WebGuy

Invite to Join Dearborn’s Pin It Website

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pinitWant to see something cool just for Dearborn teachers?  You are personally invited to join  Dearborn Public School’s Pin It website.  The Pin It website works very similar to Pinterest but is limited to stuff we/you post as a Dearborn School employee.  Our own private pinterest just for staff, students, and parents.  This new tool is ideal for teachers who want to share and collaborate with web links and resources.  Pin and Repin the content!  With enough people pinning resources this could be an ideal website for sharing and finding new tools and ideas.

Directions:

  1. Go to the Dearborn Pin It website and login:  https://pinit.dearbornschools.org using your district ID and password (Same as emial, computers, iblog, ilearn, staff resources, etc. etc. etc.).
  2. Once signed in, click on “Add > Pin ” in the upper right area of the screen and add a pin.  You can checkout the quick Help page here first:  https://pinit.dearbornschools.org/help/

  3. Check out other teacher Pin It profiles: https://pinit.dearbornschools.org/members/

You might want to try adding a board and multiple pins.  It should work just like Pinterest for the most part.

Let us know what you think

Please send comments and feedback to Chris Kenniburg   kennibc@dearbornschools.org

Deletion of Old Blogs

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From time to time it is necessary to “clean house”.  We have several blogs that have not been updated since 2010.  Over the next few days we will be pruning these abandoned blogs from our network.  We will be deleting blogs that have not been updated since August of 2011.  Anything that has been updated since August of 2011 will be safe from this round of house cleaning.

Have a great day and happy blogging!

Please contact Chris Kenniburg with questions or concerns.

Moodle as an LTI Provider – The New Way to Share

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I have been experimenting a little bit more with Moodle and LTI.  I truly believe this is HUGE.  I mean this is incredible stuff.  LTI which stands for Learning Tools Interoperability is a new way for systems like Moodle, WordPress, Joomla, MediaWiki, and other websites to communicate and share activities with each other.

For instance, I can create a really great lesson in Moodle and then I can share it with other LTI compliant systems and it will automatically populate my gradebook with their results as well as return results to the other system.  This is going to usher in a whole new way of thinking and sharing in education.   I can share an entire course, section, activity, you name it and I can share it outside of my Moodle.

Last week I was able to connect to ChemVantage and bring in Chemistry resources into our Moodle using LTI.  This week I am exploring the ability to share moodle activities and resources outside of my Moodle install.  I also am trying to get WordPress and Moodle integrated.  So far, not looking promising.  I am stuck on something  Wordpress LTI settings.

Check out this growing catalog of LTI Tools:  https://developers.imsglobal.org/catalog.html

Setup your Moodle to be a provider: https://docs.moodle.org/22/en/LTI_Provider

 

Moodle – ChemVantage LTI Setup and Usage

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Here is a great way to give access to Chemvantage videos, quizzes, and homework via Moodle.  Using LTI your Moodle website connects to ChemVantage and allows the two sites to communicate back and forth.   This means that a quiz taken using the embedded ChemVantage will be added to your Moodle Gradebook.  Automatically.  There has never been an easier way to add content to your Moodle course.

While this works for chemistry teachers, there are plenty of other LTI resources available.  One such resource involves using WordPress to give blog access to Moodle Users.  I am working on this and hope to have a working example soon.

Here is a video of how we connected ChemVantage with Moodle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X24tmYBKdNs

You will need to email ChemVantage to get LTI Credentials which allows your Moodle site to connect.

HTML 5 BigBlueButton Web Conferencing

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We just heard GREAT NEWS from the BigBlueButton Project – they are working on an HTML 5 client!  This is exciting news since many of our schools and teachers are purchasing iPads.  With the new HTML5 client these iPads will now benefit from BBB web conferencing.  Fred Dixon of BigBlueButton has worked tirelessly to make BBB one of the best open source projects.  During the few years I have known Fred, he has been incredibly active in promoting and solving problems with BBB users.  I have no doubt that his team will deliver the goods with a new HTML 5 user interface.  From installation to usage, BigBlueButton is top notch and fully integrated with many popular web apps like Sakia, Moodle, WordPress, Joomla, and more.

Dearborn Public Schools will be working with BigBlueButton to help test the HTML5 client.  We have several hundred iPads and utilize BigBlueButton with Moodle and WordPress.

Read more about the HTML 5 Project here:
https://mozillaignite.org/apps/374/

In Depth – A closer look at how one EFHS teacher is using Moodle

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Introduction

Moodle is an incredible online learning tool.  In Dearborn Public Schools we have a very specialized installation of Moodle which we call iLearn.  Our Moodle install has the added features of web conferencing, real-time collaborative document editing, student portfolios, and several other features that are not part of the standard Moodle installation.  With iLearn teachers can create very interactive elearning opportunities for their classes.  Let’s take a look at a high school biology course setup by Mr. Robert Harrison of Edsel Ford High School.

Read more

Great iBlog Websites

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Hello Staff,

Here is some inspiration and a quick look at what other teachers/schools are doing using iBlog.

If you want to create a classroom website using iBlog, please login and create one today!
https://blog.dearbornschools.org

Feel free to contact me if you have questions on getting started.

Regards,
Chris Kenniburg
Webmaster, Dearborn Public Schools

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