a site activity in a series of Lessons, to figure out where content or questions needs to be improved on unrelated 1.5.x and a 1.9.7 sites.
  • Assisting customer service answering questions and fixing student issues on 2 24/7 courses.
  • As part of a team, I am still looking at lesson plans and integrating 10 subjects that can be used by 2 different tracks of students, especially with Quiz and resources.
  • Pre-planing to create another new Moodle site (Maybe 2.0) that will use 1.5.3 question categories. Estimate launch July 2010.

Reports and Excel

I have a created several spreadsheets that are used to track student progress. All these use the "download" features found in Quiz, Grades and Questionaire (contributed code) in 1.5.x and 1.9.7.

  • Grades. I download uncategorized Grades in Excel for a course and paste everything into another spreadsheet's worksheet of the same name. I then have Excel tell us everything we wanted to know about the class and each individual in a series of worksheets. I keep summary info for each column for previous classes.`
  • Quiz. I do the same with quiz scores. I wanted to have statistical information on a separate worksheet for each Quiz. Looking forward to 2.0 reports to replace my graphs.
  • Logs. I want to know who has filled out a subject evaluation (25 questionnaire activities) and who has not.

Courses are Rooms for my wife

My wife was tired of not being able to share files, communicate and keep information up to date with her school counselor association via their web site. Why not Moodle? So I have been having fun changing courses into committee rooms and translating Moodle into language that ironically is all about the social constructionist point of view, for this group of adults that just wants to communicate (or not). I call this applied anthropology (big grin).

Here is a brief bio.

As a support person, I work with Moodle 1.5.x & 1.9.x within a very specific learning environment: 'certified training'. My primary job is to assist state agency trainers. Most Moodlers are trying to be fantastic educators and interact with students for weeks or months. Our goals are similar but the interaction is very different. After hours, I also work for private trainers who supply certified on line training in other parts of the country. Outside of Moodle, 600 hours a year will find me multitasking as a site adjunct for training being presented via video conference technology between 4 sites. And just to keep me aware of new users, I like to teach introduction to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Computer courses at the local community college.

I am constantly learning.

As a young adult, I lived and worked with Ibos, Effics (Nigeria), and Somali people during my 4 years in the Peace Corps doing Community/Rural Development. Served in the Army for 2 years. Lived with the Navajo for a year as a volunteer at a boarding school for special students in New Mexico, while I did historical research. I have a BA in Anthropology from Franconia College. My wife and I ran a small manufacturing company in rural New England for 20 years before my current job. Beside Moodle, my hobbies include walking my dog, genealogy, local histories, and encouraging wild flowers around my house near the White Mountains of New Hampshire, USA.

Fun of course

Need I add that Life Should be Fun!

Frank Ralf tells me:

"Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit."
Aristotle

Cheers to all

Chris


Footnotes and links

After I learned about subpages on userpages in wikipedia, I decided to put my handy formats for MoodleDocs here

I am thinking that a page with documentation that is already indexed might be useful

Category:Pages requiring updating. Or {{Update_section}}

Discovered David Scotson's David Scotson concerning MoodleDocs.

Moodle download stats [1]

Lesson Development pages

More notes to myself