Books

Occasionally I am asked to review books on certain topics in eLearning.  In this section I am going to cover the books that I have reviewed so you can get an idea of my impression of them.  If you have other impressions of any books I pimp please comment.

Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques

Ok, always good to start off with an explanation of who this book is intended for.  Taken from the book, explaining what you will accomplish with this book:

As teachers begin to use an online learning system, the first thing most of us do is explore the system’s features. We discover it has online forums, electronic flashcards, interactive quizzes, Wikis, collaborative workshops, and other features. Our question now becomes, “How can I use this feature to teach my course?” or “What features of this software can be used to effectively teach my course?” For example, we discover the software has an Assignment module and ask, “How can I use online assignments in my course?”. We start by exploring the software and figuring out how we can use it to effectively teach our courses. When given a new tool, it’s natural to explore the tool’s functions and think of ways to use it.

So a way to look at this book is that it targets explaining how to use many of the features of Moodle to create effective online courses (based on research based instructional design principals).

What this book is not

This book is NOT a technical manual, and it expects you to have at least some experience with Moodle.  This is actually a really good thing…if you are a technical person you might find learning Moodle easy, but not have any idea when it is a good idea to use certain features like Forums, Wiki’s, etc.  This is where this book excels, at teaching you when to use certain features from an instructional design perspective.  As I mentioned earlier, it is about creating effective online courses.

What I liked

• Tips for creating a positive interactive experience in forums
  • Like responding timely to forum posts
  • Maintaining a positive attitude to show open-mindedness
• How to gauge forum participation by looking at forum logs
  • This is cool, never new this was possible, but could be really useful
• Filled with many great examples
  • Helps to actually show how features can be used in practical application.
• Stresses the importance of interaction on the learning experience
  • Explains that interactive experiences are better for learning than static text
• How chat can be used for synchronous real-time learning

What I didn’t like

The book only focuses on features that are currently built into Moodle, and avoids add-on modules even when it makes sense to use them.  The reason they did this as that they wanted to focus on core features of Moodle that will be included in any updates to Moodle.  So this isn’t a bad thing necessarily, but often times they suggest workarounds that seem really hacky, and would be a pain in the ass to implement.  For example, in the second chapter they suggest creating an individual forum for each user in a course, and to do this they create groups for each person, and if you had a class for 10, 20, or 30 people this is going to become quickly monotonous, and you are going to quickly be overwhelmed by the number of groups you have.

My take

The book does a great job of explaining when and how to use features to create rich, effective learning experiences.  If you are someone like me who often focuses on the technical aspects of what IS possible, you don’t focus on how to use these features to create great learning experiences.  It could also be useful to folks who aren’t super familiar with some features (like forums, chat, etc) and how they can be used in a learning environment.

You should check out a sample chapter from the book here.

You can purchase the book from Packt Publishing here.

Essential Articulate Studio ‘09

This is the first ever book on any Articulate software.  Essential Articulate Studio ‘09 is written by my friends Patti Shank and Jennifer Bircher.  I spent many nights, weekends and many more missed football games reviewing the technical details of this book as Patti and Jennifer wrote it.  So you won’t be able to find a single technical error

Who should buy this book?

This book is great for any novice to intermediate Articulate user to walk you through doing anything you are looking for in the Articulate Studio.  If you are an advanced user of Articulate user this probably isn’t the best book for you, but if you have other colleagues in your organization that need to learn how to use Articulate Studio ‘09 this book will be perfect.

What you will learn?

You will learn about every feature in the Articulate Studio.  Curious how Learning Games work?  No sweat, check pages 228-236.  Want to know about Web Objects?  Check page 254.  Point is if there is a feature in Studio ‘09 this book will tell you about it.

Patti also did an awesome job of injecting some instructional design advice in many of the chapters.  She when beyond just explaining a feature and explaining why you would want to do something based on instructional design concepts.

So if you are knew to Articulate, or know someone who is, this is the perfect book to get them up and running in no time!

Where to buy Essential Articulate Studio ‘09?

Interested in buying the Essential Articulate Studio ‘09 book?  You should buy it hear at Amazon ($26.37 which is 35% off the cover price).

Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching

I initially hesitated before I agreed to review this book because of the title.  I know very little about teaching Second Languages, and not sure how well I would be able to review such a book.  I decided to take it on because I do have some experience in both class room learning, and eLearning Spanish (via Rosetta Stone) and thought it would be interesting to see how Moodle could help in such an environment.

What you will learn

You will learn a lot in this book about Moodle that doesn’t just apply to Moodle’s use in Second Language classes.  Some things you will learn that have nothing to do with Second Language settings:

• Moodle Overview – Gives a basic overview Moodle.  Where you can find help, info about core features, common terms, etc, are all covered in the intro chapter to get you up to speed.
• About Blocks and Modules – What they are, and how you can extend Moodle with them.  This is particularly useful for the Second Language part of this book.  If you are familiar with Wordpress, and the Wordpress Plug-ins, Modules are similar to that.
• User Management – How to import/add users into your Moodle account.  What the permissions mean and how to use them.
• Managing Courses – How to create and manage courses.
• Grading Systems – How to setup a grading system.

One knock on the book is that it mentions screencasting tools, but neglects to mention Screenr????  :-)  In fairness though, I think the book was written before Screenr was born.

What separates this book from many of the other generalized software books is that it actually tells you how to develop good courses, instead of being a glorified help manual.  It tells you how to effectively use Moodle for Second Language Teaching.  I have read many software books that explain features, but don’t explain HOW TO use the software for the objective you are trying to achieve.  This is where this book excels, it tells you HOW TO build effective courses for Second Language teaching.

This is a solid book for anyone who wants to learn about Moodle, even if you have no need for it in a Second Language environment.  Interested in buying the book?  You should buy the book here at Packt Publishing.