danaleeling

On the iPhone the Moodle app can only upload a file. The Google Sheets app on iPhone downloads a gsheet file format.The Moodle app on Android, however, cannot open gsheet files natively. The workaround would be to download the gsheet file and then opening the file using Google Sheets.  Downloading and attempting to open the gsheet file on Android, however, causes the Android Google Sheets app to crash. This means that students working on iPhones cannot directly submit a Google Sheets file to an instructor working on an Android phone.  One workaround is for the instructor to use a laptop and to open the gsheet file with LibreOffice.org. The complication is that LibreOffice does not automatically open that extension. On one rig Dropbox had grabbed that extension. LibreOffice will open the gsheet file. A workaround for creating a file that an instructor can open on Android is for the iPhone using student to create an Excel file. This has to be done from the Google Sheets app on i...

If one copies and pastes a comment into the feedback comments dialog in Moodle Grader, links to YouTube videos will automatically embed in the comment when viewed by the student. thus the comment: 3️⃣ Number three: Continuous. Although the car speeds do look to be discrete, technically they are continuous. Data cannot be both discrete (a countable number of possible values) and continuous (an uncountable number of values). There is a video later on,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzehnqDN5ag that attempts to explain why data such as the pace and speed are continuous, ratio level data. Looks like this in the student view: The embedded video has disrupted the flow of the paragraph.  The fix would be to go into the Source code for the comment and add a embed=no&amp; to the link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?embed=no&amp;v=vPFYGVCv2x4"> Performing this operation repeatedly would significantly add to marking time. One option might be to only c...

Moodle generates a lot of notifications.  At the end of the first week one multiple students have high notification counts.  The smallest value I saw was 13 notifications. Above is another in the forties, not unusual. The largest I saw was 64 notifications. A student is highly likely to miss an important notification in the flurry of notifications. While there is a notifications preferences screen, students will not know which notifications can be safely turned off. A deeper dive into the nature of the notification explosion indicates that some courses had all assignments open on day one. I suspect this might be a result of not specifying an opening/available from date. If I am correct, then the use of release dates for activities in Moodle is clearly important. 

Canvas provides Coming Up assignments and quizzes by default. Out-of-the-box Moodle does not automatically display this information, with apparently no home page overview of all upcoming events across courses for a student. Within a course blocks provides this functionality but only for that specific course. Upcoming events appears to be a potential replacement for Coming up. After writing the above, a Dashboard appeared in Moodle.  The Dashboard appears to restore some of the functions of the Canvas Dashboard. Too early to tell.

The class opened with coverage of Moodle. Then I transitioned into plants.  Asplenium nidus was not in my bag and is always an easy identification. Not this term. Perhaps two could name the plant. Only one Pohnpeian student was able to name weipwul, along with Satawal, Yap, Islanders and the Chuukese students. I was in shock, complete disbelief. Kideu was a hundred percent lost, although one student from Pohnpei said he used to know the name but forgot. I also covered the meanings of A. nidus and Microsorum scolopendria and the concepts of cultural loss.  I wrapped with Davallia solida to a silent class. Only one student from Satawal could name the plant.  At that point I abandoned all thought of proceeding - I knew there was no hope of identification for the rest. Wrapped up by 4:24. 

Monday was used to introduce Moodle and handle add/drop issues.  Tuesday opened with a look at Moodle and then an overview of the kingdoms . First up was Plantae: Tracheophyta: Class Cycadopsida.  Then Class Pinopsida. Both are available to the west of the classroom. I walked north and used a bryophyta/dendrobium orchid symbiont on a palm along Romantic Drive as the next feature in the walk. Cyanobacteria was the next stop. Bacteria: Cyanobacteria: Cyanophyceae: Nostocophycidae: Nostocales: Nostocaceae: Nostoc: Nostoc commune.  Plantae: Tracheophyta: Lycopodiopsida: Lycopodiales: Lycopodiaceae: Lycopodielloideae: Palhinhaea: Palhinhaea cernua.  Plantae: Tracheophyta: Lycopodiopsida: Lycopodiales: Lycopodiaceae: Lycopodielloideae: Palhinhaea: Palhinhaea cernua.  A hand waving stop at Kingdom Plantae Phylum Tracheophyta Subphylum Angiospermae Class Liliopsida Order Arecales Family Arecace...