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INTRODUCTION
Some time ago, I shared this note about an upcoming Moodle book review. I have since carried Moodle 1.9: E-Learning Course Development by William H. Rice IV (Packt Publishing) home with me countless times from work, and to work from home. It’s been my companion to those events every father must attend and sit patiently in an out of the way spot. The book even enjoyed a short stint as a pillow during one long afternoon when a siesta was the only way to survive the time.

Note to the Packt Publishing Folks Who Sent me the book for review: I apologize in advance that I never learned to write proper book reviews (have no interest in writing “proper” book reviews). I always figured I’d share what’s useful, the take-aways. I hope this entry suffices for book review purposes.

I also have to admit that after receiving the book in the mail from Packt Publishing, I realized that my office already owned it and that it was being read by one of my team-mates. I felt a bit ashamed that the book was in the office but that I had not read it…I prefer to see that as a testament of what you can do with Moodle.

BENEFITS OF OWNING THE BOOK
One of the benefits of reading a book about a tool you’ve only explored and used to meet identified workplace needs is that you learn things you needed to know but didn’t know you needed to know (e.g. Wikis in Moodle). You also pick up stuff you probably wouldn’t have seen as relevant but now do based on the book explanation (Workshops).

Below is a list of some of those benefits. Of course, I encourage you to decide for yourself if these are valuable benefits to have access to…I sought out items that aren’t readily encountered in setting up Moodle (at least, that I didn’t encounter).

Rice’s personable “voice” starts out with less than riveting topic–yet it is a must-read and accurate–introduction to installing and configuring Moodle. As I made my way deeper and deeper into the book, I skipped over stuff I’d already learned (although skimming it for nuggets practical experience may not have forced me to learn) and jumped to stuff that I had to learn more about.

Some of the key areas that jumped out at me as I read included the following:

#1 – OVERCOMING INSTALLATION ERROR – PHP MEMORY LIMITS
As I read the book, then re-read it, I listened to his voice as he discussed the process and compared that to my hands-on experience. I could not fault him for his attention to detail or the accuracy of the steps. One of the key points in the book was handling the potential PHP errors that sometimes occur (page 51) in regards to memory limit. This is a problem I had encountered and had to work through during my Moodle installation on UbuntuLinux. Others may certainly encounter it when setting up a server’s PHP/MySQL installation from scratch.

#2 – ACCESSING AN EXTERNAL DATABASE
Being able to authenticate users from a variety of sources is useful information for educators whose districts do not have LDAP for their students. Rice’s exploration of this (page 74) encouraged me to try this effort out in one of the Moodle Tips I shared online documenting my experiences with Moodle, and I’m definitely grateful to the 1.5 pages he spent on the topic.

#3 – CHANGING ALLOWED FILE UPLOAD SIZE
Knowing how to change the file upload size is critical, and Rice’s explanation goes into detail (pages 88-89). I found this to be extremely helpful for my own Moodle installations so that I could ensure that I could upload LARGE files (like videos). While you don’t want to upload files that are TOO big via the Web (better to use FTP…check pages 180-181 for more info from Rice) because they may time out, Rice explains how to deal with the time out issue with specific examples. This has proved invaluable to me.

#4 – USE OF FILTERS
I had no idea what filters (pages 89-91) were and what they did in Moodle. Rice explained this succinctly and helped broaden my appreciation for what filters can accomplish. Rice shares that filters can automatically link words and phrases to items in your site, interpret what you’ve uploaded, and restrict the kind of content a user can place on the site. Obviously, it is the third use that catches the eye of any Moodle administrator who deals with students who haven’t quite mastered digital citizenship.

#5 – PUTTING A COURSE INTO SEVERAL CATEGORIES
Rice has a nifty tip for putting a course into several course categories. I haven’t tried it yet but it is something worth checking out. Rice is kind enough to provide a link to a javascript that will get the job done.

#6 – USING METACOURSES TO ENROLL STUDENTS IN MULTIPLE COURSES AT ONCE
Rice shares this point, I would like to be able to enrol a student in all the courses at once. I can do this by enrolling the student into the parent metacourse. . .if I enrol a student into the Lounge [the metacourse], then, he or she is automatically enrolled into each child course. This is a neat tip to know and be aware of.

#7 – USING FILES TO UPLOAD CONTENT TO MOODLE
I didn’t know it, but FILES can be used to upload content to Moodle IF you are a course creator or teacher. This is a tip that can be used when uploading photos to be used in a Lightbox Image Gallery. Of course, this makes me wish for multiple browse and upload window like when you need to upload multiple photos to Flickr at one time.

#8 – LESSONS, SURVEY, QUESTIONS
Rice’s explanation of these elements in Moodle could have been horribly complex, but wasn’t. I now understand the difference between the different types of surveys (page 238), including the COLLES, ATTLS, and Critical Incidents. These are some surveys I’m going to consider adding to my existing online professional learning courses. There is a lot more available in Chapter 6, and I have confess that I’m going to be referring back to this again and again.

#9 – WIKIS IN MOODLE
Before reading Chapter 7, I was thoroughly confused by the wikis option in Moodle. It wasn’t until I better understood wikis as explained by Rice that I realized how versatile wikis could be.
One of the points I missed completely in working with Moodle wikis was Rice’s first step in the process, which involves creating a text file and uploading it to Moodle so that the text page can serve as the first page of the wiki.

#10 – WORKSHOPS
In my daughter’s writing class, the teacher will ask students to submit a piece of writing to be “workshopped.” That is, the student reads the piece to the class and then the students discuss it. I used the same approach in my writing classes, and found Rice’s explanation of Moodle’s workshop feature to be helpful:

A workshop provides a place for the students in a class to see an example project, upload their individual projects, and see and assess each other’s projects. When a teacher requires each student to assess the work of several other students, the workshop becomes a powerful collaborative grading tool.

#11 – FRONT PAGE SETTING
One of the questions that I’ve encountered in moving to setup online professional learning is how to customize a “friendly” front page, as opposed to one where the user has to login right away. To learn how to do that, I dipped into Chapter 8 of Rice’s book.

#12 – BACKING UP MOODLE
Although you can find quite a bit of information on this topic online, Rice hits upon some key ideas for backing up, restoring, and importing.

#13 – OVERRIDE ROLES
Overriding roles–for example, so that anyone could view and complete questionnaires–is something I jumped into right away. Rice covers this on page 350 of the book and it’s worth reviewing as one of those things you need to know when administering the site.

Some of the things that needed a bit more exploration, either in the book as an appendix or online:

• Setting up Moodle Cron Jobs on various operating systems (e.g. Mac, Windows, GNU/Linux)
• Integrating Moodle with online Web 2.0/Social networking resources/tools
• In-depth recommendations about course design for K-12 purposes. I would have loved to see a chapter on this aligned to iNACOL standards.

Rice’s book is a must-read for folks, whether as a reference book or as a tutorial for newbies. As a newbie to various aspects of Moodle, I found myself dipping into the book several times to find out how to do something or to get background information. Since Moodle is so powerful, you learn what you need as you need it…but Rice’s book helps you understand more than you might need.

Bottom line: Would I buy this book? Yes, of course.

Be sure to read the following Moodle articles…

1. Moodle Tips Roundup – a list of tips I’ve picked up in my Moodle journey.
2. Doing the Moodle Mambo
3. Moodle Habitudes: Constructing Online Learning Environments
   
4. Book Review – Moodle 1.9: E-Learning Course Development by William Rice
5. Why Moodle? A few reasons culled from around the Web using Google
6. Moodle-izing Education (due for publication in Education World…find it here in mid-March, 2009)

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure