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Moodle 1.9 Theme Design: A Review

So you've been using Moodle for a while now and want to add some pizazz to your site. There's a new book out which will help you do just that.

Moodle 1.9 Theme Design: Beginner's Guide by Pail Gadsdon, is what you will need to get you started designing a site which is appealing to your users and reflects your own personality.

I'm relatively new to Moodle. My school district has set up a Moodle site which I have been using to develop a hybrid "Advanced Library Research" course on. I haven't really even had the time to experiment with the built-in Moodle themes.

I'm not a designer. As a matter of fact if there is any skill I'd spend time on getting to know better (if I had the time) design is what I'd like to explore. But this guide says it's for beginners so I thought I'd give it a try.
I am a very basic HTML user. I started my website using Netscape Composer and then migrated over to Adobe Dreamweaver several years ago. I still don't use many of the features available. For example, I just recently got to the point where I think I can use the template feature which could be very helpful as my site has many, many pages and it would be useful to not have to change things on each page or just copy a page when I want to make a new one. I do use the split view in DW so I can see the code. (I'm an old WordPerfect fan and can't stand the fact that MS Word doesn't show where those hidden codes are when editing.

Although the author expects the reader to have some understanding of HTML and CSS, the book takes you through the process of creating a theme in a step-by-step way that you can feel like you can work with the material and not feel out of your depth as you go along.

Chapter 1 provides an over view of virtual learning environments (which Moodle is) and a short introduction to Moodle itself and the skills and tools you will need to enhance Moodle themes.
Chapter 2 explains how Moodle's standard themes are applied and how you can download and add a non-standard theme to Moodle.
Chapter 3 shows how to change the header logo and footer details. It also reminds the user to check the appearance in different web browsers.
The next chapter looks at adjusting background colors and fonts using CSS. Accessibility issues are also discussed at the end of this chapter.
Layout issues are explored in chapter 5 and this was where I began to see the real value of this book. I'd seen other Moodle sites and noticed they looked quite a bit different from one another. I now saw how I could make my site look more custom-made and user-friendly.
As I stated at the outset, design is not my strong suit, so chapter 6 is very important for a user like me. It's where you begin to learn about "knowing your audience" and understanding the goals of the site before actually beginning to design something appropriate for your Moodle users. Once you've more or less made those decisions, the question remains: where do all those neat graphics come from and how do you make them fit the pages you've begun to develop? The chapter shows how to find and download themes for various age groups and types of users (young children, older students, college-aged patrons, disabled, etc.) as well as general design tips. The software used by the author is Adobe Photoshop but the instructions could be applied to any of a number of software products including some freely available ones.
Chapters 7 and 8 pull all the elements of our theme together from creating the mock up to testing the various components such as links, fonts, headings, background, and icons, and testing the various components as they are changed.
The final two chapters, both titled Under the Hood, consider how to style navigation, login screen, core functionality and modules, of your Moodle site.

I'm really looking forward to using this book to help me make my Moodle site as attractive as it can possibly be so my students will want to come back again and again to collaborate, complete assignments, and communicate with me a each other.

All in all, I think this would be a very useful book for anyone working with Moodle 1.9 to improve the appearance of their site. Although Moodle 2.0 is due sometime this summer many folks around the world will be using Moodle 1.9 for a long time to come so it should prove useful to those of us without much experience with design or knowledge of HTML or CSS.

Moodle 1.9 Theme Design

I've made a commitment to read this book and do a review of it. I'm glad the subtitle is "Beginner's Guide" because I'm still a beginner to Moodle myself!

Twitpics

I used Twitpics to upload my first pictures to Twitter @besschinlibrary.
I took some pictures of the students during their mock senate proceedings which took place in the library. I've taken pictures before and posted them to my Library Leaves blog but this was the first time I've tried Twitter. I also discovered that you don't even have to go to the Twitpics site, you can merely send them as an email attachment to an address they give you with the tweet as the subject line.
I also posted pictures of our new "Wild Things" mural.

Shop for a Kindle

Amazon now has a way have direct link to a specific product and if a blog reader buys it via this link the blogger makes 15% of the purchase price. Kinda neat!

The Unquiet Library

Keep an eye on this site it's full of stuff about "21st-century" learning and is sure to change and grow as time goes on.
Take a look at the video "Connected Student Toolbox" for a vision of the future.

in reference to: The Unquiet Library 2009-10 (view on Google Sidewiki)

Google Sidewiki Works

Thanks for the explicit directions! I've seen this before but haven't used it until now.

in reference to:

"Click on the Sidewiki button on any web page Add helpful information about the entire page or any part of the page Publish to the browser sidebar for others to read"
- Google Sidewiki (view on Google Sidewiki)

ShareThis

Here's a really neat free tool that works in conjunction with your browser to enable you to share on lots of different forums really easily.

ShareThis adds an icon, like the RSS feed icon, right in the address box of your browser. Clicking on it opens a list of various social networking links such at Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, Delicious, etc. In just couple clicks you can share stuff in a variety of ways.

Social Media Revolution?

An interesting video referred on LM_NET by Lizanel Boman from Ryan Seacrest's page(!?).



Get on board or get off the track!

Eight Tips for Super Searching

Interesting article from PC Magazine, Eight Tips for Super Searching. I'm always looking for new search techniques and sharing them with kids and teachers as appropriate.
In other news, Microsoft has released it's new search engine, Bing. It's got some new features and a neat home page effect (could be distracting?).
I notice that in the above article they still refer to MS Live Search but the link is re-directed to Bing.

Shared via AddThis

Print Can Be Wrong Too!

Great little article on the SpeEdChange blog discusses how print media can be wrong too.

Britannica Widgets

Encyclopaedia Britannica has recently made a series of widgets available which can be embedded into a blog or website. They come in a variety of "flavors," e.g. U.S. Presidents, brain, dogs, philosophy, with more to come.

The widgets are dynamic and show a snippet of information about one of several topics under that particular heading. There is also a link to the article in Britannica itself. One caveat is that the version of Britannica used is the commercial version which is different from the version many schools and colleges use. But it's still a pretty nifty little series of tools.

I've embedded several into the library web pages. See, for example, the page on U.S. history which uses the U.S. Presidents widget.

For more info on the widgets and to watch a video about how easy it is to embed them in your site go to Brtiannica's Assets & Widgets page.

Try Bit.ly

Bit.ly is becoming the new standard for link shortening.

ReadWriteWeb has an interesting posting about it here. "A little startup called Bit.ly has unseated TinyURL as the default link shortening service on Twitter. This isn't just about shortening links, though. "The truth about Bit.ly," enterprise software analyst James Governor said today, "is that it's not a URL shortener, it's a trend management and metrics platform."

This is Bit.ly's link to the California School Libraries Work! wiki .

Embedding Video in a Blog

Well, I finally embedded a video in the library news blog, Library Leaves.

I took a one-minute clip at the Mock Senate yesterday with my little Panasonic library camera. It shows a student, Ian Kaufman, speaking about lowering the drinking age.

I use Picasa at home to manage my pictures and was able to save it there and then insert it using the video insertion tool on Blogger. It worked just fine.

Take a look. Now that I've done it once I may just do it again!

AL Direct, the online journal of the American Library Association, recently (Mar. 25) had a link to a Google Blogoscoped posting about an experiment Google is running which gives more search options using regular Google search "Tony Ruscoe and Philipp Lenssen write: “Google is running an experiment in their search results, apparently shown to a portion of their users. On search results, say for the query comic books, a link in the top blue bar will read ‘Show options.’ Click it, and a side bar full of options expands to the left. One of the most interesting experiments is the ‘wonder wheel’. This will show a Flash-based interactive mini app which starts with your keyword in the center, and related terms around it.”..."

The technology involves downloading a cookie to the specific computer so the blog posting gives the code that needs to be sent to Google to put the "Show options..." into effect.

For a long time I've been waiting for Google to become more graphical and this is an admittedly baby step in that direction.

Some of the other options allow the searcher to limit the search by media type and date range. There is also a tool which give a time line of the search terms.

How useful all this is waits to be seen but it's always good to see what Google engineers are working on.

BTW, there doesn't seem to be anything at Google Labs on this topic/tool yet.

HOW TO: Use Google Reader Like A Rockstar

HOW TO: Use Google Reader Like A Rockstar

This is great intro to Google Reader and related tools.
Google Reader is a tool which allows the user to read RSS feeds easily.
It was not one of the first readers but has certainly become a very popular one over time.

I use Google Reader extensively. The only challenge is keeping up with all the feeds I want to follow.

This link comes from the folks at Mashable.com and was posted by Matt Singley

eSchool News Adds Widgets

I've added a new widget to the blog (see under Technorati widget) which provides an easy link to eSchool News, a well-known print and online newsletter for the educational community.

I chose to add the Technology News widget since this blog is mostly about tech, but there are two other options--one lists Headlines from eSchool News and the other offers Funding resources. Go to eSchool News to explore the options.

It was very easy to add to Blogger because they offer a direct upload feature from Widgetbox which immediately opens the Blogger edit layout mode from which you can place the widget where you desire on the blog page. Code for Facebook, TypePad, MySpace, and other social networking sites are also available.

Give it a look and you may want to add one of the widgets to your blog or web page.

Cloud Computing

Liz Dodds earlier today sent out a message announcing a website which follows the phenomenon of cloud computing. The site, which is definitely worth a look, is maintained by Brian Dvorak, a teacher in her district, and describes itself this way:

"Cloud computing is a term used to express the process of using web-based applications to accomplish tasks that were traditionally done with desktop applications. Why buy expensive software when you can used web-based applications, many of which are free, to accomplish your computing needs. And all you need is a web browser and a an Internet connection. But how can one find the web application they need without searching for hours on the web? Ah, that is were Cloud Trip comes into play.

Cloud Trip is a free to use directory of cloud computing web sites. In addition, if you have a useful web application you would like to share, sign up with Cloud Trip and post it in our directory. As a registered user, you will also have the ability to rate the posted websites and help promote the best web apps out in the cloud."

The site looks very useful especially because of the rating system for applications which registered users can add to. I had some difficulty registering today but as soon as I'm able I will be exploring the site and adding my own ratings of apps I use. It seems to me that this would be a great site to share with students and teachers to allow them to explore this ever expanding world of web-based applications.

Polymer Vision Video of READIUS

Just discovered this neat new technology--not, unfortunately available in the U.S.

Video Tutorials from Cornell University Libraries

When I have the time I'd like to make some videos like this one which show how to use various library resources. This one comes from the Cornell University Olin Library and is part of their series of 90-second videos called "Research Minutes."
The topic of this video is finding substantive news articles, certainly a topic which high school students need to understand.



I like the way this video just use still pictures and screen shots, a la typical slide presentations, and a little music to convey a sense of movement and urgency. Very easy techniques to make viewing the video much more enjoyable.