WebGuy

Who doesn’t like getting a sticker or stamp of approval?  Now you can award students digital “Badges” in iLearn.  This new feature is great at motivating students as they appear in their profile and can be seen by others.

Teacher Robert Harrison at Edsel Ford High School has been using Badges with his students.  Badges can automatically be awarded to students based on completion of an assignment or grade on a test.  They can also be given out by the teacher to individual students as needed.

Here is what a student profile looks like after being awarded badges.  Click to enlarge photo.

We just updated iLearn to Moodle 2.6.1 last week and some teachers were complaining about slow load times when trying to use Quickgrading when looking at Assignments.  The issue stems from the way Moodle wants to build the table with all the student data.

Have you ever wanted to do a school-wide or classroom book review?  Moodle is a powerful tool that allows a teacher to do many types of projects with students.  A good example of how you can use Moodle for a project is doing Book Reviews.  With Moodle you can have a central location for book reviews written by your students.  Ratings, genres, comments and many other features can be added to create the ultimate book review.  You can totally customize the forms and look of the book review too!

Dearborn High School has been working on a book review project in the library.  Lets take a look at what they have done.  Click on the images below to enlarge.

Students must first find and enter the DHS Book Review course.  This is a simple course with only the Book Review Activity.

When they click on the Book Review activity they are shown a list of book reviews written by classmates.

When a student clicks on title of a book they are taken to the review .

They can also search for titles of interest using the search feature.

And finally, the student can add to the Book Review by using a simple form.   They upload cover art and their review in one easy-to-use form.

Guess what?  If you are reading this from another school district and would like to be able to start your own book review you can download our template and customize it to your liking.  This is a preset for the Database Activity in Moodle.

Here is the download: Book Review-preset

If you are a teacher in Dearborn Public Schools and would like to have a book review for your classroom please contact Chris Kenniburg for help.  kennibc@dearbornschools.org