News+Items

Any items found on any site that may be of interest or debate on educational items will either have the link to the article or a copy of it here.
 * News Items **

Mobile Phones in the Classroom - Education Review Article
 An interesting article on the use of mobile phones with an educational perspective.

As well as the study above on mobile phones in the classroom, this site has some interesting lesson content on use of mobile phones: **[|Mobile Study]**

 As well as those above, and to prove that there is a lot of thought on this issue, here is a blog site that has an article on the use of Mobile phones as a learning tool : **Mobile phones - powerful learning aides? **

 And yet another, there are many, but these 3 are connected in their quality of research, and after reading, educationalists are going to have to stop and think: **[|From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning.]**

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 * 21st century pedagogy **

Having just been to the Moodle Administration course (28 and 29 Sept 09), there is a lot of information that is relevant to teachers.
 * Moodle News **

 Moodle is coming out with an upgrade at the end of this year, which will make it much easier to upload files, create course content with flair and do most things you did not want to try before...stay tuned.

 Also, there are a lot of help files on the **Moodle.org** that as teachers are made for you, take the time to go there and find the file that helps you rediscover the benefits of using this fabulous online learning repository.

Well, Moodle 2.0 is now out, and as I've started to use it I am discovering a lot of changes, and must say, are all for the good? Well, it takes some getting used to, but as you get into the complexities of this new system, you quickly discover that it's not what you have been used to in the past. No third party software (of worth) is able to used in this new system, i.e. HotPotatoes, extra quizzes etc., so patience is needed as you have to wait till those soles that write the third party software bring out those much loved extras that were available on the old Moodle series before 2.0.
 * Moodle 2.0 **

Of course, there are many new and great to use parts of this new Moodle 2.0, short cuts to courses being one really handy thing, but it is not easy to make up webpages within Moodle like before, nor place links on, till you go through a steep learning curve, as they insisted on renaming those functions, I for one don't think that is necessary as it's only name for name sake not a good thing that makes anything work better. I also found that when making 'upload assignment' for my students, it didn't produce a 'submit' button as it did previously, hm, how that it no good as students quickly found out. I went in to have a look and all selections were correct, upload was ticke as yes, so I just hit the save button again, and what do you know, it then produced an 'submit' button, I then did this to the other 4 courses, and same thing, had to do it twice to have a 'submit' button appear.

<span style="color: #1226ba; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Still, it is new, and I'm sure come time it will come out with patches for some little problems, and updates to make things a little better, it's just another get used to it thing I'm sure. Stay tuned!

**Deal or No Deal**
Quite often Twitter comes up with some great sites but this would have to be a beauty, as it shoots from the hip about technology and kids, very much worth reading: @http://tomwhitby.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/deal-or-no-deal/